Great Design Thank You

[angrychisel]

Hey Quentin,

Great design and thank you. I’m part of a makerspace in Charleston, South Carolina in the U.S. We’ve decided to use your design to base a 3d printer class around. The price for making one of these puts it in the range of most hobbyists. All of the parts are easily sourced or printed and the design is brilliant. It’s fun just watching the arms move around. Much more fun than a regular 3d printer. I’ve had to make some changes to the design to accommodate local materials (pretty much like any design). I have models and stuff posted I don’t recommend anyone use them yet until I actually fully fabricate a working model. Which should happen this coming weekend. We have most all of the parts and are printing what we don’t have now. I’ll try and keep you posted on our progress. Thanks again keep up the great work.

http://angrychisel.github.io/makelab-chs-MCAPP/

Files are there but use at your own risk. I’ve made some exploded view animations but I still need to make assembly prints and instructions. And I won’t be doing that until I’ve fully assembled and tested a model.

[Quentin Harley]

It looks impressive!

Let me know when you get it going…

Q

[angrychisel]

We’ll be sure to keep you informed on the progress. I have a little more done on the drawings. Exploded sample link below. I tried to keep it as close to your design as possible.

Click to access MLC-6.PDF

[Quentin Harley]

Thanks for this! Would you mind if I shared it in the main blog in the build instructions?

[angrychisel]

Yeah definitely hahah it’s your design feel free to use what you want. The drawings aren’t great yet but I’m still working on them. Any input you’d like to add let me know and I’ll add it to the drawings. I have some explode videos on youtube also that might help out, also.

[Steve]

A nice exploded diagram. Except you didn’t identify the copper pipes in the drawings. Hard to build the drive shaft assembly with limited diagramming. Couldn’t follow the MLC#s in the part number. Realize internal designation. DIN# has little meaning.

Thanks for the great work. Nice crutch while I wait.

[angrychisel]

Yeah sorry it’s a work in progress still. I just drew it all up yesterday and I still have quite a few models left to draw. Not to mention all the part drawings. I just did a quick exploded view to help us assemble one for testing. I’ll try and make better drawings as I go along. I’m not making any final drawings or putting too much more into documentation until I have one fully assembled.

[Steve]

No problem. You’re ahead of me. Just trying to use whatever I can find until Quentin finishes his doc. I think with the right doc could be built in a long day.

[Quentin Harley]

Yes. I put together the last one in a day. Helps if you know what is going on, right!

[Crioca]

Great stuff, any chance of making online attendance possible? Or putting up videos of the classes at some point?

[angrychisel]

We will surely put our classes online with videos. I will look into doing an online attendance. We’ve never done a distance class before. But any classes we do at Makelab Charleston we always put up online.

[jesse]

Wow, how did you make those angrychisel?

[angrychisel]

The drawings or the videos? I guess it doesn’t matter, lol. I used solidworks for both.

[Dr K]

Very cool.
I’m working on a build in Columbia SC. Right now I’m still trying to get the vitamin’s in, but I’ll be watching what you guys do. It looks like your a bit ahead of me in the converting to SAE, but I’m glad to follow.
Good luck and I’ll be posting as I go as well.

[angrychisel]

well you’re right in our neighborhood. if you want to swing by any time let me know.

https://www.google.com/maps?q=3955+Christopher+St,+North+Charleston,+SC+29405&hl=en&sll=33.624497,-80.926614&sspn=5.258919,9.876709&t=h&hnear=3955+Christopher+St,+North+Charleston,+South+Carolina+29405&z=16

[angrychisel]

Hey everyone,

Sorry I haven’t gotten back on this lately. Stoopid real life has thrown some speed bumps in the way of progress. In spite of real life progress has been made. Here are some pics of where we’re at so far.
http://llancaster.com/?flagallery=morgan-construction-2

This is a great design Quentin. Thanks again Been a blast building it so far. Once again USE MY DESIGN AT YOUR OWN RISK at least until i have all the kinks worked out.

[angrychisel]

Hey Quentin,

I’m having some issues homing the Morgan. I’ve homed XYZ and when I issue the M360 to calibrate the arms the machine just sits there. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. It won’t let me manually move the arms in either direction to move to theta 0 (parallel to the top plate). Here’s a video of what’s going on.

[Quentin Harley]

Strange…

I will put some debug code in there. I am running the current version on one of my machines, and it seems to work just fine.

When you issue M119, do you get this after homing?

