Makerfront woes

To connect with ssh, the user is mks or root — at least the root password is makerbase and maybe also the mks password as well.

Edit: I have just confirmed that the password is makerbase for both the root and mks users.

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OK, I got SSH access. User “root”, password “makerbase”. That allowed me to install openvpn, and I now have access on my big work desktop at my desk - which has two 32-inch 4K monitors.

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Do you have Klipper experience before this?

(Just want to know how to help next…)

Nope. First I heard of Klipper was a week or so ago. They seem to have good docs on klipper3d.org.

Got it working a little more. The MCU wasn’t starting up because there are no thermistors. I don’t have spare thermistors laying around, so I faked it with a couple of 82K resistors. Installed each resistor on a Dupont header. Now fluidd reports that the extruder is 29.4C.

Now I know how to figure out what thermistors I have…just measure them with an ohmmeter. No sooner said than done - I have 122K at 69F. That’s a 100K thermistor.

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Yeah, they do have really good documentation!

It was the “cryptic names for each pin” that made me wonder whether you needed help mapping out what you would need to connect and how that would apply to the Klipper printer.cfg — but between their docs, the sample printer.cfg for your board, and the image I pasted hopefully you are on your path to success. :smiling_face:

But happy to be of assistance if it turns out you need any. :smiling_face:

Edit: posts crossed in the mail, sounds like you are well on the way. :heart:

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Hit a small snag. My motor cables are terminated in Dupont
headers. They’re not polarized. I have to figure out the pinout so I know I’m not plugging them in backwards.

Do you know how to locate the stepper coil wire pairs by checking for continuity? You should have continuity across a pair and not otherwise; normal steppers for 3d printers don’t have any center taps to worry about.

The pins on the control board are normally adjacent pairs of coil connections. If the coils are A and B, then something like 1A 2A 1B 2B where the letter designates the coil — and if the motor runs backwards, you can either adjust the direction in the klipper printer.cfg or simply swap polarity on one of the two pairs of wires. So as long as you wire it up so that the pairs don’t cross, you are set.

Snag dealt with. I think. There are two coils in each stepper, and if you plug it in backwards, the motor will run backwards.

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…and I verified the stepper pins withe “LED” method. Way cool.
HOWEVER,
Now, whenever I try to move a stepper, the MCU firmware dies.
“Unable to read tmc uart ‘stepper_z’ register IFCNT”.
This basically means that the MCU can’t talk to the 2209s.

Interestingly, it’s complaining about stepper z, even though I said “Home X” or “Home Y”.

Web searches show that common problems include:

  • Didn’t connect power to the motors Pretty sure that’s not it here. I don’t think this board even has a “power to the motors” connector. And the voltage readings at the current adjustment pots look valid.

  • Wrong MCU pins. The board schematic on github does seem to match the declarations in printer.cfg.

OK, I think I got it. For “uart mode” only ONE jumper is needed under each stepstick.

I put it together with only one Z driver driving both motors - just for now. Modified printer.cfg to suit. Now it complains
“quad_gantry_level z_positions needs exactly 1 items”.
Probably because the host processor told the MCU to "raise the gantry to z,z,z,z or z,z, and it only needs one z, because I’ve limited the Z to one motor - for now.

…Off to Google.

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Fixed the gantry issue. There was a section for that in printer.cfg - I just deleted it. Now it does move the motors. They are eerily quiet, especially the Z.

But doesn’t move them far. Just a bit, and then it complains about the stop sensors still being activated.

My end stop microswitches each terminate in a 3 pin Dupont header. Need to ohm it out, figure out exactly how it works.
Probably one common pin, one normally open, one normally closed.

I stuck a voltmeter on one of the three-pin headers: pin 1 is 5V, pin 2 0V, and pin 3 - 3.3V. On the big pins diagram, they are cryptically labelled “V”, “G”, and “S”. Judging from
the schematic, those mean Voltage, Ground, Signal.

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OK, the limit switches are now properly wired. It homes X properly. Y OTOH is making a horrible
grinding noise. A LOUD buzz.

I have verified that the printer.cfg is the same for both X & Y. Also, the one jumper under the stepstick is identical. ALSO, I swapped stepsticks X & Y, and the problem stayed with Y. At this
time, I’m suspecting a bad connection to one of Y’s coils. Bent pin? Female receptacle inside dupont shell pushed back?

Now something weird is going on. I say “home X”, and it moves DIAGONALLY to the X side. Y is also moving, and there is no grinding noise. Then "home Y’, and it moves to the proper Y home, WITH the terrible grinding noise.

Got it homing XY. The grinding noise is gone, as well as the strange diagonal motions. The fix was to change the printer type from “corexy” to “cartesian”. Z axis is still challenged. Only one stepper is moving. Right now I have both Z’s on one stepstick. Possibly time to separate them.

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Enabled the “two independent Z steppers” feature. It sort of almost works. Instead of going down to the bed, both motors smoothly raise the carriage up…and up…and up. OK, the direction is wrong. I reversed both connectors. Here’s where it gets weird. After reversing both connectors, one motor goes UP, the other goes DOWN.

Sounds like you are most of the way there… :smiling_face:

You can invert the dir pin for a stepper in configuration, instead of cable-swapping. You are now using independent stepper drivers for the two Z motors, right?

Just add a ! character to the dir_pin to invert its direction. For example, I have a printer with half of its six steppers inverted:

$ grep dir_pin printer.cfg
dir_pin: !PF0
dir_pin: !PE2
dir_pin: PB7
dir_pin: !PD5
dir_pin: PD0
dir_pin: PG11

All the steppers are now going in the correct direction. Homing is working properly. It heats the extruder. But it does not actually extrude. Also, I’d like to have the extruder fan come on when the extruder’s hot.

OK, now it’s extruding. I installed a Canakit wifi adapter, edited /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlan0.conf, and poof, we have wifi. Time to set up this printer and print a mount for the BL-touch.

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Did you get that bit configured?

Not yet. In printer.cfg, I have
[fan]
pin: PA2
… Just have to plug it into the right hole.

Trying an initial print now. It complains that the initial move is out of range. So I just changed the stepper config to reflect that fact that Y is extra long - 12 inches.

Also, the printer has a relay to drive the heated bed. With PID control, that relay is going to drive me nuts with the clacking. I suspect that this board has enough oomph to drive the bed heater directly, no relay.