Woo Hoo!! New Toy!! Stratasys Dimension 3DP

This definitely says a mouthful!!! I have pretty much decided to abandon the Duet and make the switch to the Smoothieboard. Regardless of what I have currently invested, it's all worthless unless I get it to work. After numerous more hours of reading, I have found that all of the biggest challenges I mapped out earlier in this thread about getting the Duet operating are all VERY simple with the Smoothieboard. I have already found solutions to all of them if I go for the Smoothieboard. There are tons of other smaller issues to deal with, but the ones that have been weighing on me are a non issue if I make the change. I guess I've thrown away money on worse things..... not much worse mind you..... it is kind of a high price to pay hold a Duet in your hand and look at it

 

So the resistance across the terminals = 36 ohms, provided I measured it correctly in the 45 seconds I spent on it before I had to run out the door. If I am doing the math correctly, It works out to about 16 watts @24v, and about 400 watts at 120v. So I'm guessing they have to be 120v????

Here is what it looks like, It's about 8 inches long overall:

 

Sounds reasonable, 16w is too small to heat a chamber, and it makes sense to use AC for the heaters since you can use a smaller DC supply for the rest of the components. AC heaters are not common in printers, but they are used by some for the heated bed, so the setup has already been worked out. Search the RepRap forums for zero crossing SCRs and I think they will explain how to hook them up.

The excess Duet might be needed by someone starting a new build. You should be able to recover most of your money.

 

Yikes!! These look to be on the pricey side! I had planned (possibly foolishly so) to trigger a DC input 120v switching SSR from the bed heater mofset on the board... Will this not work, or will it work and just not give reasonable results??

 

There is definitely some sound advice in this. I am *sorta* putting the cart before the horse.....
I just don't have a lot if interest in putting a ton of time and more money into getting it almost going, then find out What I was planning with the chamber heat isn't possible the way I configure things. I don't think I will be able to print (at least not well- there is no heated bed) without the chamber heated up, although I could probably manually control the heat elements to get some prints off, but it would be of little benefit since once I have it moving and print ready, the heat would be next in line.

My current basic plan:

1) Keep Duet, and get the axis moving on their own using the under powered on board drivers. This would be just for initial testing before I go to external drivers. I think it would be best to get it moving so I can make sure the board and axis do what I expect before I make drastic changes to the pin mapping on the board - just to make troubleshooting easier. I have figured out how to re define the pins to be able to run external steppers.

2) Get endstops working properly. At this point the machine should move and home itself.

3) Get all the fans that are currently there hooked up and working.

4) Get chamber heat and it's thermocouple or thermistor working. At this point I should only need to add an extruder and hot end to be able to do basic print functions.

Those are the things I can work on now without spending a bunch of cash. After that it is time to add the extruder(s) and external steppers, but that will require a bit of cash outlay that I'm not going to put out there until I'm more confident this is going to work.

Whether I do the steppers next or the extruder I will decide later. Technically, I could add the extruder next and start test printing, but I don't have any interest in dialing it in and then changing the drivers and having to fine tune things again. On the other hand, it sorta makes sense to put the extruder on first, so at least I have something that can print, I would just have to limit the power at the steppers to keep from frying them. I can't fry the current steppers because when I go to the external ones I am going to reassign the other extruders to the on board steppers.

UUUGGGHHHH.... overwhelming!!!!!

 

After tons of research and hunting around I have finally identified all of the connectors and terminals I need to buy to interface with the factory wiring. On most of the connections I will just remove the terminals from the existing connector housings and crimp new terminals onto wires that will reach to where I need them to go. All of the existing wires that go to the steppers, endstops, fans, etc. had been cut about a foot from the original control board. I was initially just going to splice extensions onto them, but replacing them properly will make a much neater installation, and should make troubleshooting and such much easier. I *think* I either have, or have on order, everything I will need to make the axis move, endstops work, and fans run. I just placed the Digikey order for the connectors and terminals today, so they probably won't be here in time for me to do anything until I get back from vacation.

 

I had started tracing and labeling the cut wires, but once I realized how much cleaner it would be to do it properly it was a no brainer. The terminals and connectors are due in from Digikey tomorrow, but I won't have any time before vacation to mess with it. I'm pretty excited to get this thing moving under it's own power.

 

The connectors and such have arrived from Digikey, and I'm back from vacation, so wiring can begin. It will probably take me a couple weeks to get it moving on it's own with the limited amount of time I have to dedicate to it, but I'm excited I can finally do something other than read and research.

