Qidi Tech 1 - Replicator 1 clone

[Roger36330]

All motors but Z are being ran at max Vref (118 not the normal 128 one would believe) so they get hot enough to blister your hand as X did to me. Since the carriage is ABS I am surprised the motors haven't caused it to sag at the very least.

It appears not a soul knows what Vref should really be except it should not be at full throttle (at least with Marlin using Stepsticks we knew what Vref meant precisely).

My suggestion would be to turn all motors down to 80 (leave Z at 40) and do a nice print and see what happens. If no skipping then after 1 hour feel the motors and if mildly warm 80 was the magic number.

You can do what I did with my I3 and just keep going lower and lower until the motor would skip or lose steps then back it up some. By doing that you will have way cooler motors that will last longer and the ABS plastic parts will love you for it. So, 80 and if that works go 60 and if not then 70, etc... since we have no idea wth the formula is for a Mightyboard.

I guess it's time to reveal my ignorance, to address the Vref adjustment, is that done via the firmware or a POT on the stepper driver etc? Is this something a novice should attempt?

Roger

[Roger36330]

Update, found it, that was easy. Thanks for your help.

Roger

[Roger36330]

You are awesome, changed Vref from 118 to 100 and stepper motor is cool to the touch.

Tks

[suds]

Any baseline results on stepper vref@80? Point me in the right direction to where the adjustment is made. I'd like to test.
Thx.

[Syd_Khaos]

Been digging through some of Da Vinci's schematics.....gonna start printing some of that stuff.
Gonna start with a perpetual motion wheel driven by water. It will be his 'over-weighted wheel' design where the hammers are replaced with vials 1/2 full of water.
After that I will be doing a floating arm trebuchet..I know there are some models for these floating around the net...but most are altered. I will be trying to stick to Leonardo's original design as much as humanly possible.
Then probably one of his flying machines, though very undecided as to what one I'm gonna attempt.

Will be a big change, as the past several days everything I have printed was derived from the models at NASA website. My favorites so far being the Hubble and several terrain plates of Moon and Mars (the best imo is Victoria Crater).

[JSensebe]

Hello Guys, I will be receiving my QiDI in a couple of hours today. Noob question (even after reading a lot post) Should I place 3M Painters tape on stock plate and then align it? Or, align the plate and add the 3M painters tape/glue and then see what happens?

Also, how do I know I have enough ABS/PLA to run a big job and does the QIDI pause when it runs out? Giving you a chance to load more...

I've been running mine with the blue tape that shipped on the plate and a liberal application of glue stick. I've only printed PLA so far, though. I'm itching to try the ABS, probably in the next day or so. I clean up the glue stick with a damp paper towel as the glue is water soluble and will actually turn back purple again when it gets wet, which helps; it's much easier to clean purple glue than transparent glue.

I don't think the printer can detect when it runs out of filament. You just need to make sure you've got enough, or watch it carefully while it's printing and pause it if you run too low. My longest print has been twelve hours, because I was printing several parts at once. I probably wouldn't do that again. I had a little bit of stringing between the parts that I needed to file down.

[DarkAlchemist]

I see they are selling the 10mm rod kits on Ebay now. $30.00 plus 20.00 shipping from China. I sent them a message and they said it was a 10mm kit as it doesn't say it in the description.

As I said not cheap and anyone within 30 days of purchasing can get them for free or get your money back.

[DarkAlchemist]

I guess it's time to reveal my ignorance, to address the Vref adjustment, is that done via the firmware or a POT on the stepper driver etc? Is this something a novice should attempt?

Roger

Done via RepG as the pots on a Mightyboard are digital like they are on a Smoothieboard.

[JimHs1]

Will be a big change, as the past several days everything I have printed was derived from the models at NASA website. My favorites so far being the Hubble and several terrain plates of Moon and Mars (the best imo is Victoria Crater).

Links to the files? Or to the website where they are located. Thanks.

[DarkAlchemist]

You are awesome, changed Vref from 118 to 100 and stepper motor is cool to the touch.

Tks

Remember, the whole point is to see how low you can go before it skips then raise the number a little. 80 seems to be about right so 100 is still a little high BUT one extruder versus two makes a difference so 80 for one might not be enough for two though I would say to give it a shot.

Very stupid of Qidi to have maxed them to full force like that as 118 is the max from what I read (for the record I don't think Qidi knows what they are doing they are just winging it as they go along with open source files).

I found it odd that Z is only at 40 and everything else is 118. Oh, I would suggest to play with A and B because a cooler motor there is less of a chance of a clog (regardless if a heatsink and fan are used hot is just wrong).

Good luck and please report back how low you managed to go on each one.