uccnc 3d printer?

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Re: uccnc 3d printer?

Postby Robertspark » Wed Oct 10, 2018 11:30 am

dezsoe wrote:I asked the builder of that 3d printer and he said, it is not controlled by UCCNC, but the standard ATMega based board.


ahh, you can see an aluminium box with an LCD behind the display screen with UCCNC on it if you look at the clip again so that explains it.

A_Camera, 220/230v is fine for me, I started out as an electrician doing single and 3 phase up to 440V (now 400v in uk)

I'm still getting to grips with term like "marlin" and "smoothieboard" etc. Any recommendations for a suitable 3d board / bob?

been looking at cura and octopi / octoprint (I've got a few spare adruino mega, due boards, and a RPI 3B spare)

but have not used anything yet, just installed, looking, trying to learn and understand.
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Re: uccnc 3d printer?

Postby A_Camera » Wed Oct 10, 2018 12:08 pm

Robertspark wrote:
dezsoe wrote:I asked the builder of that 3d printer and he said, it is not controlled by UCCNC, but the standard ATMega based board.


ahh, you can see an aluminium box with an LCD behind the display screen with UCCNC on it if you look at the clip again so that explains it.


Good observation, I didn't notice that, but looking at the picture again I can see the LCD panel.

Robertspark wrote:A_Camera, 220/230v is fine for me, I started out as an electrician doing single and 3 phase up to 440V (now 400v in uk)


...me too... but I worked with even higher voltage for about five years in South Africa when I was young a loooooong time ago... which is one reason why I happily avoid higher voltages... :lol:

Robertspark wrote:I'm still getting to grips with term like "marlin" and "smoothieboard" etc. Any recommendations for a suitable 3d board / bob?


I am using this board, which I have three of:

Image

It does not need a bob, only stepper drivers, which you plug in, plus power and USB and of course, steppers, sensors and heaters.

Robertspark wrote:been looking at cura and octopi / octoprint (I've got a few spare adruino mega, due boards, and a RPI 3B spare)

but have not used anything yet, just installed, looking, trying to learn and understand.


Beware that as far as I know, the Marlin for Due is still experimental, and that the Due needs level converters because it is said to be very very sensitive, no protection, so the shield must be for 3.3V and all the inputs must be level converted to 3.3V. Can't help with Cura, Ultimaker, Ocotoprint or Smoothieboard, never used any of it.
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Re: uccnc 3d printer?

Postby Robertspark » Wed Oct 10, 2018 12:20 pm

A_Camera wrote:...me too... but I worked with even higher voltage for about five years in South Africa when I was young a loooooong time ago... which is one reason why I happily avoid higher voltages... :lol:

Me too (SA + zimbabwe) .... but in southern africa the voltages are 220, 380 and 600, still 50hz though an very english in approach as it was here 20+ years ago, changed since here though with uniformity of EU standards a bit.
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Re: uccnc 3d printer?

Postby A_Camera » Wed Oct 10, 2018 12:39 pm

Robertspark wrote:
A_Camera wrote:...me too... but I worked with even higher voltage for about five years in South Africa when I was young a loooooong time ago... which is one reason why I happily avoid higher voltages... :lol:

Me too (SA + zimbabwe) .... but in southern africa the voltages are 220, 380 and 600, still 50hz though an very english in approach as it was here 20+ years ago, changed since here though with uniformity of EU standards a bit.

Yes, at that time the household voltages were 220V even in Europe, but I was working with the modernization of railways around Joburg + Sasol + Anglo-American (mining)... and so on.

BTW, at that time Zimbabwe was called Rhodesia and Smith was the boss and the streets of Hillbrow were safe(ish)... :)

...as I said, I was young, not just younger... :lol:
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Re: uccnc 3d printer?

Postby Robertspark » Wed Oct 10, 2018 1:47 pm

hillbrow was safeish :lol: 25 yr ago when I was there (during the daytime), lived in Kempton Park , I was born under smith and went the SA before here (search of education, work + safety).... ;)
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A blast from the past...

