1 Topic by grimjack

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Topic: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

Having become dissatisfied with the amount of adjustment needed to my "ready to Print"printer, the poorly designed extruder gear and associated electronics, and the cost of filament from XYZ which I could not use because said gear failed to feed, but the built in software said I used anyway, I decided to fix it.  I am converting it to use a standard Arduino Mega and RAMPS kit.  I have everything except the dupont connectors to make/extend some wiring, so I tore it down to get ready.  The mechanical parts seem to be pretty good and well designed, it has optical end stops, a pretty decent looking hot end (if you ignore XYZ's weird additions), and a nice fully enclosed case.  I am also not going to use the control panel, because it uses non standard wiring (as far as I can tell).  I took a lot of pictures of the disassembly process, and will also of the reassembly / upgrade process.  Is anyone interested in me posting them?
Grimjack

2 Reply by carl_m1968

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

grimjack wrote:

Having become dissatisfied with the amount of adjustment needed to my "ready to Print"printer, the poorly designed extruder gear and associated electronics, and the cost of filament from XYZ which I could not use because said gear failed to feed, but the built in software said I used anyway, I decided to fix it.  I am converting it to use a standard Arduino Mega and RAMPS kit.  I have everything except the dupont connectors to make/extend some wiring, so I tore it down to get ready.  The mechanical parts seem to be pretty good and well designed, it has optical end stops, a pretty decent looking hot end (if you ignore XYZ's weird additions), and a nice fully enclosed case.  I am also not going to use the control panel, because it uses non standard wiring (as far as I can tell).  I took a lot of pictures of the disassembly process, and will also of the reassembly / upgrade process.  Is anyone interested in me posting them?
Grimjack


If the optical endstops are the same as the ones used on their other printers they will not work with a RAMPS or any other third party board. Their endstops do not have the built in current limiting resistors so if you connect them to a RAMPS it will burn them out. Those limiting resistors are on the Motherboards for the Da Vinci builds. I converted my 1.0 to RAMPS and found this out. Also the LCD is not compatible either..

Printing since 2009 and still love it!
Anycubic 4MAX best $225 ever invested.
Voxelabs Proxima SLA. 6 inch 2k Mono LCD.
Anycubic Predator, massive Delta machine. 450 x 370 print envelope.

3 Reply by grimjack

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

Thanks for the heads up!  I may have to get out the old meter and calculator and put a resistor in line with those end stops.  I reckon that would work. 
Grimjack

4 Reply by grimjack

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

I took an "endstop" out of the torn down chassis, and there are no resistors on the tiny little pcb. It appears to be just the opto sensor itself.  Shouldn't be too hard to rig something together and continue to use the factory made parts.  I find it a shame that such a mechanically well built frame and chassis was crippled by a "use our software and filament" mentality.  The only other thing I think I will have to mod out is a way to mount a standard sized spool of filament.  The XYZ spools are about 2 cm smaller in diameter than standard spools.
Grimjack

5 Reply by grimjack (edited by grimjack 2015-12-17 04:47:19)

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

Ok, got my voltages and such worked out for the endstops.  The marked outputs on the factory sensor are A, G, and C.  A is the positive side of the emitter. G is ground, to to both emitter and receiver.  C is signal.  Make a wiring harness or board to connect the factory cable to, and put a 220 Ohm resistor inline for the "A" to feed the emitter. "G" ground can go straight to ground.  The "C" signal pin needs a 12k ohm pull up resistor tied in to the +5 Vdc, then feed it to signal. 
  Very much like the BIQ ECO wiring for a Rep Rap.
Grimjack

6 Reply by pwnedmark

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

Hey grimjack,

Any updates on your teardown/new build? I'm definitely interested in seeing how this goes.
I'd consider doing the same when i'm out of the filament I have.

7 Reply by hydronaut

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

https://fccid.io/document.php?id=2560608

8 Reply by grimjack

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

As there is some interest, I will do some updates.  Pictures will follow later.

