Trying to develop new extrusion method, having difficulty designing solenoid valve

Hi there,

I have been designing a 3D printer that's on the same infrastructure as Prusa i3. However, I am not sure how to use my new extruder, which is a pressure-based solenoid valve.

Essentially, the valve is powered by a Spike and Hold, not a PID like Prusa i3 is. This spike and hold requires 24 V in the first millisecond and then 5 V for the hold voltage. As you already know, Arduino cannot exceed 24 V or else it will burn out the circuit. In addition, the Marlin software that powers this model is for PID.

My question is this: how can I redesign the printer for the solenoid signal without damaging the Arduino?

You connect the solenoid via a circuit eg [playground.arduino.cc]

Then you only have software to contend with

any unused IO pin can be controlled with M42 [reprap.org]

A lot of people also just connect to D8 and use fan on and fan off commands (M106/M107) (this is how inkskape generates gcode for laser cutters)

You may need to write a gcode passer that takes standard output and convert it so it turns your solenoid on and off as needed

There are are bunch already extruding with clays and ceramics... is also simple on off like you need, but I haven't looked into the details how they generate their gcode to do it.

Thanks for the help!

Are you saying that Pronterface will interpret the code for me despite it being a PID signal?