Hotend fan pin controlled

Hi,

I started getting in to repetier and found this neat feature called "extruder cooler pin". If I understand that correct it enables the hotend cooling pin only if a certain hotend temp is reached. A feature which I find very useful since my hotend fan is rather loud and its not necessary to keep it on while tuning the printer. http://www.repetier.com/firmware/v092/index.html under temperature near the bottom

There are lots of choices to to assign pins to control the fan. So before I have to find out how to make the endstop pins usable for that or find the empty 5V digital pins (and put relay on them to switch 12V fans) I wanted to ask if this has been discussed or solved before?

Cheers

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/27/2015 08:11PM by sungod3k.

Update. I found an old mosfet controller that was designed to enable model cooling on the sanguinololu.

I set the extruder cooler pin to pin 0 on the aux1 pins and treated pin 0 as activated (although I cant find anything that looks close to #define pin0 or aux 1 in the pins.h). It even works but its always on, no matter what trigger temp I give it.

Talking to myself here but if someone is interested. I used the X min signal pin and now it works as intended
.

Hey!
You are not alone. I have found this feature (extruder cooler) right now but I am not really sure how it works.

Configuration:

• I have an All Metal Hotend (E3D clone) 1.75mm with a PTFE inliner.
• Printing PLA on a hotbed.
• Teensylu controller.
• The hotend is cooled by a 30mm fan. The print itself is cooled by a centrifugal fan. So, two fans. Right now both fans are connected to the one default fan pins via an adapter.

The fans are configured to be disabled while printing the first layer.

My problem that drove me here:
When printing parts with a large footprint, the heat creeps up the hotend and melts filament before the PTFE inline resulting in a jammed hotend. This results in a tedious disassembly rage and blowtorch orgy.

I want to control the hotend fan (30mm) that cools the heatsink of the E3D hotend separately from the PLA fan. This means that the 30mm hotend fan shall run as soon as the hotend hits a specific temperature (50°C) but the PLA/print fan shall only be enabled after the first layer.

Questions:
Is this option "Enable extruder cooler at xxx °C" a separat function to control the hotend fan like I described above?
If not, how can I add a second fan so that it meats my criteria desribed above?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/2015 07:41AM by ianmcmill.

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Short story yes it works like you want. Long story I will wirte out later, I have to go to work now

I wonder what e3d clone doesnt come with cooling fins. that defeats the purpose^^ so I would almost spend the money to get a lite6. youll much more fun with that and ptfe liner are definitely a thing of the past.

also you can run the fan always on by just plugging it into the 12v outputs. the solution above is only for when you want the fan off when you make firmware test etc.

so what I did after I had enabled the extruder cooler pin was that I set it to an empty endstop. in my case the x-min. since you can plug the fan directly into that you need either a relay, which some people advise against because even that could overload the capacity of those pins. so what i used was this littel mosfet controller (carbonfrog sells them). it was originally intended do enable model cooling on the sanguinololu, so i hooked the 12v and ground into the existing 12V aux pins on the ramps and the signal wire into the signal pin of the x-min endstop.

Thanks for the answer.

So the "Extruder Cooler" is a different function from the default fan that cools the print itself ? Did I get you right?

This is my clone


It came with ribs.
I came without PTFE inliner.

When running the hotend one single minute without cooling by the 30mm fan, it jammed instantly.
I actually ordered a new thread with PTFE inline and it worked way better (without cooling). Or at least it worked better for a longer period of time before it jammed. So I don't think PTFE inliners are a thing of the past.
The E3D v6 1.75mm version actually is designed with an PTFE inliner.

I don't like additional Mosfets laying around and as this basically an Arduino board with unused pins, I don't see the need for a Mosfet.

There are so much pins on the board that I don't want to use endstop pins for this. When adding endstops in the near future, I will still have extruder endstop fins available but this is a dirty hack.


Okay .... So after playing around in the Repetier config tool I have found this:

Perfect !

Now I use digital 12 (which is also PWM) for the fan:


P.S. oh now that I think about it...is D12 then 12v ?

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/2015 12:17PM by ianmcmill.

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Blog: Capotexl
Filament Factory - How to build your own cheap filament extruder
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Make the world a better place

Quote

So the "Extruder Cooler" is a different function from the default fan that cools the print itself ? Did I get you right?

Yes, model cooler is usually on the D9 pin on the ramps

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This is my clone

I see. I thought of a bit different model. but thats fine. you need the active cooling and the liner, there are no ways around it.

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So I don't think PTFE inliners are a thing of the past.

Yes correct.

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I don't like additional Mosfets laying around and as this basically an Arduino board with unused pins, I don't see the need for a Mosfet.

You need something that translates the controlling function from the low powered logic pins to a 12V fan. There are some people trying to put LED strips in the printer with a similar controll mechanism, but there are some arguments against relay. The older boards dont have 12V switchting or PWM controlled pins besides heater1 and heater2/fan. and a controlled hotend fan is not necessary for most people.

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There are so much pins on the board that I don't want to use endstop pins for this. When adding endstops in the near future, I will still have extruder endstop fins available but this is a dirty hack.

There will always be at least two unused endstops in any printer config and they work. With other pins you need to first find out their function. eg pin 0 and 1 have something todo with the serial connection i think, so they shouldn´t be used for this.

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Okay .... So after playing around in the Repetier config tool I have found this:

Possible but most likely a 5V pwm and even than I would bet on much amperage to play with.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2015 07:18AM by sungod3k.

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sungod3k
There will always be at least two unused endstops in any printer config and they work. with other pins you need to first find out their function. eg pin 0 and 1 have something todo with the serial connection i think so they should be used for this.

Please write shouldn´t or should not. You are confusing people with your bad english.

Sorry, don´t take it personal
-Olaf