SENDING:M119
Reporting endstop status
x_min: open
x_max: TRIGGERED
y_min: open
y_max: TRIGGERED
z_min: open
z_max: TRIGGERED

[angrychisel]

this is my return from M119

>>>m119
SENDING:M119
Reporting endstop status
x_min: open
x_max: TRIGGERED
y_min: open
y_max: TRIGGERED
z_min: open
z_max: TRIGGERED

after I home all axes I issue a M360 correct? Then manually move the theta arm until it is parallel with the front of the top base plate, correct? Well I guess that’s not even possible since I can’t get it to move in any direction after I home it.

[Quentin Harley]

That seems right. It is almost as if the firmware does not believe homing to be over.

Busy with the firmware… give me a couple of minutes. Will let you know.

[angrychisel]

Hey Quentin,

I’m sure it’s my fault. I think I have another error I need to clear out. I think I may need to bypass the temp sensors since I don’t have any of that hooked up yet. Still waiting on parts.

Printer stopped due to errors. Fix the error and use M999 to restart. (Temperature is reset. Set it after restarting)
X:-18.95Y:40.75Z:205.00E:0.00
SCARA Theta:80.40 Psi+Theta:213.55
SCARA Cal – Theta:80.40 Psi+Theta (90):60.38
SCARA step Cal – Theta:95.59 Psi+Theta:158.30
Printer stopped due to errors. Fix the error and use M999 to restart. (Temperature is reset. Set it after restarting)
X:-18.95Y:40.75Z:205.00E:0.00
SCARA Theta:80.40 Psi+Theta:213.55
SCARA Cal – Theta:80.40 Psi+Theta (90):60.38
SCARA step Cal – Theta:95.59 Psi+Theta:158.30

[Quentin Harley]

Yes. That should do it.
Use 100k resistors over the thermistor pins to fool it into believing it is 25degC

In the mean time I have made some changes in the firmware to make it easier to pinpoint problems that may arise surrounding calibration.

[Quentin Harley]

PS: if you don’t have 100k resistors, others may work as well. Just dont have them open circuit or shorted. That will cause immediate System stop for safety reasons (Think burnt down apartment etc.)

Let’s see! At least it is homing very nicely.

[angrychisel]

Yeah it’s homing great. Everything is going incredible actually. I really like the design, I can’t say that enough. It’s simple, it’s stable and it’s cheap. But I really can’t seem to figure out what I’m doing wrong with calibration or what I’ve set up wrong. It homes out and won’t move anywhere after that when I issue the M360. I’ve got a video of the machine and the pronterface gui working together so you can see what i have going on.

[Quentin Harley]

You are not doing anything wrong. The homing works fine because it does not check for the stop condition of the machine. I will add it later, since adding the code can cause some issues at the moment.
I simulated your problem by just unplugging my hot-end thermistor input.

You have to get some resistors on the thermistor inputs. Use a long nose pliers and turn it on the pine to make it go.

I made a little service plug for myself – a 6way plug with 3 resistors on it to simulate the thermal hardware of the machine.

[angrychisel]

Thanks Quentin,

I’ll give that a go. And thanks for all the help by the way.

Lee

[angrychisel]

Ok I’m a little confused about the 3 resistors. I put 2 resistors in, 1 for the hot bed and 1 for the hot end thermistor. What is the 3rd one for? And what do I need to adjust with the long nose pliers? Even after I put the 2 resistors in there I’m getting the same thing where it homes out but M360 does nothing. I can’t adjust in X or Y to calibrate the arms.

Lee

[Quentin Harley]

I use RAMPS, and using the three resistors was jut me being future proof – ext1 ext2 bed

When you connect to the bord, and tick “watch”, what are the reported extruder 1 and bed temperatures?

[angrychisel]

I’ll have to check again in pronterface to see but I took pics of the lcd interface.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/92444pgdscor020/2013-08-18%2016.49.44.jpg

[Quentin Harley]

14degC should be fine.

Does the machins still complain about the stop condition errors?

[Quentin Harley]

PS after homing, does it allow you to home it again afterwards?

[angrychisel]

Yeah I’m not getting anymore errors about the heat. And yes after I home it, it will let me home it again. I can move the Z axis around but that’s it. I’m unable to move in X or Y.

[angrychisel]

I’ve uploaded your latest changes and now when I home it and give it the M360 it moves up in Z but it seems to ignore all DEFAULT_MAX_FEEDRATE and DEFAULT_MAX_ACCELERATION that I have set. I’m assuming it’s attempting to move to Z0. before it begins the theta arm calibration? Unfortunately i can’t get to Z0. without my stepper lockin up because of the feedrate or accleration. Not sure which one it is. Where does the M360 get it’s feedrate or accel from?

[angrychisel]

Ok I’ve made some headway, I think hehe. But when it homes out now and I give it M360 it moves the theta arm but it keeps trying to go around. I’m not sure what i’ve set wrong maybe you can give me some pointers. I’ve attached a video to show you what it’s doing.

