POS is Alive! It's Alive!

[jcdammeyer]

Long story short. Wanted a Delta printer. Bought expensive, for the time, Delta printer. What a Piece of S. Slop in the universals. Plastic filament drive unable to push filament through bowden tubes. Too much play in the linear bearings so twist one of the slides and the hot end moves several mm. And the 8 bit Arduino software just was inadequate.

So I splurged on a Replicape and Touch screen for a BeagleBone Black running LinuxCNC and Octoprint and found that one of the stepper motor drivers wasn't working. Even changing drivers around in the software still had problems. This was about 6 years ago. Gave up.

It's been collecting dust. It's in the way. To make it fit the Replicape I had to replace all the connectors. Well today I put the original connectors back on. Once I correctly put the X and Z limit switches into the proper places it homed. Yahoo. It's alive.


Now why am I doing this? Well it was collecting dust. The BeagleBone due to a failed Replicape and no support because the designer has moved onto other things was a total loss. So I thought now that I know more than 6 years ago perhaps I'd pick up a few more linear bearings to stabilize the motion. I've already replaced the extruder drives with all metal units. I have a whole bunch of different types of extruder nozzle assemblies.

So it's time to do something with the POS. I figure if I can make it mechanically sound then maybe one of the more advanced 32 bit controllers would handle it better.

 

[kevin.decelles]

May the force be with you! I got the delta bug out of my system when I went down the Tiko kickstarter rabbit hole

Nowadays I just want it to work

 

[Susquatch]

Nowadays I just want it to work

I used to love the rabbit holes. But sometimes I hated them too.

As time slides by, I hate them more and love them less.

Just now I read your note and realized why. Rabbit holes are all underground. No wonder I'm hating them more. I'm in no rush to get there. Gotta shoot those rascals before they reach the hole.

 

[Cryoine]

the ESP32 based controllers are a dream to work with but any 32bit controller will work wonders, with the feature sets they pack into them these days also 3D printers work best when coupled to a furnace lol. The 3D printer makes the molds and the furnace makes the metal all gooey for those molds.

I never messed much with the delta style printers I know a friend of mine was building one and gave up on the project and i took his rails and build my cube pcb mill

 

[YotaBota]

a Replicape and Touch screen for a BeagleBone Black running LinuxCNC and Octoprint

Is this actually something real or have you been watching to much Dr WHO and RED DWARF! This sounds to much like something out of sci-fi. lol
Hope to see it running.

 

[David_R8]

Good luck mate!
Is it mean to say I love my Ender?

 

[jcdammeyer]

I know I have to buy a new cartesian printer. My existing one has started acting up again.

the ESP32 based controllers are a dream to work with but any 32bit controller will work wonders, with the feature sets they pack into them these days also 3D printers work best when coupled to a furnace lol. The 3D printer makes the molds and the furnace makes the metal all gooey for those molds.

I never messed much with the delta style printers I know a friend of mine was building one and gave up on the project and i took his rails and build my cube pcb mill

Any particular suggestion for a 32 bit controller? Needs XYZ and two extruders so 5 axis. Three outputs for heaters, bed and two extruders and therefore 3 thermister inputs.
The biggest issue with the current controller is even the slightest change to a limit switch or bed height mechanical adjustment means changing the Print Height Z value in the firmware and reprogramming.
Why? Because the code runs faster if it's a literal value than one stored in EEROM. If that processor even has EEROM.
And yes I make a lot of patterns using the 3D printer to then cast metal.