Duet on mendal?

Hello All
im stumbling through building a Mendel tricolour and wanting to know if anyone has successfully used a duet for this...

i imagine it would need a unique firmware and a proximity sensor... Critique or ideas welcome...

i have tried using the omerod firmware and have not worked out where to purchase the proximity sensor or away of manual homing on the duet...

Any thoughts...

Hi iScrat

We use the Duet successfully on a mendel90 with 4 materials (Kraken hotend) so it should be fine with the tri colour mendel, just need to make a few firmware tweaks. For more information check out the following blog posts:

Mendel90 with Kraken:
[blog.think3dprint3d.com]

Working with the RepRap Firmware in Eclipse
[blog.think3dprint3d.com]

You dont need to use a Z-Probe if you don't want to, I use the standard Mendel90 endstop configurations of X-Max, Y-Max and Z-Max (ie it homes up) and this works fine, but you can use Z,Y,Z, min if you prefer. It it all configurable through the firmware by changing the settings in platform.h

Cheers

Tony

Hi iScrat

I have an Ormerod and a Mendel, over this weekend I will be adding a 2nd Duet/Duex combination to the Mendel.
X,Y,Z and E Steppers should just work, there is already a microswitch Y endstop and the Ormerod uses the proximity sensor for X.

Some in the Ormerod comunity have already replaced the use of the proximity sensor as an X-endstop with micro switches.
I plan to use opto-endstops for both X and Y on the Mendel.

To start of with I will be homing the Z axis using a manual method and a 6mm Drill shank, ensuring my heat bed is already level.

Later I will be adding one of dc42 (Dave Crockers) Single Nozzle proximity sensors so as to allow for auto Z homing and Auto bed compensation. It will be the one from my Ormerod as I am upgrading that one to a 2 nozzle variant of dc's proximity sensor.

Temperature sensing should be ok, as should the heaters for the bed and nozzles.

The use of dc's proximity sensor does mean you have to use dc's fork of the RepRapPro firmware but both are supported very well.
With a great web interface to allow you upload gcode files to your printer and do all the actions currently in pronterface directly on the printer.

Let you know later, over the weekend, if I had any serious problems.

Once I have a single nozzle then I plan to expand the single J-head to 2 or maybe 3.

After a Brief check tonight only the Y-endstop is enabled in the firmware, so i will be loading up eclipse and creating my own form of dc's firmware with the endstops enabled.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/12/2014 07:27AM by ezwul.

I have successfully put the duet Board on my RepRapPro Mendel Tricolor. Using the Micro switch end stops. I never was a Fan of having more than one hot end (To Much work to keep it aligned and working). So I use one hot-end with the multiply color adapter to put 4 extruders into one hot end (superior, a must do). To make this all work I used the DC42 0.78r Firmware with the 1.02 web interface. I also have the expansion board plugged into my Duet to get the other 3 extruders. This is working very well, I even use my favorite Slicer (Cura in absolute extrusion Mode). I now won’t to put DC42 Proximate sensor (Depth Sensor). Have a Mount made, but wiring the Depth Sensor is an issue. The expansion board uses the Connector I should plug the Depth Sensor into. Does anyone have a Solution or any ideas?

Notes:

1. Cura dos not support the new tool commands right yet.
2. I cant attach all the stl and gcode. Please email me at guywin@hotmail.com and i will send a ZIP file.

Hi gd
If you post on the ormerod forum I am sure DC will explain how to connect up the proximity sensor when used with the duex4 expansion board.
The explanation might already be explained in other Ormerod forum posts.
I'll be back on the printer Sunday night so should be able to post some progress and look at your reply to my email.
Regards
Lloyd

I have a few comments on the above posts:

1. You can use my sensor board with standard Duet firmware. It is only the backup mode (simple modulated IR sensor mode) that needs my firmware to make it available. But you only need the backup mode if you have the X homing tab at an unsuitable height to use the normal mode for X homing.

2. If you are using a DuetX4 then you can connect the sensor board to the DuetX4 expansion connector instead of to the Duet expansion connector. See the Wiring section of my blog entry at [miscsolutions.wordpress.com] for details.

3. gdwinslow said "Cura does not support the new tool commands yet". Can you explain which tool commands you mean?

4. ezwul said "After a Brief check tonight only the Y-endstop is enabled in the firmware, so i will be loading up eclipse and creating my own form of dc's firmware with the endstops enabled." The firmware already supports endstop switches on all axes. You just need to disable the proximity sensor with M558 P0 before homing X or Z if you are not using it for that axis.

5. gdwinslow, how successful do you find the single-nozzle multi-colour adapter for multi-colour printing? I understood that RRP were having some problems with it, and I assumed that was why they haven't released the Ormerod multi-material upgrade yet. Also, where did you get the brass bush that connects the adapter with the heatsink block and nozzle?

---

Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Quote
dc42
I have a few comments on the above posts:

1. You can use my sensor board with standard Duet firmware. It is only the backup mode (simple modulated IR sensor mode) that needs my firmware to make it available. But you only need the backup mode if you have the X homing tab at an unsuitable height to use the normal mode for X homing.

4. ezwul said "After a Brief check tonight only the Y-endstop is enabled in the firmware, so i will be loading up eclipse and creating my own form of dc's firmware with the endstops enabled." The firmware already supports endstop switches on all axes. You just need to disable the proximity sensor with M558 P0 before homing X or Z if you are not using it for that axis.

Hi dc

1) I will be moving the spare dc single nozzle probe to my mendel for bed probing, and I am unsure yet if I will make a tab for X homing or use the endstop already there.
Which ever is simpler, probably using your comment for 4)

4) Thanks for the command to show how to "disable" the probe whilst homing to the endstop. The switch on X is at X=0 and luckily the switch on Y is at Y=230 so tsimilar to the Ormerod.

With your probe working anywhere on the glass, I was thinking of a way to lower the probe until it read a reading from the bed say 200 and then move the bed until the reading goes to zero to detect the edge of the glass, that way the home position is the edge of the glass. Maybe have an emergency Z endstop to catch the overrun if the sequence starts outside the bed area.

Is this something you have considered before?

Lloyd

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/24/2014 09:58AM by ezwul.

Hi Lloyd,

My probe only outputs 4 readings: 0 (= well away from bed), 465 (= close to trigger height), 535 (= at or below trigger height), and 1023 (= too much ambient IR for reliable sensing). So if your print head can move beyond the edges of the glass, the following might work if the bed is sufficiently level AND the head is over the glass to start with:

1. Execute G30 to lower the head until trigger height is reached.

2. Lower the head by an additional small amount, say 0.3mm.

3. Move the head in the X or Y direction until you get a zero reading, which should indicate that the sensor is off the edge of the bed.

But I haven't tried this.

---

Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].