Teacup Firmware on GEN 7 TM board with TB6560 drivers

Hello.
I am building a Printrbot LC and I am using the GEN 7 TM board with ATMEGA 644 P and TB6560 drivers.
The project is presented here:
[cnc.maket-city.ru]

I connected only one driver to the x axis for test, nothing else, no endstops, no thermistors.

Is there any condition in software that doesn't allow to move an axis unless u have temperature input or things like that?

I used the Teacup Lumen v1.4 firmware from the download section, I made the modification that inverts the enable line in the config.h file.

I recompiled and uploaded the firmware from arduino IDE, and now the driver is enabled correctly.

But I have no signal on the STEP and DIR lines that go to the driver, no matter what I command from pronterface.

In the firmware folder there are many config.h files, I edited the default one, but I see that there is also a config.gen7.h file, should I rename that file
modify it to config.h and then recompile?

Other question would be how can I debug using pronterface or arduino ide to see where the problem is?

Thanks and hoping that you can help me make this printer move.

The enable is inverted. So you will need to change those, or remove optical isolators.

Also x/y share the same enable on some boards with 4 axis so you will need both x and y enabled to allow a move. You can do this in initialization, or by looking for code that enables stepper driver.


Hope this helps.

You can also remove the optical isolated buffers, and i think this removes the need for inverted end stops. There is some documentation on how to remove optical isolation on the tb6550. I think this will get you started [forum.seemecnc.com]

The tb6550 board works well and is cheap, but is a headache to setup, especially with the optical isolator slow slew rates. For reprap hardware it is best to have direct TTL control of driver as steps can go well above 10khz!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2013 08:49PM by jamesdanielv.

Hi.
I don't have a board that I bought from internet, I made 4 boards, each with 1 TB6560, STEP, EN, DIR +5 +12V inputs from controller board and outputs to the steppers.
So no optocouplers.
Yesterday I wired an older board with TB6560 to the controller and it works!!!
At least the stepper are moving, didn't measure the precision yet although.
So there is something wrong in the schematic from maket-city and I think that I narrowed it to the fact that in the maket-city schematic, both EN and ~RESET pins of the TB are wired to the EN output of the ATMEGA, but this doesn't seem to be correct.
I the working driver, ~RESET is pullup to +5V always.
I will try today to solder ~RESET to +5V and see if it works.
If it's not this then I will add some more capacitors, maybe there is some filtering problem.
This is the driver that doesn't work:


This is the driver that works:
TB6560Driver_schematic.pdf with the mention that I cut the pullups for DIR, EN, STEP because it was designed for using with optocouplers.


So only notable difference would be the ~RESET line, which is pullup in old driver, and same with EN in new driver that doesn't work.

Finally I got an old driver working with the the controller board, it seems that these boards are very sensible to build.
Also after some measuring I got also one of my boards to work, the oscillator capacitive was not working.
But I have some strange noise in the stepper and it seems that communication with the pcb is disturbed because I get some start messages in printer face when I use my board but the old board has no problems.
I will search in the forum to see what this means.

Just got 2 circuits to work again it seems that they are really sensible.

Last night made to work and the second TB6560, looks like hot spots and verification procedures should be like this:
1. circuit is powered at 12 V
2. check inputs 12 V, 5 V, GND to be ok
3.verify that the capacitor from OSC which is 330 pF 470 pF to have a voltage around 1.4 V (for 470 pF) but still different from 0, this means that the internal clock circuit alive
4. put wire from 5 V to EN that normally should be 0 or close to 0
5.measure stepper output when EN = 1, two of them should have +12 V and -12 V

If all the above conditions are met means that business is good, but if the generals and oscillating circuit capacitor That's ok.

Another recommendation one electrolyte and a 100nF ceramic on 12 V and 5 V lines as close to the IC as possible, it seems that the power lines are very disturbed by the stepper coils so filtering must be used.

can you post your results in a wiki page? I think this would be interesting for those that want to go custom electronic to save money, or those that want to breadboard some of the electronics

Hello and thank you for the idea.
I would talk with the author of the board from maket-city and if he agrees I will make some wiki page.
Can you make a suggestion when can I start this page like what branch of the electronics tree?

Quote

Can you make a suggestion when can I start this page like what branch of the electronics tree?

It would be a new wiki page. There is (unfortunately) no tree-like organisation in the wiki, I guess most people find things by Google.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Well I made the module for the Z axis, connected the 2 motors in parallel and everything worked so far.
So I decided that I should connect all axes and extruder and make some tests.

Well when I connected all the modules it seems that somewhere I have some noises that make the steppers from z all crazy...
Also when the steppers go crazy and vibrate like crazy, also pronterface is having problems because it says

Printer online...
start...

many times...

Do you know what may causing this problems?

I suppose that either the 5 V line is dropping for the ATMEGA, either I have a short to GND or a lost of ground on the lines that go to the drivers and thats why they go all crazy.
I don't have an oscilocope so debugging this will be really hard.
I will put some leds on the lines that to to the drivers, blinking leds on a line that should be either 0 or 1 would mean noise.
If you have any ideas about the cause of this problem please let me know.

Could just be drive speed. For Z, if you have the microstepping set to 16 you get very high steps per mm. If you have set the drivers to low (whole or half) microstepping you need the correct (low <500) steps per mm in firmware or the firmware will try to move the steppers way too fast and they just stall. Even with correct microstepping, the firmware might have unrealistic max speeds for Z, try slowing stuff way down and see what happens. Also check connections and stuff.