Don't Buy junk stuff!

Some people just have to take the hard road… everytime. :grin:

I know, I know don’t buy junk belt. But it was so cheap! I got 10 meters for 4 bucks or something??? AliExpress before prices went up. I really tried to make the lowrider on the cheap! But what I found out is most of the junk I bought ended up getting thrown in a drawer to never to be used again or thrown away because it broke. You have no idea how many times I smacked myself saying, why didn’t I just buy the LR V1kit and get the right parts first!


Look how awesome that belt looks!
I had no idea the belt had done that. I was thinking, well odd a foot down it was cutting pretty well but when it got towards the end the cut looked not so great. However, I have been having every problem under the sun! I snapped off the y axis 3d printed part and printed new ones. I talk about it in another post somewhere on here… Z Axis Problems

I bought junk wires, I made junk wires (it’s so easy to make junk wires), i bought conduit (don’t do this! it wont fit!! Which the drawings and BOM tells you to not use conduit but I did it anyway because it was cheap and available. Where Stainless 1" pipe is $400+130 shipping!!! Until later i found out you can use DOM pipe which is affordable from Amazon.) Don’t enlarge the prints to make it fit Conduit. LOL it causes so many problems!!! Couplings… (post Z Zeros at 200mm) I have turned everyone of my couplings into slinkies. Good thing i bought them from Ali because i got them in a 10 pack. Now i have 10 slinkies, so much fun to be had. I later bought these solid couplings. Oh I love them so.

I also like my printed end caps. let me tell you, DOM steel is super sharp. I need a debur tool to fix it but now with the printed end caps who cares! it works so well. Talking about DOM pipe, it has waves in it… or maybe my super cheap 200 pack for $20 bearings are not concentric. not sure. All i know is my x axis doesn’t smoothly glade over the DOM instead its fast, slow, fast, slow. about every 8" or so. Not sure if Stainless does that?

Don’t buy those junk red endstops. I already had about 6 of them from a 3d printer that I made. I also used the Nema 17 42 ozin motors from that printer on the lowrider from 2007ish? (original Prusa 1, Oh that’s right the wedge!) They just skipped work every time I asked them to do a job. :laughing:


Also, on a post i talk about the many Ali logic Boards i bought… oh my! Good thing is that i bought one of them that V1 uses. I just needed the TMC2209 drivers. Becauses the thing I don’t want to do ever again is make my own firmware. Talk about breaking my spirit. :cry:

It’s time to get serious and stop wasting all this time i don’t have! I bought V1 belt! I would buy other things from V1 but I pretty much have all the good parts now. So it’s not a good idea to buy a kit at this point. Should have done that at the beginning of all this non-since. I got the Iwiss iws-2820m crimper that really works!!! I have to crimp like 4 times to get it to work but it works every time. I am trying to make wires that work! I have 20 awg black/red for my endstops. I am using the same endstops V1 uses.
I do not understand why the LR has only one Z max endstop and not two? Instead the last endstop is X max. What does X max do for you other than find the full X limits? Two Z max would make sure the gantry is level. or am i missing something?



Color coded (xblue,yblack,zyellow) and I own the V1 tool touch plate! The SS touch plate is not long enough. The x carriage about crushes my fingers when i am touching off the tool and it’s impossible to get the clamp back off unless i raise the z at least 60mm or more. Maybe the clamp is not supposed to go on the tool? I don’t know? I will also put a new connecter on the touch plate wire as the black molex connector just fall off the board. That’s why I used 3 pin JST connectors with the top wire missing.

I am using the V1 power supply. I didn’t know where to put that massive brick of a normal 3d printer power supply without it becoming dust filled. This connector part has saved my cookies like a million times! I am so glad i didn’t cut off the wire and wire it directly! When the 200mm, hey lets plunge the gantry into the table, lift the y axis off the table and snap the bit into tiny fragments happens. I can solve this by unplugging it here!!! YAY
I am almost done with my Motor wires. I am keeping the motor wire as is. but i am pulling off the molex connectors for a JST SM plug. If I need to replace the motors for whatever reason or move them around. It will be easy to do. All motors are wired exactly the same! The extinction cables I made are not wired the same. The two yellow Z axis are flipped. This is because I want the gantry at the front of the table vs back. I want to be able to replace bits without having to walk around to the hardest to get to place on my table.

All that is left is to put the new belts on and put it back together. Oh and make it run well.
This has been a frustrating but super fun and most of all the learning curve was steep but totally worth it. But I could have made this table for way less money if I bought V1 at the beginning. well other than that darn SS pipe!
You guys have helped me so much, thank you!!!