[angrychisel]

ok so i’m an idiot and forgot to issue a M92X107Y107 so it was on the default 215 and was going past. But now my issue is i move the theta arm to a parallel position and enter M206 and the X adjustment then a G28 and another M360 and it goes right back to the same spot. Do I need to issue any other M or G codes to get it to take the M206?

[Quentin Harley]

Please post the section of the terminal from where you moved to the parralel position, issued M114 to find location, entered “M206 X###”

You can check if m206 stuck by issuing M503 to print the current settings to terminal.

[Quentin Harley]

In hindsight, I think I should create a way to automate the entering of the calibration values. It could be a bit easier.

[angrychisel]

Well it’s definitely not your fault. This is my first 3d printer build and I should have finished my mendelmax2 first before I got into this. But we had so much interest in this design that I decided to just pursue this first. So I’m sure your instructions are clear enough, I just don’t know what I’m doing.
And it looks like it’s taking the input from what i can tell. I may have my steppers reversed I think.

>>>m114
SENDING:M114
X:141.00Y:64.90Z:205.00E:0.00
SCARA Theta:9.49 Psi+Theta:135.48
SCARA Cal – Theta:9.49 Psi+Theta (90):35.99
SCARA step Cal – Theta:11.28 Psi+Theta:149.79
>>>M206 X9.49
SENDING:M206 X9.49
>>>M503
SENDING:M503
echo:Steps per unit:
echo: M92 X107.00 Y107.00 Z1280.00 E450.00
echo:Scaling factors:
echo: M365 X1.00 Y1.00 Z1.00
echo:Maximum feedrates (mm/s):
echo: M203 X300.00 Y300.00 Z30.00 E45.00
echo:Maximum Acceleration (mm/s2):
echo: M201 X500 Y500 Z5 E10000
echo:Acceleration: S=acceleration, T=retract acceleration
echo: M204 S300.00 T300.00
echo:Advanced variables: S=Min feedrate (mm/s), T=Min travel feedrate (mm/s), B=minimum segment time (ms), X=maximum xY jerk (mm/s), Z=maximum Z jerk (mm/s)
echo: M205 S0.00 T0.00 B20000 X20.00 Z20.00 E5.00
echo:Home offset (mm):
echo: M206 X9.49 Y0.00 Z0.00
echo:PID settings:
echo: M301 P22.20 I1.08 D114.00

[Quentin Harley]

Your motors are turning in the right direction so at least the motor polarities are not reversed. Do you think you might have x and y interchanged?

The best way to check is to look at the homeing closely.

The arms move together until the first endstop contact. The machine then homes theta first ( the thin arms ) and then Psi ( the big arms )

If this works you have set it up correctly.
Remember to use M500 to store setting before you use the reset button or switch the system off, othrwise you are back to your original settings

[angrychisel]

HAHAHAH – Never try to make changes to your 3d printer 10 minutes before you have to go to work. I ended up ripping my endstops off. Never hurry when you are making configuration changes hehe.

I’ll double check everything again when I get home. I was pretty sure I had everything correct (stepper on right axes). The thing that made me double guess myself was that after I give it the M360 I had to use the X jog to get the theta arm in the correct position for parallel instead of the Y jog like it says in the calibration flow chart. Should I be using the Y jog to bring the theta arm to parallel? If so then I did have X and Y reversed.

[Quentin Harley]

Where did it stop before jogging starts? Did it end up close or not.

It may mean that your M92 steps per degree is a bit too low if it does not move far enough. Try increasing it gradually until it ends up close enough to use Y jogging to get it in position.

[angrychisel]

It moved about 10 deg too far, by my eye. I didn’t try and throw a protractor on there to measure the angle. I’ll try adjusting the M92. AAAAhhhhhh I see what you are saying. I’m having to make too large of an adjustment for it to work with the Y adjustment. I’ll try that tonight when I get home. I noticed when I tried to adjust with Y it moved it a little but the theta arm was so far back it couldn’t adjust enough to get the arm parallel. When I get this figured out I’ll try and make a video of all the things that went wrong for me.

[angrychisel]

Hahah thanks for all the help Quentin!! Finally got it. I had the X and Y motors flipped. Kinda what I thought. But in my rush before work to flip them I put my limit switch headers on the wrong posts and tore everything up (no wonder you went with hall sensors instead of hard switches). I rushed home at lunch got it all set back up and got it calibrated. I’m still waiting on parts for the hot end so I won’t have video of it printing until that shows up. I will however try and get video of the homing procedure. Your tip to watch the arms verified that they were flipped.