Postby A_Camera » Thu Oct 11, 2018 10:18 am

Robertspark wrote:hillbrow was safeish :lol: 25 yr ago when I was there (during the daytime), lived in Kempton Park , I was born under smith and went the SA before here (search of education, work + safety).... ;)

Totally off topic subject, but Interesting history... at least for me.

Kempton Park was equal to Jan Smuts Airport and Modderfontein (near Kempton Park) for me. I am sure it was a nice place to live, but I have never been there, except at Jan Smuts airport. I had a flat in the Ponte (I am sure you know the building) for a year and had a view towards Hillbrow/Berea/Yeoville and partially towards Kempton Park (if I stuck my head out of the window and turned to the right). One day I heard a huge blast, so I went to the window, opened and looked to the right, seeing a huge mushroom cloud rising... No, it was not a nuclear blast, but an accident at the Modderfontein factory. Never the less, it was really huge, shaking my building many miles away as well, and I could really feel the tremble on the 32nd floor, where I had my apartment. This was in 1977 I think, so it's been a while now.

Hillbrow was safe, day and night, even though there were some issues with some gangs back then, also some shootings and fights, but I never felt unsafe walking around anywhere in Joburg, day or night. Eventually got tired of walking back and forth to Hillbrow for shopping and jolling, and since the night life took place in Hillbrow, I moved to Nedbank Plaza, one of several famous buildings in that area where I lived mostly. Moving around was common at that time in my age, which suited me fine during my years in SA. My "base" was in Berea/Yeoville/Hillbrow, where I had several flats, but I worked and stayed on different sites as well, Vanderbijlpark for Sasol, Walvis Bay, Swakopmund, Windhoek and Kimberly for Anglo American corp. and other mining companies. I had more than a few jobs and other activities which showed me parts of SA and SWA, and in fact also some parts of Rhodesia, others could only dream about... :) but it was good times, good weather, nice people AND I WAS YOUNG in my 20's... so I have very warm memories of it.

I never went back to SA after I left in 1980 and I suppose I never will go back. Some memories are best left alone and kept as memories, because I know it changed, not only the system, the people and the buildings, but street names, places, city names and even Transvaal is gone for whatever reason those terrorists had, to change that name... I love SA for what it was, but not sure I'd love SA for what it is today, so it is best left alone, as memories of times long gone. Still have some friends living there, but most moved from the Joburg area and many moved out of the country as well.

OK, sorry folks for this off topic nostalgia...
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Re: uccnc 3d printer?

Postby Robertspark » Thu Oct 11, 2018 3:09 pm

Back OT {before we get a complaint about uccnc forums for uccnc... ;) }

I've decided to get one of those GT2560 boards, and Drv8825 drivers along with a LCD 12864 (all for about usd $40 delivered). If its good enough for A_Camera..... its good enough for me + a starting point if nothing else....

I had a look into Marlin, and how to set it up and it all appears straight forward to setup.

I've noticed the vast number of G / M codes that seem available http://marlinfw.org/meta/gcode/

CNC motion is motion so uccnc I'm sure could do 3d printing and do it well motion wise (way better than an ATmega board trying to run all of the functions through one MCU), I'm probably not going to make best use of the available technology by trying to adapt or add to uccnc + uc300 for things like heated bed and extruder and fan controls.

I'll park this one here as I've got (quite) a few other things to do before attempting to dabble in 3d uccnc development.

I also dont want to tie up my uc300 eth controller for hours running 3d prints when I'm using it (or the one PC its all connected to) to switch between mill, router, plasma, lathe.
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Re: uccnc 3d printer?

Postby A_Camera » Thu Oct 11, 2018 6:30 pm

Robertspark wrote:Back OT {before we get a complaint about uccnc forums for uccnc... ;) }


Good idea. Otherwise I may go on forever about SA and my views may not be politically correct and presently accepted, so it is best to shut up.

Robertspark wrote:I've decided to get one of those GT2560 boards, and Drv8825 drivers along with a LCD 12864 (all for about usd $40 delivered). If its good enough for A_Camera..... its good enough for me + a starting point if nothing else....

I had a look into Marlin, and how to set it up and it all appears straight forward to setup.