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First, the DualLR firmware does use xmax as Z 2 max endstop. Z1 max is Zmax and Zmin is for use with a touch plate and G38.

Second. Whew! I can honestly say no one wants you to have to go through all of that. Hopefully you learned a lot. Ryan does have very reasonable prices, and gets bulk discounts. So if you find it cheaper, it is important to ask why. But really, I am just happy you’re making progress.

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The saying is “The cost of cheap parts is the cost of the cheap parts, plus the cost of the “expensive” parts to replace them when they fail, plus the time to diagnose and R&R them.”

That belt is :crazy_face: :exploding_head:.

I work for a company that sells structural steel. We don’t sell stainless, but 1" DOM (On which my bearings are perfectly fine) isn’t expensive at all, provided that you don’t mind it coming in 20’ lengths. I just ran a file around the edges of my DOM tubes to deburr them.

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LOL i totally didn’t understand the endstop Xmax and forums about endstops!!! haha Xmax has been relabeled to be Zmax#2 and Zmax as Zmax#1.
I would say a lot of my problems have been me not understanding. Which is fine. Got to learn somewhere, right?

So, I wrote this because I know a bunch of people like myself. A bunch of people that have no idea what they are getting into. That think all 3d printers and CNC’s are basically a couple rails attached to a Arduino. In theory they are right but in practice they are not right at all. There is so much design and thought that goes into making a machine like this.

What an awesome quote! It’s not just that they are cheap. Many items are not the correct spec. for what you are using them for. IE. 42ozin motor vs 76ozin. A tiny 3d printer doesn’t need the torque. Also, older motors do not have the quality control of the new junk motors.
However, my Ali belt was totally junk!!! This quote totally applies!!!

To tell you the truth. When I started this project I wasn’t sure if I wanted to commit to the LR2. I was looking at the MPCNC, i was looking at the workbee, ox, and several others. I didn’t really want to drop the cash needed to buy any of them. My thought was to slowly buy stuff and turn it into one of these. Or worse make my own design! Because when you’re ignorant you might think about just making something better! :joy:

However, the major advantage of the LR2 and MPCNC is I own a Prusa i3. The second major advantage is both of these machines are large enough to do a real project! The third is people that own one of these machines are doing the same things as someone that owns a Shapeoko or similar.

I have since committed all the way to the LR2! I think this machine rocks even with my interesting path to get there.
Once I am done Diagnosing and R&R the machine. I might be of some help??? By trade I am a SW designer not an Engineer. Though I like to think that I have some of the traits. :grin:

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Dan do you have a link?
I know that postal serves do not like shipping industrial goods like this to residential areas. Many require a Dock.
V1 has a link in their BOM to Amazon that sells it in 8’ lengths. (hopefully the link is not dead???) I would have liked 10’. less calculations on how to cut the two pipes into the correct sizes for the LR2. 20’ is also awesome… anyone wanting to make a 20’ LR2 table? :innocent:

Sounds like you’re having fun and have a very good sense of humor.

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Oh I do have a good sense of humor.
Everyone should!
I know it is very hard to see humor when everything is not working. For me that breaking point is coding. I originally bought the SKR 1.3 with TMC 5160 drivers (we all know and love Teaching Tech!)((secretly, I also bought the SKR Pro and GTR…at the time, Ali was so cheap!) . I wanted those AMPs for some serious (old) Nema 23 steppers! (That’s a side story) But there wasn’t any easy firmware.bin file for that setup.

I installed Arduino but found out i can’t compile. Then I installed Atom but PlatformIO was no long installable. :frowning: Then I installed VScode and PlatformIO but it didn’t compile vanilla marlin code. I followed the install directions to the T! :dizzy_face: Who knows it could be that PC so i installed it on 2 other windows PC’s. nope didn’t work! Again, Jeffeb3 gave me superhero help but I couldn’t get it to install.
Then I did it! i converted one of my PC’s into Ubuntu!!! don don donnnn
Very long story short I got it to compile vanilla code after 3 weeks of sudos. :joy:

Then something wonderful happened but dreadful for compilers! Jeffeb3 updated his code and updated his code and updated his code!

Seeing a pattern happening. :open_mouth: I decided to buy 2209 drivers and forget about coding. I should of saw that coming!

That one decision to go with the logic board and drivers V1 uses. Made it so that I could start cutting vs dreaming about a working CNC. Now I am Troubleshooting vs lost in the Building phase. Come to find out the logic board is almost more important than getting the machine ironed out.
Light Bulb! (gru) Does that mean Ryan and Jeffeb3 plus many on the forums spend all or a lot of their time working on Archim’s, rambo’s, SKR Pro’s as well as all the people like myself that bought SKR 1.3 or 1.4, nasty clone Milkshakes :grin:, Duet 2 and whatever boards cross the Forums? Those guys really are superheros!
Again Thank you all for all the help and dealing with frustrated people like myself.

