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Topic: Automatic extrusion heater not working

Recently, a buddy of mine, purchased a solidoodle 3, and immediately began tinkering with it. A few 3d printed upgrades and some tuning of the PID loops, and we had a working printer. He recently left, leaving me in charge of the printer. Upon his departure he told me that I have to manually heat the extruder myself. So, to specify, when you tell the printer to start a job, it will attempt to heat both the extruder and the bed. In Repetier, both of the lights are on, saying that both are being heated. When I look at the temperature curve, the bed is heating up but the extruder is not. There is no power on the bottom graph and the temp remains constant. So, I cancel the job and manually tell the bed and extruder to heat. Then, like magic, they both heat up. But, when the extruder reaches 190c, it stops responding to manual stimuli. As soon as it drops to 189, I hit the heat button, and it starts heating until it overshoots into the 190's or 200, and stops responding. SO, once the bed is finally heated, I overshoot the extruder (manually) to about 200c, and then start the print. The program starts, and as the extruder cools, the program tells it to heat, and it listens. This is, as long as teh extruder is up to temp. What's the deal? It wont heat automatically,and it is hell trying to get it to work. Is there a code that controls this? Or is there any G-code that I can tell the machine to go strait to this temp before printing?

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Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

RH will do this automatically... usually it has some delay from the time it reaches target temp before it will start printing... can you post the gcode of the object you are trying to print? or at least the first page of it in a screenshot? might be some start code in there that is messing with it...

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Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

The delay on the heater coming on is infinate. I have the first thirty lines or so of the g-code of a print that I know worked via the manual method.

; generated by Slic3r 0.9.7 on 2013-06-18 at 14:29:07

; layer_height = 0.1
; perimeters = 3
; top_solid_layers = 6
; bottom_solid_layers = 6
; fill_density = 0.25
; perimeter_speed = 50
; infill_speed = 60
; travel_speed = 150
; scale = 1
; nozzle_diameter = .35
; filament_diameter = 1.68
; extrusion_multiplier = .763
; perimeters extrusion width = 0.42mm
; infill extrusion width = 0.42mm
; first layer extrusion width = 0.42mm

M107
M190 S100 ; wait for bed temperature to be reached
M104 S200 ; set temperature
G21; set mm units
G28 ;home all axis
G90; set absolute coordinates
G92 E0; reset extruder distance
M104 S200; set extruder temp and start heating
G1 Z5 F300 ;move platform down 5mm
G1 X195 Y195 F3000 ; move to back right corner
M109 S200; wait for extruder temp to be reached
G1 Z.3000 F200 ;move platform close to nozzle
;G1 E7; extrude anchor
G1 F3000; center print head
G92 E0; reset extrusion distance
G90 ; use absolute coordinates
G21 ; set units to millimeters
G92 E0
M82 ; use absolute distances for extrusion
G1 F4500.000 E-1.00000
G92 E0
G1 Z0.300 F9000.000
G1 X58.563 Y93.079
G1 F4500.000 E1.00000
G1 X58.773 Y92.959 F2700.000 E1.01011

4 (edited by 2n2r5 2013-06-18 19:47:19)

Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

M107
M140 S100 ; <----- Add Sets bed Temp to 85
M190 S100 ; wait for bed temperature to be reached <---- this will slow you down too. This wants your bed temp to be 100? that is pretty high. Make this 85 or 90
M104 S200 ; set temperature
G21; set mm units
G28 ;home all axis
G90; set absolute coordinates
G92 E0; reset extruder distance
M104 S200; set extruder temp and start heating <---- Remove this line , you have it twice for some reason
G1 Z5 F300 ;move platform down 5mm
G1 X195 Y195 F3000 ; move to back right corner
M109 S200; wait for extruder temp to be reached
G1 Z.3000 F200 ;move platform close to nozzle
;G1 E7; extrude anchor
G1 F3000; center print head
G92 E0; reset extrusion distance
G90 ; use absolute coordinates
G21 ; set units to millimeters
G92 E0
M82 ; use absolute distances for extrusion

SD3 w/ mods:
Glass bed with QU-BD heat pad upgrade, threadless ballscrew w/ 8mm smooth rod, spectra line belt replacement, lawsy MK5 extruder, Lawsy replacement carriage, E3D hotend, Ramps 1.4 w/ reprap discount controller, DRV8825 drivers, 12v 30A PS, Acrylic case, Overkill Y-idlers, Filament alarm, Extruder fan + more.

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Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

I took out the line that you showed and also lowered the bed temperature, and still no heating for the extruder.... Hum.... But when I manually trigger while the program is not running, it heats just fine...

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Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

This waits until the bed temp is all the way up until it starts.. what is your bed temp at?

SD3 w/ mods:
Glass bed with QU-BD heat pad upgrade, threadless ballscrew w/ 8mm smooth rod, spectra line belt replacement, lawsy MK5 extruder, Lawsy replacement carriage, E3D hotend, Ramps 1.4 w/ reprap discount controller, DRV8825 drivers, 12v 30A PS, Acrylic case, Overkill Y-idlers, Filament alarm, Extruder fan + more.