I have got it wired up (mostly) on RAMPS 1.4 running Marlin firmware. I finally got the motors and endstops all worked out and got my LCD screen (after market, not original) running.  The stock thermistor is a 100K model, I went with option 1 in Marlin, but won't know if it needs tweaking until I finish tuning it up.  Oddly, the "Y" motor wiring was exactly backwards from the other three motors.  Still need to go through Triffid Hunters tune ups, and build a few test pieces.  Once it is working well, I will print a case for the electronics and PS.  The new gear and idler on the extruder are a VAST improvement over the stock model.  without tweaking it, it is hard to hold on to a piece of PLA to keep it from running through.  Only problem is it sounds like a machine gun when running, I probably should tweak that motor and feed rate. 
Grimjack

9 Reply by hydronaut (edited by hydronaut 2016-01-02 21:32:30)

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

grimjack wrote:

As there is some interest, I will do some updates.  Pictures will follow later.

I have got it wired up (mostly) on RAMPS 1.4 running Marlin firmware. I finally got the motors and endstops all worked out and got my LCD screen (after market, not original) running.  The stock thermistor is a 100K model, I went with option 1 in Marlin, but won't know if it needs tweaking until I finish tuning it up.  Oddly, the "Y" motor wiring was exactly backwards from the other three motors.  Still need to go through Triffid Hunters tune ups, and build a few test pieces.  Once it is working well, I will print a case for the electronics and PS.  The new gear and idler on the extruder are a VAST improvement over the stock model.  without tweaking it, it is hard to hold on to a piece of PLA to keep it from running through.  Only problem is it sounds like a machine gun when running, I probably should tweak that motor and feed rate. 
Grimjack

Please post pictures.  I am seriously considering doing the same thing.  How did you identify all the pins on the ribbon cable to the extruder?

10 Reply by grimjack

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

I did not even try to do that.  I dumped that ribbon cable like my first ex wife.  I ran 6 wires, heater, thermistor and fan.  Drilled a few small holes in the side of the hot end 'case', ran my wires out there, and hooked em up.  I left the boards in there, and used all the associated pieces, it lines up the bowden connector, feed tube, and hot end all nice and neat.  Just didn't use any of their electronics. 

As a side note, I have finally got a first test print out of it, a small cross I found on thingiverse.  It printed ok, after several rough aborted starts.  a 1 cm side measured out at 10.32 mm, but it was the same on every arm.  The height was just a hair over the 1 cm, and the layers all stuck together very well.  Surface finish wasn't great, but I am tweaking it in slowly.

grimjack

11 Reply by hydronaut

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

smile  It's a great little small printer and the price was cheap.  Not sure how the PLA would hold up but I can always print in ABS later and add a heated bed.  The hot end attaches very nice with the clip.  Was thinking of printing my own head to attache and use something like this.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/3D-Printer-Extru … IUQ27uiUFg

How are the optical endstops holding out?  That is my only concern.

grimjack wrote:

I did not even try to do that.  I dumped that ribbon cable like my first ex wife.  I ran 6 wires, heater, thermistor and fan.  Drilled a few small holes in the side of the hot end 'case', ran my wires out there, and hooked em up.  I left the boards in there, and used all the associated pieces, it lines up the bowden connector, feed tube, and hot end all nice and neat.  Just didn't use any of their electronics. 

As a side note, I have finally got a first test print out of it, a small cross I found on thingiverse.  It printed ok, after several rough aborted starts.  a 1 cm side measured out at 10.32 mm, but it was the same on every arm.  The height was just a hair over the 1 cm, and the layers all stuck together very well.  Surface finish wasn't great, but I am tweaking it in slowly.

grimjack

12 Reply by Anthem (edited by Anthem 2016-07-14 03:23:57)

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

I'm going to be taking on this project in the coming days and weeks with my Jr. After stupidly updating to 2.2.7 and subsequently blowing up my stock firmware, I'm now stuck with a bricked Jr. So I bought a RAMPS kit and will be taking on this conversion soon.

