I’m in the process of building my first Zen XY and I am fairly new to most of this stuff. I just got into 3D printing this year, and though I’ve been able to trouble shoot my switch to ramps 1.4 on my Anet A8, I can’t figure out what I’m missing here. I don’t doubt that it’s pretty simple but I just can’t find it.
The firmware will load to my ramps with no problem. I am trying to use a reprap discount smart controller (non-full graphics display style) and I can’t seem to get it to work. The display will light up and it will show two lines of faint blocks, but won’t show the start-up for the firmware. I’ve attempted to make changes to the config.h by enabling the display as well as making small changes here and there all to no avail. I’ve even tried switching the display plugs around a little as I know that was a problem with my full graphics display on my anet. Any advice on what to try next?
HA! Nice catch, though I swear it’s not upside down, it’s actually mirrored due to my camera.
Anyway… thanks for the thoughts. If you, or anyone else are willing, I think what would help would be to start with a fresh config.h and for me to learn what I need to change on it to get things to work properly. I’ve tinkered enough here are there that I think learning the correct way from scratch would help more than knowing how to fix the muddled mess I’ve made. Ideally I do want to use the SD card with it. I plan to have the table in my office at work and would like to keep a bunch of designs on a card rather than having to plug it in to my computer all the time.
FWIW I know it’s not the hardware. I have an MKS Base 1.4 with repetier on it that I had configured for a 3d printer using this controller so I plugged it all in and it worked fine.
And I got it working… I went back to the original config.h and realized that I’d forgotten to uncomment the full graphics smart controller. duh. Anyway, thanks for the willingness to help. I’m sure I’ll have more questions to add to this post within 15 minutes of starting to work on it again.
Knew there would be more questions. I am having problems with motion. I can’t get the X and Y to move independently and X wants to home in the opposite direction of Y. End stops are wired correctly, closed normal and Y axis changes motion when it hits the Y end stop. Motors are wired correctly as near as I can tell. I have the X motor as the one that has the end stops mounted to it. The plugs for both motors are matching each other in orientation. Firmware is the ramps 1.4 downloaded direct from the ZenXY page and has the BetaZenXY label on the bottom of the screen. I’ve verified belt routing several times to make sure I didn’t have something small messed up. I used both the SOGC video and Bill’s pictures.
The problems I’m having. When I ask it to move an axis independently both X and Y move together. When I auto home they move together until they hit the Y endstop and then change direction to head to the opposite corner. I didn’t change anything in the firmware other than matching the display that I’m using. Any thoughts on where to start to fix this?
Try flipping the X stepper plug over (makes it go the other way). CoreXY is not easy to diagnose as both steppers need to move. You have to kinda guess and check to get it correct.
If you move in X or Y, both motors should move. Moving only one motor moves in a 45 to the axes.
I would try the guess and check that Ryan suggested. Start with everything in the middle and see if you can get the movement of the magnet to be in X and Y in the right direction (positive away from the endstops). Once you have that, try M119 and making sure you’ve got the X and Y endstops in the right place, then you can try homing X, then Y.
Ok, not sure what happened but there are changes, though I don’t know if it’s any better. X and Y still only move together however they move in the same direction now. If I auto home, both run until it hits the Y switch, then the steppers just starts skipping and nothing moves and the X axis stays jammed in the middle. If I move everything back and I attempt to home X they run together again until it hits the Y stop and the motors start skipping again. Basically it looks identical to when I auto home, just without the bounce of the Y endstop. There has to be something stupid simple that I’m missing here. Hopefully there are some thoughts out there. I appreciate the help!
Don’t home it until you are pretty sure it is correct, or you could damage something.
Just move in X and Y and keep trying until you get it, Swap the plugs flip them over until X+ is away from the stops, and Y+ is as well in the other direction.
I’m going to bet that this is my problem. I’ve found a bad stepper driver or two in my stash and I wouldn’t be surprised if one of my motors isn’t working due to another bad driver since everything moves at a 45. I swapped some plugs like Ryan suggested and I’m guessing that’s why it changed direction but kept moving at a 45. Kiddo is finally asleep so going to hang with my wife on the deck and drink some wine, and revisit this once I can switch to bourbon and she is in bed. Fingers crossed. Thanks for all the help!
PS: Ryan, I’ve been hitting auto home and then holding the plug in my hand so if things don’t work correctly I can yank it before I damage anything. Thanks for the thought on that. It’s just like me to get it all working and then blow the entire thing up over something silly like that.
Everything seems to be working well now other than the last thing I can’t seem to figure out. When I create a file in sandify (awesome tool, by the way) I don’t know what gcode to use to tell my ZXY where to start, or how to find the coordinates of the starting point so I can enter them as a starting gcode, or how to get sandify to recognize home as the starting point. Any of these would be fine with me. Clearly I’m new to gcode so even directing me to a page that explains this stuff would be a help. Thanks for all the help!
Cool. I really need to get back into it. I really enjoyed working on it.
By default, it starts at the center. IIRC, the starting location is green and the end is red. If you want the pattern to come in from the outside, you reverse it (in the gcode dialog, I think). It won’t do something clever like roll around the outside until it gets to the starting location. Not automatically anyway. Then you can run a pattern that starts in the center and moves outward.
The sandify gcode is really easy, since there are no arcs. G1 X15 Y30 will move from wherever the machine is to 15,30 mm. That will be 15mm away from the x endstop and 30mm from the y endstop.
So if your machine is 500x500mm and you see the first command in the sandify file as G1 X500 Y240, after reversing it, you could add this to the beginning:
G1 X500 Y0 # first, drive along the edge in X
G1 X500 Y240 # sandify will take over and drive along the Y first.
I thought that would be harder :).
You’ll also want to force the speed yourself. Adding F300 will make it set the speed to 300mm/min (annoying units, but that’s 5mm/s). Marlin will save whatever speed you last used in a G1 command for all future G1 commands. So something like this:
G1 F300 # 5mm/s
Is a good idea at the beginning.
I wouldn’t put homing at the beginning of any files, just do it first when the machine turns on.
Yeah, for my 14 hour session I alternated starting in the middle going out and starting at home going in. That way I could just string a buuunch of files together to make it last through the entire workday. At least they don’t serve breakfast…
Thanks for the code info. It really helped me discover what my issue was. When I looked at the gcode I realized that the code was correct but the moves weren’t making sense. I did some measuring and realized that my steps per mm were off. I made the needed adjustments and all is working as it should. I’ll post in the makes thread once I’ve poured the soda and have some designs working. Thanks for all the help!
What were your fixes for those that had X and Y moving in the same direction? When I try to move in Y, it moves in Y, but when I try to move in X, it moves in Y. Anyone have some clarification of their ramps setups, such as which motor is hooked up to X on ramps? That at the very least would drop some variables. I feel like this shouldn’t be so hard to figure out methodically, but I’m struggling.
IIRC, the X should be the motor with the endstops on it.
With a corexy setup, both motors move for X or Y commnds. Are you sure they are both moving? In one direction, they should move together and in the other, they should be counter rotating. I can’t think of a way X amd Y woukd end up the same direction, unless the firmware isn’t right.
