mcbeen.com

Install was super simple, but the cable is slightly shorter than I would like. There is no room for routing it properly.

Nice to finally have a screen for direct control.

I’ve been trying to use a run-out sensor from BTT for a month or so, but its just nor working for me. I took it apart and found a few issues with it. The biggest problem was the pinch wheel is smooth metal. On the sense wheel, there was no bearing. It was also made of aluminum on a steel axle, so there was tons of friction and it was jamming.

So, I ground the pinch wheel to give it some texture. Then I modeled up a new sense wheel, and fitted it with ball bearings.

The results so far have been promising.

I have been working on a modular lighting kit for building hexagonal grids. These little bow ties lock them all together. With this design, I can build an unlimited sized array with only three parts.

Here are a few smaller strips printing out and lighting up.

I went ahead and picked these up from chaoticlab because the default printed plastic ones are just not designed well. Adjusting them causes grinding on the belts. I also wanted to get rid of any flex in the z axis.

Adjustment is far simpler now, and they don’t look too bad. Just with they were purple.

I’ve been printing out these dry boxes for keeping filament clean, and have been pretty happy with them.

As you can see, things are getting better, but there are still flow issues.

Added a bit of flair cut up by one of my bored daughters. I think it fits well. I think I’m going to stencil a print of of it and mirror for the other side.

And I have run into a number of issues I’m trying to resolve. I’m deep in the valley of despair.

I made a lot of assumptions starting this project, even though I tried as much as possible to make sure I knew what I was getting into. One of the big ones was klipper. I expected it to be much simpler to get started and configure. I expected to just download a basic config and grow from there. I expected there to be a well defined middle of the road. There’s no roads here. There is a ton of information, but its more or less unstructured. It’s not a bad thing, I just didn’t understand it going in.

This project has forced me to use all of my abilities across many specialties in an integrated manor I was not expecting. Hardware, Firmware, Software, Programming, Electrical, Soldering, CAD design. Its been very difficult. It probably would have helped to have someone to guide me through this. Here is a small sample:

Klipper configs do not use pinout aliasing for configurations. This means that you bury your hardware pinout in the actual macros. It makes configs completely locked into your controller board. Configs can’t be repurposed easily with a remapping. I’ve been trying to use aliases, but its messy as heck.

I ended up abandoning sensor less homing as it causes all kinds of issues to get it working. Its super hard to tell the difference between acceleration and an end-stop. It’s just far easier to use a switch. I spent a long time making up a new homing macro that is now more or less redundant.

Ran into issues on my z axis motor grub screws coming loose and causing z leveling to fail. redid them all with storing locktite.

Found the gantry was slightly racking causing prints to be out of square. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOn6u9kXvy0&pp=ygUYY25jIGtpdGNoZW0gdm9yb24gZ2FudHJ5

Canbus is randomly timing out during leveling causing the system to crash. Hacking the tolerance values in klipper has mitigated it to a point. https://klipper.discourse.group/t/canbus-communication-timeout-while-homing-z/3741

Extrusion is a nightmare. I just don’t get whats going on with it. Nothing seems to work to fix it.

Feeding filament seems to be a problem as well. I need to find a better way of dealing with friction in the long boden tubes.

Still trying to get z height dialed in and stable.

For some reason, on square prints at a 45 degree angle, coming from the LEFT ONLY, are f-d up. Its driving me mad.

Maybe I should have just got a prusa. This is exactly what I didn’t want.

Today I woke up to this:

something went wrong during printing, and the toolhead just filled itself with solid plastic. I was able to get the hotend out though, and begin working it in my vice using a soldering iron. I was a bit concerned wit the status of the heater core.

It was a mess,but it cleaned up surprisingly well.

I ordered up a new boot, as the existing one was just ripped in half. So far its back in service and working well. At least now I know the extruder can push when it needs to.