I need some serious help

[Roxy]

Nickschaos81, I'm going through the same stuff right now with my new G2s Geeetech printer. I'm bringing up the Marlin RC2 (Release Candidate 2) on it. There are some extra adjustments available in the newer Marlin's. You get to trim the endstop adjustments for each tower and you get to trim the diagonal rod length for each tower.

I'm pretty level right now, but I need to figure out how to use the diagonal rod trim to fix one place I have the nozzle lifting up too much.

[Alibert]

OK, I will slow down a bit.

The first point you must understsand that the actual XY size of the object you print is related to the actual diagonal rod length and what the firmware thinks it is. If your firmware setting is off, the the object you print will be larger or smaller than waht the slicer intended. If you want a cube with sides of 20.0 mm exactly, this will only happen if the firmware setting is exactly equal to what the diagonal rods are in real life. If the firmware setting is larger or smaller, the XY size of the cube will be smaller/larger (or the other way around, I will have tolook that one up) than the intended 20.0 mm.

Therefore measure the diagonal rods accurately with calipers and stay with that value in firmware. I use the average of all three for the initial setting until I can print the calibration object.

When you move the hotend over the build plate at, let's say Z=0 height, you will observe the hotend seemingly moving up or down when going from the edge to the center. This is the dome (center higher than edge) or bowl (center lower than edge).

As you want to keep your diagonal rods constant and as close to reality as possible to maintain XY dimensional accuray of your printed objects, you can only change the dome/bowl shape with respect to the center by changing the diagonal radius setting. Do not tinker with the diagonal rod settings to adjsst dome/bowl effects.

If your hotend is OK at one tower but digs into the build plate when approaching another tower, then it means your dome/bowl is not horizontal but slanted. You can only get it horizontal but adjusting the endstops of the towers. This you do by moving the hotend as close as possible to a tower, try to guage how much higher or lower you need to adjust the endstop, adjust the endstop, then re-home and move the hotend back to the foot of the tower again to see if you are right. As the z-height will also be influenced by the errors in the endstops of the other towers, you will need to adjust the endstops in turn for all three towers, and again, and again until no more adjustments are needed. I usually do all three towers at least threen times in a row to get it right.

The endstop adjustment procedure distorts all other settings, so that is why you need to do it first, and do it well (and never touch the endstops again as long as your printer lives...)

To recapitulate:

Get the endstops right first, take your time and do it well as possible.

Measure the diagonal rods and stick to that value.

Get the z-plan flat by adjusting the diagonal radius only, do not touch endstops or diagonal rod settings.

When you this far you can print the calibration object (which I am doing right now on my printer by the way, now that I have rpertier 0.96 working) for the final fine-tuning.

I will update you on my progress of the latter when I am finished...

[Roxy]

Thank You for that detailed description! That helped me. I'm going to go back and re-do my end stop adjustments. But I still don't understand why that affects the height the nozzle is above the bed when it is close to the tower. By moving the carriage up or down, you just push the effector sideways more or less???? There is something going on with the endstops that I don't understand yet.

[LuckyImperial]

NEW PROBLEMS!!!! so not excited

I went thru and did all calibrations again , everything seemed fine except my diagnol rod length (for dishing) went from like 240 to 640 .... that normal? Horizontal length had to be increased too , its now at 180 from 140 ish (dont remember exactly)
I also did the extruder calibration as well. Esteps went from 147 to 165. My Max Z went from 350 to 302 , then down to 268 and seems to steadily be decreasing.... but this could be because the heating and cooling of the extruder , or the stupid auto level mickey mouse rig of an effector i have.

The real problem that i seem to have is it now tries to print everything in micro. When I load the calibration tool to print , I slice it ... even in the preview window it still shows that its going to print out close to my max bed size , but once printing starts it prints it 1/4 what it is supposed to. I loaded the calibration cubes and it tried to print those so small they would have fit on a nickel, with a 4 wrap skirt. So either I inadvertly built a shrink machine or I screwed up somewhere.

Remember...

"Diagonal Rod Length and Centered Rod Offset. Those two settings may be called something different in different firmware, but they're always there and they always do the same thing. Diagnonal Rod Length will affect the dimensional accuracy of your printer and Centered Rod Offset (smooth rod offest, rod radius, horizontal rod offset, etc) affects the "dishing" of your printer. If Diagonal Rod Length is wrong then your printer will print things either too big or too small. If Centered Rod Offset is wrong then things don't get printed on a level plane.

The next thing in calibration is leveling. Which is dead simple. You level the effector plane with repsect to the bed by adjusting endstop offsets, or trimming them using screws that are sometimes mounted to the carriages (for some printers). 3 points define a plane. Your job is to make it match the bed. Takes 10 minutes if you have trimming screws. "

[Nickschaos81]

So I found this article, because I can't stop thinking about this , even thou I'm at work.
http://minow.blogspot.com/?m=0

It seems to make more sense to me and his terms match things in my firmware.... you guys thoughts?

[LuckyImperial]

So I found this article, because I can't stop thinking about this , even thou I'm at work.
http://minow.blogspot.com/?m=0

It seems to make more sense to me and his terms match things in my firmware.... you guys thoughts?

That article has been the "Gold Standard" for delta calibration for quite some time now. It will definitely lead you down the right path.

[Nickschaos81]

so i think i have this thing finally working. im fine tuning dimensions but it seems to be good. I finally broke down and shut the eeprom off and did all calibrations straight from the firmware in arduino. Then reinabled the eeprom ( like it talked about in the link i just provided) Ill keep you guys posted , but as for now , i think i have a printer

[Alibert]

Congrats!!!!

[Nickschaos81]

so i have a new question concerning rep. I found a big problem with the eeprom stuff built in to rep. I can and now have a working printer by altering the arduino config.h file of my firmware. as long as i have the eeprom line turned to off. If i turn it on so i can alter the eeprom from withing rep. It undoes everything.... So for now I have it turned off. I have uninstalled rep. and reinstalled. to see if that would fix it .... any ideas... like maybe a way to get rep to set the eeprom config by actually reading it first.... not a big deal. i dont mind using the arduino side of it , but for convience it would be nice


Edit: Rep as in Repitier host

[Alibert]

Just change the value of EEPROM_MODE in Configuration.h to any unused before value in the range of 1-255. I am at 32 myself now...

The firmware when booting compares the byte in the EEPROM to this value. If it is the same (like 1 or 2), then the EEPROM values are used instead of the values specified in Configuration.h. If it is different (actual EEPROM value differs from what you specified as EEPROM_MODE in the source code before compiling), the settings of Configuration.h are used to overwrite the existing values in the EEPROM.

The web-based configurator tool specifies 0 for no EEPROM support, and 1 or 2 for changing EEPROM settings at boot. However, any value of 1-255 is OK, as long as it is different from your previous flash...