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Sounds like me, Chist!

Not so much cheap (although that is exactly how I shop!!) but also uneducated. I now have an Arduino setup, a Ramps board/LCD screen setup, and ended up with the SKR1.3 (not PRO! dammit I’m not buying another board!) And then the drivers… started w/ some dinky ones from the Arduino setup (forget what brand) the went to some I saw in Teaching Tech 8825’s (which was old info, but seemed most comprehensive)(… and then realized I really needed the TMC2208… but oh crap, should I have gotten the 2209’s???) Huge difference BTW… motors are way cooler and quite quiet! Only Z movement is pretty much the same loudness, but cooler motor temperature. I printed and bought all I needed for doing endstops, only to get frustrated, breaking printed parts and trying to get the code to work, only to realize I don’t need them AT ALL!! Everything is relative to the piece your are working. Lot’s of duhs and learning curves here, but fun all the same. And “very satisfying” as Teaching Tech dude says all the time. LOL - I also got the Z touch plate thing to work and want to modify the Touch Screen to add buttons for it… joy…

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so… "sudo su - " and become root, so you don’t have to preface every command with “sudo”

:wink: I’m not a programmer, but a UNIX/LINUX admin… if we could put our heads together… DANGER! :slight_smile:

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:man_facepalming:

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lol. I work as a *nix admin. I usually just start with “sudo bash” and work from there. (Sometimes csh for some very specifc things that work better.)

I’m working from a MKS board on my MPCNC, and a crappy RAMPS 1.4 on my ZenXY. I did up the firmware to run the MPCNC on a Duet 2, which is actually quite simple if you know your way around RepRap Firmware, and the Duet in particular. That’s what my 3D printer is running, so I had a head start.

I managed to compile Marlin for the RAMPS/Mega2560 in the Arduino IDE. I gave up on this stuff in Windows yonks ago. My laptop runs Mint/Debian. Enough like Ubuntu to not matter.

I tend to overestimate what people can do for themselves, but there is real value in a project like this in being able to grab a board with pre-compiled firmware, and a clear support line when you want to change stuff from default.

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We’re you trained as a *nix admin? There are very specific and demonstrable reasons not to do that. In fact, many shops explicitly lock out all the shells from sudo to prevent it. Or were you contrasting your profession with your home/hobby? :grin:

Oh yeah, I’d have got in trouble at school for that, though school was 30 years ago.

Generally though, if I need root access for a bunch of things in succession, it’s during initial set-up and not when the system is live.

On my laptop, it’s easy enough to just log in as root, because root has a valid password. There are valid and demonstrable reasons not to do that, too.

I do always limit what I do with root access regardless,

I’ve had some troubles with things bought from AliExpress recently with manufacturing tolerances. In particular parts for my Ender (nozzles, extruder etc)

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As long as you don’t curl http://whatcouldgowrong.org/install | sudo bash. This drives me crazy setting this trend.

LOL!!!
Dennis those are my same words! I’m not buying another board!!! Then the SKR Pro pops up for like $29 bucks on Ali and I think… well maybe. NO I CAN’T DO IT. check out, bought! Time to wait 3 months and forget I ever bought it.

Oh, If I had the ambitions to make a video on youtube that looked 1/8 as professional as Teaching Tech’s videos. Plus only using into from the V1 site. That video would be so helpful to everyone making LR2’s!!!

I would say most of us found out about LR2 from youtube. Probably from Teaching Tech’s videos. It looks so easy! He walks you down the steps like your baking a cake. Then you do it yourself and this cake is not going as advertised! :joy:

“And then I realized I really needed…”

You know I had been on the V1 site many times before I decided to start building. Looking at the BOM, looking at the drawings, and getting an idea how much this would really cost.

Then I whispering to myself :thinking:, If you start this project, make sure to do it right! Follow Teaching Tech to the T! Fail. :face_with_head_bandage:
LOLOLOL

Truthfully, I couldn’t tell you what the differences between some of these TMC drivers are. They give you a comparison chart and all the check marks are the same. This one can StelthChop, I’m game!

I really want my endstops to work because of Tool changing and saving my machine from potential fails. Twice now, my machine dropped a z axis real quick and I pulled the plug before I broke the tool. But now I am in deep poo because that relative location has been forgotten or lost. Trying to find the starting location is impossible. I have high hopes that Endstops can save the day.