 

Uggghhh!! Unfortunately no..... I did manage to get all of the terminals replaced for the axis steppers, and got them back into the original connectors, and ran those wires into the area where the control board will be mounted. I've hit a little snag with the existing power supplies I had figured I could use, so the next step is to figure out either what it takes to make them work, or find replacements. There are 3 existing power supplies. One is 24v - 10a I'm assuming was used solely to power the inductive loads (fans) to isolate noise from feeding into the control power. One is a small pc-ish power supply that I'm assuming was used solely to power the hard drive and other pc type stuff (ethernet card etc) that used to be there. The third was the one I was assuming was used to power everything else. It appears to be a 120v dc, 24v dc, and 12v dc supply, but it's obvious I don't know what it really is... The 120v dc would have been for the chamber heaters, and I was figuring the 24v dc was to power the control. I put line voltage into it and only get 36v dc from what is labeled 120v, and nothing out of the 24 and 12v outputs (I assumed they were outputs, but obviously something is awry). I wouldn't have thought it would be externally regulated, but I'm not that electrically advanced. I will post a picture of it later on, maybe someone will have some insight to help me out.

 

I'm not sure what type of power supplies you are using or how you were testing them, but some more advanced power supplies (like the ones used in PCs) won't drive out full voltage/current without being under load. In fact, some supplies can't properly regulate their output voltages unless they see at least 10-20% of their rated output load.

 

Good point, I forgot about that. I guess I could hook it up to the heaters and see what happens.

 

Hey there cannon man. Registered on this site specifically for this thread. I've got a service manual for your machine that would be of help. I've done a lot of research into the exact thing you are trying to do, and have ordered parts for the build. I'd love to help if you'd be interested. My machine has a bad LCD front control panel. Would you be willing to part with yours?

-d

 

Hi Drumguy! Its cool that you have done some research, I have only come across some limited information on the retrofit process. I would be willing to part with the LCD screen, but not just yet.... but I have been known to change my mind on occasion . Are you using your machine as built, or are you retrofitting also?

 

Right now I'm investigating options on how to best proceed with my machine. As I said, mine has a bad LCD panel, which means the printer won't boot at all. If I could get a panel, I'm sure I'd be up and running using hacked filament cartridges. In the meantime, I'm planning on going open source in a minimalist fashion. Heated chamber, and both extruders. Eventually I'll work in two more extruder motors to help feed the filament from the bottom, but to do that you need a controller capable of 4 extruder motors, as the motors will spin at different rates.

As for electronics, I've driven a nema23 z axis in parallel with a ramps board with pololu drivers, so I think I should be able to drive these fine. My setup will be something like :

Use built in 24v and 12v supply

Ramps 1.4 with outputs for extruder 1, 2, and heated chamber, setup for dual extrusion.

3 120VAC solid state relays. One for each extruder, and one for the chamber

Swap the thermocouples for thermistors

Wire the steppers in a bipolar series combo

Use the built in EOT sensors as end stops

Possibly use the built in z probe for auto leveling

Use two arduino pro minis on the extruder motors to interpret the step signals to the extruder and convert them into encoed brushless do motor signals.

Hook up an LCD smart controller to allow standalone printing.

And that's about it! As I said, I'd be very interested in giving your LCD panel a go. I'd obviously pay whatever for it, or at least send you a big box of filament

 

If I get a chance in the next week or so, I will pull the machine out from it's hiding spot so I can take a look at it and decide if I will be using the lcd panel or not. I can't imagine why a bad one would keep the machine from booting though - unless it is prompting for some type of correction needed or an operator input of some type, but who knows.

I had *planned* on using the onboard power supplies as well, but I'm not getting any output from the 120v one. I would be interested to know if yours outputs anything without any type of load on it.

I'm not sure of the configuration of your machine, but on mine, the lower drives next to the filament cartridges appear to only engage while loading the filament until it reaches the extruder, then they are spring returned out of the way.

 

I'll check my 120v supply. I know the 120vac supply is working because the chamber does heat up, and I get 120vac at the chamber heaters. I'll check the 120vdc one, but I doubt it will be active as the head never heats up.

As for the LCD, it is one of the first things that the printer checks for when it is starting up, and for good reason, the printer isn't good for much if you don't have a working control panel to operate it on. I get an error that the onboard computer is pinging the LCD panel for a certain checksum, and it gets fffffffffff in return, aka no communication. Then the printer goes into shutdown mode before it does anything else.

Let me know if you get a chance to think about that LCD panel, either way I'd love to help you out with your quest to retrofit it with open source components, as if the LCD panel doesn't fix mine, that is the route I'm going.

Thanks

-d

 

Wait - The Heaters are 120VAC??? That is what I had initially thought until I saw there was a 120VDC power supply, so I assumed that was to run the heaters. The 120VDC is for the head??