And Back to getting my Two Trees Sapphire Plus working

[Gambo]

In any case don't abandon the Sapphire Plus for a Sapphire plus it's almost the same machine and if the one I have just as bad to get going. Mine now works almost ! It gives very good prints with lots of materials I could not use on my earlier machine but it is not really reliable it's PID based temperature control is clearly faulty with temperatures all over the place and produces err7 err5 several times a week.

I use the machine in a semi commercial development environment with it running almost all day every day the unreliability means it has to be monitored all the time in case it stops with an error - all in all a pin in the neck but lovely when it works.

[rongee]

In any case don't abandon the Sapphire Plus for a Sapphire plus it's almost the same machine and if the one I have just as bad to get going. Mine now works almost ! It gives very good prints with lots of materials I could not use on my earlier machine but it is not really reliable it's PID based temperature control is clearly faulty with temperatures all over the place and produces err7 err5 several times a week.

I use the machine in a semi commercial development environment with it running almost all day every day the unreliability means it has to be monitored all the time in case it stops with an error - all in all a pin in the neck but lovely when it works.

Sorry, I just brought up the other printer, the Pro, as a point of conversation. Like I said, I'm deep into "YOU WON'T BEAT ME!!" with this printer :-), so I'm going to stick with it.

There's a text file that came on the SD card with my printer that talked about those err7 and err5 occurrences and what to do about them. Sounds like you've already worked through that, but if you'd like to see that text file, I'd be happy to get it to you.

Thanks. Ron

[curious aardvark]

the 32 bit board will look for firmware files on power up and automatically install them.

I usually use an sd card - but if you have a usb input - guess you could use that.

Compiling marlin is usually done throuh IDE - which is an horrendous piece of software that I hate more than I hate The inland revenue (okay maybe not quite that much, more than I hate facebooks software then). if there is another way to compile marlin I'd love to try it.

Not sure why you're talking about giving up on your printer. You've barely started.
have you even printed anything yet ?

Not as bad as the chap who was going to send one back - that he'd had at discount and was clearly pre-owned - because it was scratched.
And again without trying to use it.

Not sure what you've got going on with the z-axis, but the other axis are behaving correctly. Y = front to back and x = left to right.

[rongee]

the 32 bit board will look for firmware files on power up and automatically install them.

I usually use an sd card - but if you have a usb input - guess you could use that.

Compiling marlin is usually done throuh IDE - which is an horrendous piece of software that I hate more than I hate The inland revenue (okay maybe not quite that much, more than I hate facebooks software then). if there is another way to compile marlin I'd love to try it.

Not sure why you're talking about giving up on your printer. You've barely started.
have you even printed anything yet ?

Not as bad as the chap who was going to send one back - that he'd had at discount and was clearly pre-owned - because it was scratched.
And again without trying to use it.

Not sure what you've got going on with the z-axis, but the other axis are behaving correctly. Y = front to back and x = left to right.

Sorry, I didn't mean it to sound like I was ready to throw in the towel. Far from it. Nope, I will beat it into submission some way. :-) I haven't printed anything yet. I'm thinking maybe I'm not that far away from that, tho. Of course, for right now, my definition of printing is likely to be "something coming out of the extruder". I saw your conversation with the fella that had the scratched up unit. Interesting, but heck, I'd have been happy just to have all the parts there with some instructions. All relative, I guess. :-)

I share your disdain for Facebook's software. I was a software guy for quite awhile back in the day (in the day of assembly language, Fortran, and COBOL, that is :-)), and I still dabble a little bit just for fun. I'd be embarrassed to put my name on what Facebook does.

Regards the Z axis. The folks from TwoTrees asked me to send them a video to demonstrate what it's doing, and I'm going to send them that today. My first thought, tho, is to disconnect the lead screws and see if it still behaves that way. I would think if it was binding it would be doing it in both directions, but it's something to check on.

Thanks. Ron

[rongee]

the 32 bit board will look for firmware files on power up and automatically install them.

I usually use an sd card - but if you have a usb input - guess you could use that.

Compiling marlin is usually done throuh IDE - which is an horrendous piece of software that I hate more than I hate The inland revenue (okay maybe not quite that much, more than I hate facebooks software then). if there is another way to compile marlin I'd love to try it.

Not sure why you're talking about giving up on your printer. You've barely started.
have you even printed anything yet ?

Not as bad as the chap who was going to send one back - that he'd had at discount and was clearly pre-owned - because it was scratched.
And again without trying to use it.

Not sure what you've got going on with the z-axis, but the other axis are behaving correctly. Y = front to back and x = left to right.