13 Reply by Anthem

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

Quick update. So far so good with the Jr to RAMPS conversion. I have the nozzle fan, hotend and thermistor hooked up and working. Unfortunately I accidentally reversed polarity on the fan and let its magic smoke out, but I have a replacement coming soon. Don't do that.

I've flashed Marlin to my board and am so far loving how much control you can have over the printer with it. Thinking about the Jr's stock capabilities feels like going back to the stone age.

I have the steppers and end stops broken out onto a breadboard, but they're not hooked up to the RAMPS board yet. I did add the 220 and 12k resistances suggested above to the endstop wiring.

I'm trying to achieve this conversion in a non-destructive way. That way if I want to mess with Repetier on the stock board at some point I can hook things back up and it should look like a stock system again, and so far it's going well (other than replacing the fan). I've used male-to-male jumpers to break out of the nozzle wiring. There's actually a small opening in the side of that assembly that's big enough to feed the 6 wires I need through. I've repurposed the NFC reader ribbon cable and inserted the jumpers into that to get the wiring out the side of the unit to a small breadboard. Inside the nozzle I was able to insert the jumpers behind the connectors where the wires feed in, so no soldering or drilling needed there.

I fished most of the ribbon cables out of the bottom of the unit and have them jumpered to a large breadboard up front to wire up the steppers and endstops.

I ordered a length of ribbon cable and a SIP connector set to make the final installation neater once I have it all working. The trouble I'm having there is with the stock 2mm pitch connectors. It seems no one makes DIY 2mm connectors, only 2.54mm? Unless I can track some down I'm stuck using ugly jumpers sticking out of these things (which already barely fit).

14 Reply by Anthem

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

I found this 2mm connector set: http://www.robotshop.com/en/jst-connector-kit-2mm.html

However the pictures are terrible. I don't suppose whether anyone can tell if these would fit the 2mm connectors on the Jr? I'd also still need jumpers for the endstop connector as that's a 2x6 connector and this set only goes up to 1x4.

15 Reply by Anthem

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

This had been quite an adventure so far.

I hooked up my endstops today, only to graze the 5v side of a resistor with a jumper lead (yeah, I was being dumb and messing with live wiring). Instantly fried my Arduino's voltage regulator.

Fortunately I had some 7805s lying around, replaced it and all is well again. However, I fear I also fried my X and Y endstops at the same time. The Z fortunately appears to still work, but the others are not responsive and reading 1.2v all the time (instead of 0.7/5v like on the Z).

In better news, my steppers seem to be working so far. I have some more tweaking to do of the drivers' trim pots, but X and Y are up and running and Z and extruder should follow soon.

The only items left after fixing my endstops should be to locate hookups for the LED bar (I need to work out expected voltage and current there) and the back ventilation fan. I'll also be doing a lot of cleanup of the wiring and removing the breadboarD's from the setup.

16 Reply by Zillard

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

This is pretty much what i want to do as well, although i have been looking at maybe using a MKS Gen board. But thats a way into the future endeavor.

Looking forward to your progress updates.

17 Reply by Anthem

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Re: Teardown Pics of DaVicni Jr?

I have my Jr printing right now after successfully converting to RAMPS 1.4. There were some bumps along the way, but nothing that wasn't my own fault. I think I achieved a pretty clean conversion. I removed the original board from the bottom of the box, and used JST and Dupont connector kits with some ribbon cable to extend all the cables out the side of the unit (through the hole where the off switch used to sit). I'm still working out a solution for printing a case for the board and display, but for now I'm mostly using OctoPrint so I don't have to fuss with the screen too much.

I'll start a new thread sometime soon to post my experiences and process (I'll try to make it as HOWTO-like as I can).

Here's a grab of my current print job, a Robot Turtle (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:216285):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/em4o8qeeay0sg27/Screenshot%20from%202016-07-30%2018-21-16.png?dl=1