I've noticed the vast number of G / M codes that seem available http://marlinfw.org/meta/gcode/

CNC motion is motion so uccnc I'm sure could do 3d printing and do it well motion wise (way better than an ATmega board trying to run all of the functions through one MCU), I'm probably not going to make best use of the available technology by trying to adapt or add to uccnc + uc300 for things like heated bed and extruder and fan controls.

I'll park this one here as I've got (quite) a few other things to do before attempting to dabble in 3d uccnc development.

I also dont want to tie up my uc300 eth controller for hours running 3d prints when I'm using it (or the one PC its all connected to) to switch between mill, router, plasma, lathe.

I think you make the right decision regarding the board, but not sure about the drivers. I don't remember why I dismissed that, but I know I had a reason. Anyway, I am considering TMC2208 as my next driver upgrade, but my current A4988 drivers are working well, and I also have a bunch of them, so I'll keep those until I fry one too many...

I have just implemented all my changes to Marlin 1.1.9, the last 8-bit version and compiled successfully, though I will not test run it today because it is too late and I am tired (got up very early every day this week). Yes, the Marlin firmware is pretty straight forward and well written if you know a bit of C and programming, but it took me about two hours to move all my changes due to manual inspection of all the files and lines I changed. Be careful, make a note on the changed lines, otherwise you will get lost in the files. The Marlin IDE is not very good at configuration management, so manual management is necessary.

BTW, I have a similar LCD, but if your's is the bigtree-tech version, just like mine, than you have to reverse the contacts at the back of the panel. You'll notice the problem because if it is similar to mine than it won't display anything unless those contacts are reversed.

Anyway, even this is OT because this forum is CNC Drive forum, not generic, so perhaps we should stop before somebody gets angry.

Good luck and send a PM if you have issues with getting it right. As I said, I am not an expert, but a rookie with some experience in Marlin and 3D printing... :)
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Re: uccnc 3d printer?

Postby Robertspark » Fri Oct 12, 2018 7:08 am

I dont have the time to try it, but it ma be possible to write a plugin to pid control the heaters which uses something like this library,

https://github.com/ms-iot/pid-controller

one thing about pid is consistent timing of the inputs and repeatability .

So it may be possible to use an zero crossing SSR to offer control over a 230v heated bed via SSR and still offer a closer control cycle given the pulses could be as low as 10hz (5 cycles on a 50hz supply) and it "may" offer closer control than bang-bang control that relies on hysteresis
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I had a look at those TMC2130 stepper drivers for 3d printers with SPI interface and they seem interesting
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Re: uccnc 3d printer?

Postby A_Camera » Fri Oct 12, 2018 9:12 am

Yes, you are probably right, it should be possible to make a PID macro to control the heaters but then you also must reprogram the G/M code handling somehow because 3D printers use so many more of them. Of course, maybe we can manage without some of them, but they really make 3D printing easier and better, so it would be crippling not to have the support for those. Also, since a dedicated HW/SW is always better than a universal, one to fit all the needs, I think I have permanently adopted my 3D printing to Marlin and will use UCCNC/UC300ETH only as a CNC. While UCCNC/UC300ETH is much better for CNC, the GT2560/Marlin/Repetier is much better for 3D printing. I have not yet tried laser engraving and don't know which is better for that, but in any case, for milling I will definitely keep UCCNC. Using UCCNC as a 3D printer means also that a PC is tied up to the printer for many hours. While you can do that with Repetier also, the Arduino Mega board has a pretty large receive buffer so even if you use the PC for printing, you can still use the PC for other things in parallel if you have a decent PC. I tested printing and designing in Freecad + surfing the net and watching YouTube video, and taking full HD backup in the background in parallel and not experienced any issues. So spending time in developing better 3D printer interface for UCCNC via some macros is in my opinion waste of time. Perhaps I am wrong and UCCNC can be made to be as good as Repetier for 3D printing, but I think that must come from CNC Drive in that case, not through different user written plugins and macro.

Regarding the drivers, here is a link comparing the 2130 and 2208. http://learn.watterott.com/silentstepstick/comparison/ I have read about some overheat issues regarding the 2130, I don't know if it is a real problem or only an "Internet" issue. Anyway, these drivers are so cheap that they can easily be replaced if needed.
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