Airwolf AXIOM - A.. not so great printer (Page 2 of 3)

I have an AXIOM Dual and it is by far the worst of my 4 printers.  It has been down as often as up in the year I have owned it.  Too many issues to even start.  The ERC (print head cassette) has been back to the factory 3 times, each time taking 3 weeks to 5 weeks to get it back.  The people at Airwolf are nice, and the hardware looks great, but my printer has been a disaster.  I'm afraid to sell it to someone since it is such a lemon.  But if anyone wants it I will sell it for 1/3 of what I paid for it.

I'm the senior service technician here at Airwolf 3D. I know this thread is a little old, but I wanted to jump in. I'm really sorry to hear about the problems that you guys have experienced with our machines. We stand behind our products and supporting the success of our customers is our top priority. I invite anyone experiencing issues with their machines, to please give us a call or message me at [email protected] and we'll take care of you.

I also welcome any specific questions anyone has about our machines!

Ok, I have submit 2 trouble tickets regarding this issue and have been treated like I am expecting something from my machine that it is not designed to do. All I ever get is an email telling me that the I can tune the feed rate while printing but that it is not recommended. I have requested to speak to someone in person but have been told that they are to busy to pick up the phone.

I own 3 printers to date, (HDx2, axiom, and a Prusa i3 clone) and have experience with about 6 other Airwolf printers both HDx and Axiom models. This one particular Axiom takes between 2 and 3 times longer to print a part with identical setting as any other printer I run the part on. If I load my HDx and my Axiom with the same part file, same filament and same slicer setting, and get an estimated print time of 6:18 it will print on the HDx somewhere between 6:20 and 6:40. The Axiom on the other hand will take anywhere from 14:00 to 21:00 hours to complete. I have updated the firmware twice and the problem seemed to get worse not better. I am printing from an SD card and have tried several different cards to rule that out. I am at the point that I am ready to pull  the Rambo board an install and Azteeg x5 GT but would rather not put another $160 into this printer if I don't have to. Can anyone help sense Airwolf obviously has no intent on helping me with this despite the claim from bpgoss1 that they are there to help.

OK, again, I have no experience with Airwolf printers for obvious reasons. But since you are struggling, maybe you are willing to try anything that may help without lose warranty.
When you connect your printer to computer though USB in Repetitor host or something similar, in manual control, send gcode command M501 to printer and check the response log, it should list all eeprom settings. Looking for lines start with M201 and M202 and up to M206. This commands are limitation of printer speed, acceleration and Jerk (how fast acceleration increase) stored in printer memory that changes printing speed regardless how fast your slicer want it to print. It will be something like this

M201 X1000 Y1000 Z100 E2000

You can find explaination of these commands here:
https://reprap.org/wiki/G-code#M201:_Se … celeration

Do M501 command on both printer that print fast and slow and compare the difference in these numbers. If they are different, that will explain the different in speed and can be changed without affect your warranty I think.

Again, I have no experience with Airwolf printer, these command may or may not work on Airwolf printer. If you run out things to try, it doesn't hurt to try, and let me know if you have further question. If you have better idea to try, ignore my post.

Thank you all for the replies. I have been communicating with [email protected]. I am not sure which tech exactly is replying as I am sure they have more then one. I have also tried calling and was told to submit a ticket as they were to busy to talk on the phone. I will try the M501 and see what is returned. I suspect that the firmware is the issue and the tech support at Matterhackers told me that he suspected the same thing but he did not get into how to resolve it and I didn't expect him to as it is a competitor machine. I think the biggest issue is going to be how to update the firmware after I find the problem.

thanks

this is not the setting stored in your printer eeprom, this is hardcoded setting in your firmware, as suggested by the first line of the response. This happens because setting stored in eeprom is in old/wrong format and current firmware can not understand data in eeprom and therefore loaded the failsafe setting, however, this setting is not currently used by your printer.

The cause of this problem usually start with upgrade firmware to newer version without load failsafe setting and save. the easy solution is go to lcd menu, select initialize eeprom or load failsafe setting in control-motion menu, and make sure you save setting in the end, power off printer and restart, you may need to do this twice.

again, i have no experience with axiom printer, the menu on lcd menu may spelled differently or in different localtion. as long as you get the idea, you should be able to find the right place. these should not void your warrenty, but after load the default setting, the printing speed may be too fast and may generate more noise as i see on the default settings you posted, you might want to lower the acceleration and jerk etc. to more confertable but faster than current settings.

