Marlin firmware fork for MakerFarm i3v w/ auto bed level & Roxy's enhancements

[AbuMaia]

Has anyone else had any trouble with the auto-bed-level sometimes not running or not completing?

Sometimes, the G28 runs, and it homes in the center, but the G29 sequence doesn't run and the printer is left with the Z level off by about 6mm. Those first layers don't adhere to the bed real well when they're applied from 6mm up.

I haven't figured out how to reproduce it at will yet, but it seems to happen if I've already run one print job and haven't reset the printer. Or maybe it's just happening when the Z axis is high (90mm or more) and it takes a long time for the G28 Z probe.

Ideas?

I used to have that problem. And yes, it was because I had finished a tall print, and it took the printer too long to home the Z axis that the X and Y steppers timed out and were deactivated, losing the X and Y home position. G29 will not run in this case, so I changed the stepper deactivating delay from (I think it was) 40 to 150. I haven't had the problem since. Sorry, I cannot remember where the setting is in the firmware.

edit: configuration_adv.h
//default stepper release if idle
#define DEFAULT_STEPPER_DEACTIVE_TIME 60

I changed the 60 to 150.

[jtice]

Has anyone else had any trouble with the auto-bed-level sometimes not running or not completing?

My custom start gcode in Slic3r heats the bed, starts the hot ends heating and then runs G28 followed by G29 to home and auto-level. After the G29, it moves the extruder tips just off the front edge of the bed (Y=215, Z=0), primes them and then wipes them onto the glass.

Sometimes, the G28 runs, and it homes in the center, but the G29 sequence doesn't run and the printer is left with the Z level off by about 6mm. Those first layers don't adhere to the bed real well when they're applied from 6mm up.

I haven't figured out how to reproduce it at will yet, but it seems to happen if I've already run one print job and haven't reset the printer. Or maybe it's just happening when the Z axis is high (90mm or more) and it takes a long time for the G28 Z probe.

Ideas?

For the most part, mine works well, but I have alot of random times it fails.
Sometimes auto homing will not safe home in the middle, just homes in the corner, if it does this, then the 9 bed leveling test locations are all shifted more toward the homing corner.
There area also times it will skip the bed leveling completely, and often if that happens, bad things follow, the printer will do odd things like try to start the print 5" off the print bed,
so the belts will slip while the printer tries to go out of range, I have to kill the power to stop it.
I have found no pattern to any of this, I can usually just start the print again, and its fine.
I have noticed that I think it helps if I push the bed and extruder to the extruder is near centered before I start the print.
If the extruder is near homed before I start the print, it tends to fail more often.

[old man emu]

Downloaded.

Do I still have to do the probe/extruder offset calibration?

OME

[Roxy]

This is scary... There is some problem causing flakey behavior that we don't understand!

[MiniMadRyan]

This is scary... There is some problem causing flakey behavior that we don't understand!

Agreed. For myself, even after some fiddling around, there were still inconsistencies. I absolutely love what Roxy and Dacb have put together, and I still fully support their progress, but for the time being I've returned to the stock firmware and manual levelling just to get projects done before the holidays! Maybe this is a good reason to justify a 3rd printer to experiment with!

[clough42]

This is scary... There is some problem causing flakey behavior that we don't understand!

My problem was just the stepper deactivate timeout. It was intermittent because I had a couple of tall jobs and lots of short ones I was printing. Increasing the timeout solved my problem. It always works for me now.

For the waiting for user issue, I had that at one point when I had pronterface connected, polling the temperatures. I took a tip from another forum and turned the temp graph off and all is well now. The temperature monitoring in Octoprint doesn't seem to cause this.

[AbuMaia]

A test to see if you're affected by the XY stepper motors timing out and preventing a G29, move your Z axis to its max position, then do a G28 followed by a G29. You may be able to hear during the Z leg of the G28 the X and Y motors deactivating, and the G29 may not work. It may tell you to "Home X and Y before homing Z" or something like that.

Or your printer may be fast enough to home the entire distance of Z in less than 1 minute and beat the stepper deactivation, and not be affected by this.

[dacb]

I have merged to the upstream Marlin_v1 with this commit: https://github.com/beckdac/Marlin/co...29b5184dab6fd0
and added the topology report fix, previously mentioned.

It is on a new branch: https://github.com/beckdac/Marlin/tr..._merge_11_2014

This is for the adventurous. I've only done a handful of prints so far.

[abuharsky]

I have merged to the upstream Marlin_v1 with this commit: https://github.com/beckdac/Marlin/co...29b5184dab6fd0
and added the topology report fix, previously mentioned.

It is on a new branch: https://github.com/beckdac/Marlin/tr..._merge_11_2014

This is for the adventurous. I've only done a handful of prints so far.

I have a problem with leveling on latest branch on my makerfarm i3 8".

SETTINGS:
--------------------

// set the rectangle in which to probe
#define LEFT_PROBE_BED_POSITION 50
#define RIGHT_PROBE_BED_POSITION 150
#define BACK_PROBE_BED_POSITION 150
#define FRONT_PROBE_BED_POSITION 50



GCODE:
--------------------

...
G28 ;move X/Y to min endstops
G29 V4 T n3 ;extended auto bed leveling
...


PROBLEM PHOTO:
--------------------

IMG_3693.jpg



PS:
with latest Marlin (upstream_merge_11_2014) I found new menu item: "Menu - Prepare - Set home offsets", what is it?

[dacb]

Dacb, Can you be talked into submitting a 'Pull Request' to Erik Zalm's Marlin? I think the community could benefit from having it in the main branch of the source tree. The big question is: How much work would it be to prune the MakerFarm stuff out of it so it can be easily merged into his tree.

If this happens, let me know. I'm downstream from Dacb and might consider rebasing.

Let me look into how this would work. There is some divergence that we'd have to reconcile while separating out the MakerFarm specific bits. I have a busy week coming up, so if someone is interested in looking at this sooner, PM me and we can arrange access to this repo such that you can initiate.

My problem was just the stepper deactivate timeout. It was intermittent because I had a couple of tall jobs and lots of short ones I was printing. Increasing the timeout solved my problem. It always works for me now.

For the waiting for user issue, I had that at one point when I had pronterface connected, polling the temperatures. I took a tip from another forum and turned the temp graph off and all is well now. The temperature monitoring in Octoprint doesn't seem to cause this.

This is great advice. I'm using Cura and Octoprint. Since I moved our tree forward against the upstream/master, I've noticed the Waiting for user message has changed to M105. M105 is the temperature poll for the extruder (IIRC). I think I am having a timeout issue with my Octoprint settings.

I've printed a few dozen items since the last update and I'm pretty happy.