Topic: Park, home, and Y axis skip problems after E3D install
Splitting this off from another thread since it was getting off topic there.
Before installing my E3D, I was having only one problem with my SD3: filament failing to feed and extrude. But the print head and bed movement, heating, etc. were all working pretty much perfectly. No changes were made during the E3D install except those documented here: http://www.soliwiki.com/E3D_extruder
Since the installation, my filament feed and extrude problems are completely gone (hooray!) but I have two or three new sets of problems. Some of these (bed heating much more slowly and LED flickering) may indicate I need to replace the power supply. Maybe the E3D's heating core draws enough more power to tip the barely-adequate stock SD3 power supply over the line. (And no one noticed before me, because no one ever did the E3D who hadn't already happened to do the power supply upgrade for other reasons? If so, there's another set of steps to add to my E3D install instructions.)
The other problems are probably not related to the power supply issue (though I suppose they could be!) and are far more concerning, since they're stopping me from printing. (And my wife's getting a little impatient of the "oh, I just need to do one more upgrade and then I'll be able to print!" line, so I really hope it's not going to be another cascade of rebuilds.)
The Problems
When I try to start a job, one of the first things in the standard gcode is G28 (home all axes). Every time this command executes, no matter where the print head is just before this, and no matter what Repetier-Host thinks about where the print head is, whether these agree or not, the print head moves to the back right corner (as it should) and then keeps trying to move farther back and farther to the right. This makes a terrible grinding noise, but apart from the likely wearing-out this is doing to some motors or belts or something, it doesn't cause any obvious, immediate problems. The print job then begins as it should.
Later, during the print, there'll be a moment where there's a fraction of a second of the same kind of grinding sound, even though the print head is nowhere near the corner. I'm describing it as the same kind of grinding sound, but it might not be that similar; it's hard to match it up from memory when it's just a split-second that comes without warning. And when this happens, the print skips back on the Y axis -- that layer starts printing back farther on the print bed, between 1.5mm and 10mm. That has happened every one of the six tries I've made at printing.
What's Changed?
Let me emphasize again that I made no changes to anything about belts, motors, mounting, etc. The belts all still seem tight as they were before, and little surprise since I never even touched them. The differences in my system since last week (when none of this ever happened) are exactly the E3D installation. So that means:
The E3D is there, and hangs down a little farther, and weighs a bit more, and maybe draws a bit more power
The firmware was reloaded, with the changes to the thermistor type and max temperature
And that's it.
No changes in where the wires mount (I reused some old connectors from my first failed Solidoodle hot-end, so they still connect to the same place in the same way -- though for now, I still have the whole extra red wire from the heating block coiled up and looking ungainly, rather than trimmed, because once I cut it I can't reattach it when one of you tells me I should have wired it a different way in the first place).
No changes in the wiring for the E3D's active cooling fan. I had already run wires from a separate 12V power supply (the one I also use to power the fans that cool my circuit board) out to the extruder, to power the fan that IanJohnson had recommended to cool the PEEK. So those are now supplying the E3D fan.
The big glaring question mark for me, but which no one else seems to want to think about, is whether the firmware I downloaded (http://www.soliwiki.com/E3D_extruder#Do … ource_code) is the same as what was loaded previously on my Solidoodle. Maybe no one wants to consider that is because it's ridiculous, the repository has to be the same version that was on my printer. But maybe it's not the same, and all bets are off.
Y axis skipping
Y axis skips are often caused by overheating on the circuit board, but that's never been the case for me. And I have a pair of 40mm fans cooling the circuit board any time the SD3 is plugged in (they're on their own power supply as mentioned above).
No, the filament isn't binding up.
Note that Y axis skipping is the very first problem I fought with, when my SD3 was new out of the box, and kept me from getting my first successful print for more than a month. Ultimately, setting a Z lift in Slic3r settings was the only thing that fixed it. No one ever found a really successful explanation for the cause.
Endstops
I've had some confusing and seemingly contradictory comments made about what the various firmware settings mean about the endstops, but I can confirm that I've tested that the endstops appear to work. That is:
I've visibly inspected them and nothing is jammed into them, there's plenty of gap in them, etc.
I've bent them a bit farther out just to be sure.
If I hold one in with a pencil while trying to use RH's manual controls to move or home, the head refuses to move.
Printer Shape and Settings
I didn't take a picture of my RH Printer Settings before the E3D install, but I did not knowingly change any of them, and it seems a bit hard to believe they would have changed some magical way while doing this. However, one thing that was noticed is, on Printer Shape, the HomeX and HomeY were set to Min instead of Max. My best guess is that this has been wrong all along and hasn't actually affected anything.
Ian has suggested I need to change either the firmware or RH so they're in synch, but I'm a little confused about what are the right settings. Looks like some changes should have been part of the E3D instructions all this time (and I'm working on adding them, once I figure out what they are), but it's unclear to me if that's just the Z axis size changing from 200 to 194 due to the extra overhead, or if there's more to it
Here's my RH printer settings as of this morning:
Trying to follow Ian's directions in chat, I have changed it thus:
Here's what's in the Configuration.h I used:
#if SOLIDOODLE_VERSION == 3
#define X_MAX_POS 209
#define X_MIN_POS 0
#define Y_MAX_POS 200
#define Y_MIN_POS 0
#define Z_MAX_POS 200
#define Z_MIN_POS 0
// The position of the homing switches
#define MANUAL_HOME_POSITIONS // If defined, MANUAL_*_HOME_POS below will be used
//#define BED_CENTER_AT_0_0 // If defined, the center of the bed is at (X=0, Y=0)
//Manual homing switch locations:
#define MANUAL_X_HOME_POS 209
#define MANUAL_Y_HOME_POS 200
#define MANUAL_Z_HOME_POS 0If I can get clear about what all these settings should be, I'll add them to the E3D instructions appropriately. I was told they should all match, but unsure which should change, or even which correspond to which.
What's Wrong?
First, does the Y axis skipping have anything to do with the way RH keeps grinding the gears during that initial G28 command to home all axes, or are these unrelated problems?
What settings do I need in Printer Shape, Printer Settings, and firmware?
And what to try next for the Y axis skipping?
