Firmware Z wobble compensation (Page 5 of 5)

Thank you, Lawsy. I appreciate all of the work you have done that make it easier for us noobs. I was in a hurry earlier, which is why I didn't search before. I don't like making redundant threads either.

Or just use google to do the search the forum with the 'site' operator ---> http://lmgtfy.com/?q=site%3Asoliforum.c … y+firmware

Sometimes it's not always obvious what to search for.  For instance, when my y-axis went nuts a few nights ago, I had no idea how to describe the exact problem in the form of a search term.  I made a thread about it, and once I knew what was causing the problem, I realized that there are already tons of threads addressing it.

Well, no. We copied you just the once, and were hoping people would forward Github issues to us through the github account. We are always futzing around with the firmware in house, but in reality I haven't seen much improvement to the core of it, besides what Eric Z is doing. We haven't seen much in requests for firmware updates, either. To be honest I've never heard anyone say our firmware needs a big change.

No one was into sending us bugs or feature requests, I suppose.

The Github page was more of an experiment, we're pretty serious about using open source software, but since so many people take issue with one thing or another we thought it would be great to encourage people to develop/make suggestions that were Solidoodle specific.

We might pop the installer scripts up there, if anyone has suggestions for making that easier than it already is.

We've never been approached by a single person with a problem like "I downloaded the wrong firmware, how do I get the wobble fix firmware?" Our sites pretty clear on what the official firmware is. So, this isn't a support issue per se. The vast majority of Solidoodle customers never update their firmware. So, no there is no grief being caused on our own end. What we would like is more customer interaction with what we provide on the machine, and more feedback from the community in terms of what you like and don't like in the official firmware.

The github exists so someone could propose a change to the official firmware. Remember that the current github page is what we ship, as opposed to your repo which is the current community/modder favorite. We don't mind that those are separate things, as not every customer needs the same kind of features that a hard core enthusiast might.

As the Solidoodle lineup expands, it will be important to maintain the distinctions between various flavors of firmware. We are still working out ways to support both the community as well as the more casual Solidoodle user in this dimension.

I don't think anyone in recent memory has approached us and said "There's a problem with the firmware." This user community is about the only place it's talked about. However, if you ever want to make a change to the firmware that is distributed with the Solidoodle, then our repo would be the place to do it. 

In other words, if someone would like add their new feature, or a bug fix to our official copy we'd be happy to look in to it, but it would be awesome if you contacted/asked us directly via e-mail, github etc. We love hearing what you guys have to say about our current software / firmware page, so please let us know how we can improve things in the future.

One thing we might try look into for the future, is paring down the firmware so that it is more specific to the Solidoodle. We are curious at this point how as to how many people are using the Panelolu features. It seems they are less used than they were before.

As a final note, we are continuing to work on Z-wobble fixes on the hardware side of things. We'll let you know the moment there is something we are able to report.

Uh? This is news, since your current github page is a 1:1 clone of an old version of the official Marlin. For example, Configuration.h has this:

#define X_HOME_DIR -1
#define Y_HOME_DIR -1
#define Z_HOME_DIR -1

which is NOT a solidoodle setting.

I appreciate your effort of opening the software/firmware development, in principle, but I don't see the point of your github. If you actually had a version of the firmware that could be used on a solidoodle, then we could discuss. Then of course there would be the point of maintaining it, tracking bugs, processing pull requests, keeping it up-to-date with base... And make it easy for the community to add features to an experimental branch, that you will test and slowly include new features into the stable version. Do all of this, and we would be happy to contribute to your "official" firmware. Until then, I stay with our "community" github.

The more I read your posts on this forum, the less I believe this.  Every time something is suggested, you get very defensive about your current practices (such as saying that most people don't want a z-axis that doesn't wobble...or at least they are willing to wait for us to fix it with hardware, then buy another $500 machine to get it).  I don't consider what I had to do to my Solidoodle out of the box to be "modding" or "hacking."  You have an x-axis motor and electronics system that are prone to overheating.  You have a z-axis rod that is prone to wobble and backlash.  You ship the printer with an extruder that over-extrudes.  You use a very flimsy heated bed that takes ages to reach temperature, and parts will still fail to stick unless you enclose the machine (and there isn't an option for an enclosure on the SD3).  These things could be fixed with the solutions already posted on this forum.  In fact, they already have been by us "hard core enthusiasts."

+1

You designed the SD3 for a factory-option cover, though, didn't you?  There are holes with nuts attached to the outer frame where hinges would go for the front door, and since the SD3 frame is a different size than the SD2, I don't think they are just leftovers from the old case design.

There would be an SD3 sitting on my desk right now if you guys had offered a cover for it.

My apologies. I checked the primary branch and didn't check the master. There is still the small problem that the firmware is not SD3-ready but it's minor in comparison. Can you please spend some time pruning the unused branches, implementing useful things (like the SOLIDOODLE_VERSION define) and giving us some policies on using your github (e.g. provide us an "experimental" branch where we can make pull requests with a reasonable chance of having them pulled)? I'm sure that also Lawsy would be happy to contribute to the official repository if this makes things easier for everyone.

And to all: may I ask to go back on track of the Z-Wobble compensation for this thread? I know I myself added to the noise, and I apologize. We can still open a new one for the github issue, and I'm sure we can all find plenty of other threads where we can complain about SD development