Agree, that's exactly what I was asked.

I have never run M501 on printer with eeprom disabled, I expected different response saying eeprom is disabled etc. but that may be lines before "< echo:Hardcoded Default Settings Loaded" which he did not include.

So I performed a failsafe reset several times and got no response on the Viki at all. I did it again with the computer connected and got the response < echo:Hardcoded Default Settings Loaded. every time. When I ran the M501 again I got the exact same Responses I got before. I then ran the M501 on my HDx2 machine that works great and got back numbers that would indicate to me a much slower machine. Both are posted below.  It seems to me if I am understanding your comments correctly that my EEPROM is most likely disabled and that there are some limits set that I cannot easily change due to Airwolf locking it. Unless someone can offer some additional work arounds I guess I will be ordering my Azteeg X5 GT soon.

thanks

Axiom after failsafe reset (No Changes from before)
> M501
< echo:Hardcoded Default Settings Loaded
< echo:Steps per unit:
< echo:  M92 X100.00 Y100.00 Z400.00 E332.00
< echo:Maximum feedrates (mm/s):
< echo:  M203 X400.00 Y400.00 Z20.00 E60.00
< echo:Maximum Acceleration (mm/s2):
< echo:  M201 X3500 Y3500 Z400 E10000
< echo:Acceleration: S=acceleration, T=retract acceleration
< echo:  M204 S3500.00 T3500.00
< echo:Advanced variables: S=Min feedrate (mm/s), T=Min travel feedrate (mm/s), B=minimum segment time (ms), X=maximum XY jerk (mm/s),  Z=maximum Z jerk (mm/s),  E=maximum E jerk (mm/s)
< echo:  M205 S0.00 T0.00 B20000 X20.00 Z1.60 E5.00
< echo:Home offset (mm):
< echo:  M206 X0.00 Y0.00 Z0.00
< echo:PID settings:
< echo:   M301 P30.00 I1.50 D125.00

Hdx2 NO ISSUES with this Machine
> M501
< echo:Hardcoded Default Settings Loaded
< echo:Steps per unit:
< echo:  M92 X80.00 Y80.00 Z1600.00 E332.00
< echo:Maximum feedrates (mm/s):
< echo:  M203 X250.00 Y250.00 Z5.00 E50.00
< echo:Maximum Acceleration (mm/s2):
< echo:  M201 X3500 Y3500 Z100 E10000
< echo:Acceleration: S=acceleration, T=retract acceleration
< echo:  M204 S3500.00 T3500.00
< echo:Advanced variables: S=Min feedrate (mm/s), T=Min travel feedrate (mm/s), B=minimum segment time (ms), X=maximum XY jerk (mm/s),  Z=maximum Z jerk (mm/s),  E=maximum E jerk (mm/s)
< echo:  M205 S0.00 T0.00 B20000 X20.00 Z0.40 E5.00
< echo:Home offset (mm):
< echo:  M206 X0.00 Y0.00 Z0.00
< echo:PID settings:

Azteeg is a Smoothie board based on Smoothieware. Settings for it are easier but different as all settings reside in a config.txt file that on an SDcard installed in the board. Not the same SDcard that prints are done from.

I am familiar with the Smoothieboard as that is what I am running in my Prusa Frankin printer. The issue I have at this point with the Marlin firmware is I do not have a file for the current firmware to look at or modify as Airwolf will not release it. You can only get it through there Apex slicer software as a direct install to the machine. I am not proficient with marlin firmware which is why I am looking at Smoothie that I know well enough to start from scratch. The Axiom heats up quick. Less then 10 minutes and I typically preheat anyhow so that is not really a factor in the print time.

Thank you Carl_m1968 and Yizhou.he for all of your knowledge and assistance on this.

Why would you never use a Smoothie? It is a 32 bit processor first of all meaning it runs circles around any RAMPS or other 16 bit board. Virtually every setting is available through the config.txt file, even current control for the steppers. If they made one that supported dual extruders for a reasonable price I would put one on my CT'c instead of the X3 pro I am using now. I used the X5 on a delta build and it was the best and most robust board I had ever used. I suggest you try before knocking.