Thanks again for all the help!!

[Quentin Harley]

My absolute pleasure. Your problem really intrigued me, especially since the output on the terminal seemed ok on face value.

Now you are ready for the Z armlevel calibration. I will do a quick writeup on that tonight.

[angrychisel]

Hey that would be great. Can’t wait to get it printing. Right now I have enough proof to start sourcing parts on this thing for our classes. Trying to get a supplier for the electronics as cheap as possible. I’ll have to warn everyone that takes our class and buys one of our kits that the materials were supplied by the lowest bidder hahaha.

[Quentin Harley]

Built by the lowest bidder, right? Sounds like the American space program…

Who says building robots is not proper rocket science!

[angrychisel]

Ok well here’s a video of it going through the whole calibration. I think the M363 is coming out wrong though. Are the 2 psi arms supposed to form a 90 deg angle? Not sure what i screwed up.

[Quentin Harley]

Did you set M92 for X and Y to be the same during the M361 step?

Wait a second… M363 is Psi 90 degree… You need to use M364 which is the 90 degree angle of the Psi elbow.

Oops! This is what happens when you write documentation while all your machines are furiously printing.

Check out the reprap wiki gcode guide where I added the information on the Morgan calibration gcodes for more information:
http://reprap.org/wiki/G-code

I will change the flowchart as soon as I can.

[Quentin Harley]

PS: from the position of the arm at M363 is seems that you may have succeeded anyway. If anything it would be a slight adjustment.

[angrychisel]

Yeah it wasn’t too far off. It’s no problem because I have to recalibrate the whole thing. A friend of mine suggested I use Repetier to do a dry run on it and I’m not sure what it did. It won’t move in Z anymore. It messed up my z stepper settings somehow. Stepper just screams now so I’m assuming it messed up the settings for that stepper somehow. That’s what I get for using pretty software. Stick to ugly stuff that works and your life will be much better in my experience. I think I’ll just use pronterface from now on. I sure wish there was a 3d printer software that displayed information like a real CNC machine. Like LinuxCNC. Would be nice to see XYZ abs, rel, and dist to go on these machines.

[angrychisel]

Alright got it running great. Not sure what happened when I tried using repetier but in the end I had to drop my Z axis homing feedrate. I’ll work it back up to a better feedrate at some point. It’s running GREAT! So quiet. Great design. Now I just need to get my J-head and it will be time to print some stuff. Here’s a video of it doing a dry run.

[jade39339]

Nice work!

[Quentin Harley]

Nice!

My poor machines were thinking that they would forever be the only two in the world at one stage. At least there is a brother coming for them soon…

[angrychisel]

Got a small issue that I’m not sure about though. The z axis seems to be moving during the dry run I’m doing? Not sure why the Z is moving in flat layers. It seems to be moving in sync with the theta arm? And when it homes and making psi or theta movements there is no Z motion? The Z motion only seems to occur in a program. Video attached.

[Steve]

More with instructions update.
Weren’t you going to load a photo diary of your build?
Thanks.

[angrychisel]

Yes I will definitely be doing that but not until I’ve finalized the build and insured dimensions and assembly procedures are correct. I’m sure I’ve already pumped out enough disinformation to side track anyone’s build at this point. All the docs that are out so far aren’t exactly complete or totally accurate I just thought they might help some people. I’m almost there though. I’ve got a few changes to make and I need to decide on an extruder. After that I need to document everything (not exactly my favorite part). I’m also going to get rid of the 22-1/2 deg pvc fittings because they are too hard to find off the shelf. I’ll just make printed fittings like Quentin. I thought it would be easier to use off the shelf fittings……..

[Quentin Harley]

The Z-offset table takes care of the bed to arm tracking.

Issue M370, and then M500

Try the print again. There should now be no z-shift.

[angrychisel]

Thanks Quentin,

Ahh yeah you said there was a Z table zeroing procedure?

[Quentin Harley]

This should help:

Morgan Start-up and Calibration Guide

Z-guide included

[angrychisel]

Thanks as usual Quentin!

[Quentin Harley]

I forgot to mention that resetting to factory defaults currently imports a default arm-level map… This would cause the weird Z movement you were seeing.

After calibrating Z, it is quite normal for Z to move all the time while printing.

[hoff70]

Looks silky smooth in the videos! Congrats on the nice work.

[angrychisel]

Thanks! We still got a ways to go, though. If I could ever get the rest of my parts. It is very smooth and quiet. Much quieter than most builds that I’ve seen. Congrats to Quentin for spotting a great application for a SCARA arm setup. The light end effector loads of 3d printers are perfect for this configuration. Looks like progress is going well on yours, too.

[Author]

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