Oh that would be so Epic! To have a button that I can hit and the machine just lowers until it hits the tool. OH dreams!
I connect to RH, load a file and then go straight to the command line. G92 x0y0z0. I am so freaked out that if i touch any of the axis’s that Z will try to Zero which is under my table! I relatively move everything to where I am going to cut and G92 again, then g38.2 z0. I am getting a 30% chance that the machine will lower. I might have to restart RH 2-3 times until it lowers. Then touch off. Beautiful! :heart_eyes:
G92 again!!!
Raise the z about 100mm to get the touch claw off. Lower it back down plus about 1mm. G92 AGAIN! Load the file AGAIN, G92 AGAINAAIN!
Start print. Satisfied! :sunglasses:

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I totally get to take credit for the Teaching Tech video… I’m the patron he mentions at the start! :slight_smile:

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Hey… so instead of the STOPS, I think the answer is a touch (probe) plate for Z. So long as you don’t reset your controller, then it should remember your initial X0 and Y0. Z will have to get re-probed after a tool change, which you re-Zero off the plate, on the project. Just don’t reset x and y! (which remind me, I’ll have to now change that in my own setup, because I DO reset those on a Z probe! - so thanks for making me think about it!) The the Z probe is WAY easier than stops. Plus, I don’t have to worry about putting my project in the same exact position for every project. Stops really don’t make sense, IMO. I will be dealing with wood mostly, probably, and each piece is different size, thickness, etc… And I can cut vinyl now, too! And draw with a pen. And embossing/grooving. And… well you get the idea!

Yes - more videos would be nice. And more details. And updated ones. And more more more! How about a WIKI?? So we can all have an organized living doc repository and instructions that can be adapted and updated…

I can definitely tell the difference in the two drivers: 8825 and TMC2208. The TMC2208 is definitely quieter and my motors don’t get hot at all! Haven’t done a LONG project to see about that under a long load, but huge difference. I’ll always go with those, now… or better ones when they come.

As far as making professional videos… well… I keep trying to convince my kids to start making videos so they can edit my videos (if I do them) some day! They still aren’t biting, but I’ll keep fishing! :wink: They already do great graphics and stuff, so it’s just a matter of time.

Geoffrey, I am so glad those TT videos are out there!!! It’s like a blessing and a curse at the same time. When I look up LowRider 2 CNC I get TT videos first, then I get lots of people super stoked about their machines and want to show them off. Some people are super happy they just got it to work, others have modified the crud out of it and others still have turned it into a work of art!
However, when I was wanting to make a LR2. All of these test drive videos do not help me out, except for making me really really wanting one!!!

But, TT videos are the short and sweet recipe into video form. You watch his videos and everyone on earth will have a LR2! Even If they all have the wrong electronics. That is an easy fix. But at least he bought the kit! So again, Thank you Geoffrey for getting the word out there and TT to make the videos in the first place.

Dennis,
First off, i own the V1 touch Probe. I like it alot!!! G38.2 z0, woot woot!!! I do re-Z after a tool change, it’s so helpful.
WOW your machine can do so much!!! Mine has done MDF, LDF?, and flooring. That 14mm water proof flooring is great stuff for the LR2 sides. I want to do Aluminum for the carriage. I need more tool bit room. my first 3/4" pine board with my 1/8" bit did not stick out more than 7mm from under the carriage.

The problem is the X/Y not the Z.
How? I so want to know how to do this, i will do it every time!!!

When the LR is about to plunge to its death or when it doesn’t round the corner correctly and lost a few steps. The machine is no longer good to go! what do you do?
I only know of two options:

  1. I can hit Pause print or Kill Print and then I have to wait until it completed some amount of the Gcode before it stops. (let’s say 4 more lines of gcode, which to a CNC is 4 more laps around the whole machine). By this time my work piece is destroyed. :sob: And i have to start over.
  2. Or I can yank the cord! The whole machine stops dead in its tracks. At this point in time my work piece may be good. I just need to start the instructions over again. But where? (LOL i know where!!! :rofl: but really where!!! :astonished:) I can spend 30mins trying to get my X/Y realigned to the best of my ability and its just not.

To my knowledge when i pull the plug, it auto resets my X/Y to the current location on the machine. if I hit Kill Print and start over, it will go back to where X/Y was +/- steps lost. Also with a sweet tilt in my Z… but that is being addressed in a different forum. :sunglasses:

Oh fun problems!

:joy:(WIKI!) WHO reads anymore??? We are all youtube junkies! I know for a fact that when Cell phones went “smart” I forgot how to spell. Wait… did i ever know how to spell???
All the hopes and dreams of Someday! Keep :fishing_pole_and_fish: Friend!

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