7 (edited by 2n2r5 2013-06-18 19:59:39)

Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

This will start heating your extruder then waiting for the bed and extruder


M107
M140 S85 ; <----- Add Sets bed Temp to 85
M190 S85 ; wait for bed temperature to be reached <----move this line***********
M104 S200 ; set temperature
G21; set mm units
G28 ;home all axis
G90; set absolute coordinates
G92 E0; reset extruder distance
G1 Z5 F300 ;move platform down 5mm
G1 X195 Y195 F3000 ; move to back right corner
M190 S85 ; wait for bed temperature to be reached <----move it to here*********
M109 S200; wait for extruder temp to be reached
G1 Z.3000 F200 ;move platform close to nozzle
;G1 E7; extrude anchor
G1 F3000; center print head
G92 E0; reset extrusion distance
G90 ; use absolute coordinates
G21 ; set units to millimeters
G92 E0
M82 ; use absolute distances for extrusion

SD3 w/ mods:
Glass bed with QU-BD heat pad upgrade, threadless ballscrew w/ 8mm smooth rod, spectra line belt replacement, lawsy MK5 extruder, Lawsy replacement carriage, E3D hotend, Ramps 1.4 w/ reprap discount controller, DRV8825 drivers, 12v 30A PS, Acrylic case, Overkill Y-idlers, Filament alarm, Extruder fan + more.

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Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

The default for the bed temp is set at 100c and it has worked wonderfully in the past.

9 (edited by sdf013 2013-06-18 20:08:46)

Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

I edited the G code, and so far, it is heating up the extruder on it's own now, but it over shot the 200 mark, by almost 13 degrees. what are your Pid settings?

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Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

you should autotune your PID. http://www.soliwiki.com/PID_tuning

SD3 w/ mods:
Glass bed with QU-BD heat pad upgrade, threadless ballscrew w/ 8mm smooth rod, spectra line belt replacement, lawsy MK5 extruder, Lawsy replacement carriage, E3D hotend, Ramps 1.4 w/ reprap discount controller, DRV8825 drivers, 12v 30A PS, Acrylic case, Overkill Y-idlers, Filament alarm, Extruder fan + more.

11 (edited by sdf013 2013-06-18 20:21:49)

Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

How do I make these G code adjustments stick, so that every time I slice something it prints out the same corrections that I just implemented?

12 (edited by 2n2r5 2013-06-18 20:23:02)

Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

Find this tab then add the PID settings that the autotune spit out at you.

http://2n2r5.com/pictures/printer/rh_eeprom_settings.jpg

SD3 w/ mods:
Glass bed with QU-BD heat pad upgrade, threadless ballscrew w/ 8mm smooth rod, spectra line belt replacement, lawsy MK5 extruder, Lawsy replacement carriage, E3D hotend, Ramps 1.4 w/ reprap discount controller, DRV8825 drivers, 12v 30A PS, Acrylic case, Overkill Y-idlers, Filament alarm, Extruder fan + more.

13 (edited by sdf013 2013-06-18 20:34:04)

Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

Okay, I was able to change the PID settings, now how do i tell slicer to keep the G-code corrections that we made earlier?
And thank you so much for your help!!!

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Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

you just have to save the printer on the printer tab of slic3r. and you are welcome.I'm glad it worked out for you.

SD3 w/ mods:
Glass bed with QU-BD heat pad upgrade, threadless ballscrew w/ 8mm smooth rod, spectra line belt replacement, lawsy MK5 extruder, Lawsy replacement carriage, E3D hotend, Ramps 1.4 w/ reprap discount controller, DRV8825 drivers, 12v 30A PS, Acrylic case, Overkill Y-idlers, Filament alarm, Extruder fan + more.

15 (edited by sdf013 2013-06-18 21:10:58)

Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

Even after the autotune, im still getting a 13 degree overshoot and the bed is still heating when the print starts... sad

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Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

That is my start gcode and please read it carefully!
some of the lines that have been labelled as duplicates, specifically here:

M190 S100 ; wait for bed temperature to be reached
M104 S200 ; set temperature
G21; set mm units
G28 ;home all axis
G90; set absolute coordinates
G92 E0; reset extruder distance
M104 S200; set extruder temp and start heating

Firstly, the extruder won't start to heat until the bed is up to temp. Since Solidoodle recently bastardised the bed heater to top out at 87, it will probably never reach 100 as set, so change the first line to:

M190 S85 ; wait for bed temperature to be reached

M104 sets a target temp for the extruder but won't wait for it to reach it before going to the next line of gcode. Assuming your previous print left the bed at the bottom, this command starts the extruder heating before the printer does its homing, potentially saving 10-15 seconds of heating time. This line could be deleted if you don't care about this.

The second M104 is an error, but not on my part. It should be M109, which sets a temp but waits for it to be reached before anything else happens.

Do not delete this line!

Doing so will cause the print to start without the extruder heated up. It should be instead:

M109 S200; set extruder temp and wait for temp to be reached

Find my thread where I first posted this gcode. It is explained nicely and even included a video of how it works.

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Re: Automatic extrusion heater not working

Thank you very much Lawsy! I will read over your G-code and have a crack at it. Ill post back and see if anything is resolved tomorrow. Thank you guys for the help. I really a noob at all this and I really want to understand the innerworkings of this machine.