I got a response back from the tech folks at TwoTrees about the Z axis. Apparently, when you turn on the printer, wherever the platform and the extruder head are sitting is what the printer thinks is their origins. In the case of the Z-axis then, as I understand it now, the origin is the top position of the platform. So, on startup, wherever the platform is, it won't go any higher because it thinks it's at the top already. Now, in their email, they also said "You can click the printer to return to zero". I've asked them to explain that further, but I'm thinking it could be there's a "move" function that just returns the platform to the origin position without having to jog it there. Or it could be a way to override the origin to allow you to move the platform to where the origin actually should be and then reset it. Otherwise, it seems like you'd have to have the power off and manually move the printer to the highest position it will physically move to, and then turn on the printer so that it recognizes that as the origin. Just seems that there'd be a better way than doing that.

[Martin_au]

Yeah, there is.
There should be an option in the menus, usually under "motion" or something similar, which homes all axes.
The Gcode for that is G28.

Be careful when you run that command. Make sure your Z-axis sensor/limit switches are working or it won't know when to stop.

[rongee]

the 32 bit board will look for firmware files on power up and automatically install them.

I usually use an sd card - but if you have a usb input - guess you could use that.

Compiling marlin is usually done throuh IDE - which is an horrendous piece of software that I hate more than I hate The inland revenue (okay maybe not quite that much, more than I hate facebooks software then). if there is another way to compile marlin I'd love to try it.

Not sure why you're talking about giving up on your printer. You've barely started.
have you even printed anything yet ?

Not as bad as the chap who was going to send one back - that he'd had at discount and was clearly pre-owned - because it was scratched.
And again without trying to use it.

Not sure what you've got going on with the z-axis, but the other axis are behaving correctly. Y = front to back and x = left to right.

I came across a thread that you started in August of 2020 in the "Tips" section where you were working with the same file(s) that I'm working with for my printer, namely the Robin-nano-config35.txt, and an associated bin file. Could you take a moment to describe what you learned about that? I can edit that txt file, but I'm not sure what to do with it after that. Do you just put it on an SD drive and start up the printer? Does the bin file need to go along? Or does the txt file need to be "compiled" somehow? I'm kind of confused about what those files are and which ones are needed for what. Would you happen to know of a source that kind of connects the dots?

[Martin_au]

Here's the "join the dots" version.
https://marlinfw.org/docs/basics/ins...latformio.html
https://marlinfw.org/docs/basics/auto_build_marlin.html
https://marlinfw.org/docs/basics/ins...io_vscode.html

[rongee]

Here's the "join the dots" version.
https://marlinfw.org/docs/basics/ins...latformio.html
https://marlinfw.org/docs/basics/auto_build_marlin.html
https://marlinfw.org/docs/basics/ins...io_vscode.html

This is great info. Thanks. I need to dig into it deeper and digest it. I'm going to guess that the software running on the Sapphire Plus will be similar and have a similar update process? The installation video I have talks about converting the printer over to Marlin, which leads me to believe that what's on there now isn't Marlin. :-)

I guess I need something like "3D Printer Motherboard Concepts and Operation for Idiots" or something. I am actually drawing some pictures for myself right now, so at least I know what dots aren't connected for me, in my head, yet. :-) On one side, I've got the motherboard, a bin file and a configuration file, and on the other side, I've got the CAD and CAM software, along with the slicer. In the middle, there's a rat's nest of "other" software, like Pronterface, Visual Studio Code, Repetier, along with the occasional "and here a miracle happens". I am really thankful to have you and others around who have been kind enough to point me in the right direction. That, together with some Youtube videos, website articles, and a few books on the subject, are slowly getting me up to speed. Who know? Maybe one day I'll be able to help the next "me" that comes along.

Somewhere down in my basement I've got a circuit board that used signals from a parallel port cable to drive two stepper motors. It was an early attempt by someone to control telescope movements (probably 15 years ago or more). Most of that circuit board is now just one chip on these 3D printer motherboards. Always interesting to see how these things progress.

Thanks again.

[rongee]

And more progress, and of course, more debugging.So, the printer powers up correctly. I'm testing the home functions now. On the X-axis, I used a zip tie to lock the belt in place, and the zip tie is just big enough that it's blocking the extruder head from moving far enough to trigger the limit switch. So, I need to fix that with a smaller zip tie or something. For right now, I just extended the bit of metal on the frame that causes the x-axis limit switch to trigger, and so it's fine.But the Z-axis again...hmmmmmIf I use the "move" buttons to move the platform, both z motors spin. But when I use the home button, only the right side motor spins. I'm not using the z-axis limit switches right now because I'm trying to the use the BL Touch, and the BL Touch uses one of the sockets for the z-axis limit switches. I'm wondering if that might be doing something. But, you'd think that if something was causing the z limit on one side to trigger, both motors would stop running, right? Maybe I'll try unplugging the BL Touch just to see if that causes a change. Any other thoughts?NOTE: Added information. After I sent this originally, I did unplug the BL touch, and now both motors are spinning. So, I'm wondering now if there's a parameter someplace that I need to set to tell it not to use that socket for the z limit switch but to use it for the BL Touch instead? thanks.Ron