1 Topic by COASTER19 (edited by COASTER19 2014-08-15 02:53:17)

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Topic: Is such a firmware change possible?

So I've had a wonderful experience with a cheap chinese RAMPS 1.4 board (sarcasm).

Upon first examination, before applying power, the leads were not clipped from all of the components properly, some bending to create bridges which would certainly have caused a failure.  I clipped them off, and proceeded to wire everything up.  All appeared to work after a dumb mistake on my part with not connecting part of my power supply.  And then I tried a real print.  The extruder ONLY moves forward.  No messing with the firmware could change that.  I looked it up and some printrboards had a similar problem when there was a bridge between 2 of the stepper pins.  So it's another hardware problem.  Great.

Here's where the firmware part comes in:
So here is my "I'm-cheap-franken-solution" type idea:  Use the firmware to switch the E0 motor commands to the (hopefully) working E1 stepper output, since I have no dual-extruder plans in the near future.  What would this involve?  Can I keep my fan output since defaulting to a "second extruder" would still takes up a heater output for the non-existant first extruder?  Should I give up and go back to my Sanguinololu until I can buy a quality RAMPS?  This has been quite the adventure so far... Thanks for any input or suggestions!

2 Reply by grob

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Re: Is such a firmware change possible?

I've never tried it, but from browsing through some of the config pages in the firmware the other day I think you could just edit pins.h to swap all the stepper driver pin assignments for extruder 0 with extruder 1... Don't see what could possibly go wrong... smile

SD3. Mk2b + glass, heated enclosure, GT2 belts, direct drive y shaft, linear bearings, bowden-feed E3D v5 w/ 0.9° stepper
Smoothieboard via Octoprint on RPi

3 Reply by COASTER19

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Re: Is such a firmware change possible?

grob wrote:

I've never tried it, but from browsing through some of the config pages in the firmware the other day I think you could just edit pins.h to swap all the stepper driver pin assignments for extruder 0 with extruder 1... Don't see what could possibly go wrong... smile

That was my first thought too, but I couldn't seem to find anything easily identifiable as the ones needing changing...  and I don't like to mess around with that unless I know with a bit of certainty that I won't start a fire from a bad edit!  But I have a fire extinguisher right here, so I'm up for suggestions.  The board was 15 bucks and the arduino another 15.  The most valuable parts to me are the stepper drivers, since I pulled them from my Sanguinololu.

4 Reply by adrian

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Re: Is such a firmware change possible?

pins.h ; just search for " == 32 " and then edit as necessary in the subsequent lines.

5 Reply by COASTER19

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Re: Is such a firmware change possible?

adrian wrote:

pins.h ; just search for " == 32 " and then edit as necessary in the subsequent lines.

And that worked!  Thanks adrian!