Category: Making Stuff

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Prusa Mk3s Pi3 control panel intergration.

As i will be adding a Pi3 and octopi to manage and control my machine i was trawling through Thingiverse i spotted this little beauty. Thought would save me space and can integrate with the Prusa machine i also have 3.5 TFT adafuit display kicking around my bedroom.

Got this remixed design from FlyByTom this version V7 with no end cap. i went with this design will completely integrate into the panel this will mean can plug into the pi3 for USB and network connections when. I will be using the jumper pins from the back of the TFT screen to the Rambo board this will power the pi and integrate it into the printer. The link for the design can be found here

Downloaded and jumped into Prusa Slicer followed the instructions and put it on the plate at an angle so it will fit.

ready to print.

i am going to print in PETG when i do the final print but for a test print i have some black PLA kicking around the cave so will do a test run. Then print in petg later as I have 3 rolls kicking around that i have been meaning to print with but that will be a final print later.

The test Print and fit:

6hrs it printed in came out not half bad there was tiny amount of lifting in one corner

The wiring of the PI3 into the Prusa Rambo board. This is going to be slightly different from the guide on Prusa’s web site as will be wiring from the front of the PCB. found someone who makes cables but unfortunately, they don’t ship to the UK so going to have to make one my self.

There are six wires need to link the machine to the pi bank of 4 and 2 are used. so from the Rambo PCB, you will use the following

Pins used on the Rambo board.
Connections like so from the Rambo PCB

so to make this as i had no 7 pin connecors i glued a 6 x2 connector and a 2 pin connector together to make it a 7 pin connector. used some breadboard to hold it all together whilst the super glue set.

nicely glued up. ready to solder the other end.
Rambo connector cable i made for linking to the pi3 plugin and play.

Now a direct link would be too easy as the TFT screen uses all 40 pins in connection there is a break out header shown in PCB diagram below but too tight to attach connector did try.

failed attempt as heads too long.
JP1 is the brake out connector. only interested in the first 16 pins.
pins used in the PCB pinout diagram.

as the pin headers are too big so going to have to solder to the pi 3 directly so ignore above brake out wiring will be same pin numbers on the back of the PCB board going to flux and add solder to the 6 pads on pins 4,6,8 and pins 15, 16. I ran out of time to tin wiring and solder and test on Tuesday.

What it looks like wired up.

building the system:

This was partly straight forward partly frustrating as not all guide work. heres here’s my simple version of the guide this guide is if you are Using Adafruit 3.5 TFT display

You will need to download the octoprint image from https://octoprint.org/download/

you will then need a program to burn it to your sd card i use etcher select image select sd card and write 20 mins later will have a working image

Put install screen to the raspberry pi add the SD card and network cable then power the pi will take a few mins to power up the screen will show just as white don’t panic.

scan local ip network for pi in my case showing on my network as 192.168.0.1 using a ssh client login to the system using user name pi and raspberry as password.

Time to install TFT screen drivers this will get the screen displaying correctly. in the ssh, terminal screen type the following.

  • cd ~
  • wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adafruit/Raspberry-Pi-Installer-Scripts/master/adafruit-pitft.sh
  • chmod +x adafruit-pitft.sh
  • sudo ./adafruit-pitft.sh

when installing the script you will get asked the following. what screen it is in my case option 4 3.5″ 480×320. you will also get asked if you want the screen to display consol. i said no and yes to HDMI port mirroring just in case i decide to use the HDMI port. You will then be prompted to reboot the machine say yes.

you will then need to relogin to the pi.

As octoprint image does not have graphical front end is web-based. We are going to first have to install the X desktop environment, then Touch-TFT and its requirements

  • sudo apt-get install libgtk-3-0
  • sudo apt install xserver-xorg xinit xserver-xorg-video-fbdev

Once X is installed, we can follow up with the installation of OctoPrint-TFT you will need to first of all download by using wget command.

  • wget https://github.com/mcuadros/OctoPrint-TFT/releases/download/v0.1.2/octoprint-tft_0.1.2-1.stretch_armhf.deb

You will then need to install the script.

  • sudo dpkg -i octoprint-tft_0.1.2-1.stretch_armhf.deb

You will need to set the graphics output.

  • sudo systemctl set-default graphical.target

We need to remove the 99-fbturbo.conf file from our Xorg directory. i tried this but didn’t find the file still works without it. so unsure.

  • sudo mv /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/99-fbturbo.conf.old

Now on reboot OctoPrint-TFT should load and start attempting to connect

this was in the hose so no printer connected.

On reboot, you will see this screen until you plug it into the printer. you will then control screen as shown below. as i haven’t installed my link plug into the Rambo yet this was just to do a test to make sure all was working.

testing the server works. need to mess with the style sheets

now to configure the web interface of octopi.

Open web browser goto IP address or octop.local you will be greeted with a wizard so set user name and password and enable security. name profile of printer and set bed sizes in my case 250mm x 210mm x 210mm i also adjusted temperatures to match my Prusa printer in the configurations folder.

i will be adding plugins but will cover that in another post.

i will finish off this project on my return to London as got a 208-mile drive down to Wales for a weekend of getting holiday rental ready for first guests.

so will plug everything in on Tuesday.

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Was a productive night in the cave bit of modding and crafting.

After looking on the Elegoo mars forums i saw someone had reworked the firmware to allow network support so i had to do it.

https://www.elegoomars.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=15

you will need to register to download the firmware modification then unpack it for installing it to the machine the script comes with great instructions. the

I then found a great design on Thingiverse that allowed for a keystone network adaper to be installed to a cat5 cable. so i jumped on amazon order some keystone plugs and now to convert the firmware and add the hardware.

Last night i printed and cured the new black plate on the printer.

So modifying my new printer begins
1hr later time to cure the back plate.
Ready to install later.

Thanks, amazon.co.uk prime as next day delivery for my keystone plugs and tools to do this had a load of patch cables left in the office so going to sacrifice one of them as my plugin and play solution. all my bits are paid for not sponsored just like the service.

goodies for the mod.

time to make a short network cable to keystone connector. armed with my cable stripper and punch tool time to cut down the cable and make it panel mounted.

All done and tested.

unfortunately, i managed to install plug backwards and broke the print on removal. so will be a tomorrow job as currently printing a USB mod for moving the key from back to front.

USB extension cable ready for next mod.

Updated from yesterday 02/10/19:

The right printed the rear plate again, guess what i managed to break it again so i think will print it in pla once i have my Prusa back up and running right.

I am hoping to get an upgrade on Monday and be back in business as driving me nuts not being able to use it. will also revisit the MMU of my mk2s as could be good fun.

I have ordered some black resin and will reprint the bottom part of the USB holder in black but works well. some pictures of it in green.

going to reprint in black as all green is too much.
base to ve redone in black and keep top green. for the time being.
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The first project on the SLA printer

Yes, at last, i get to take the Elegoo Mars printer out for a test drive.

So i have already tried this mount on my standard Prusa FDM printer on quick and dirty settings and it printed but had some issues with the camera holder, it fitted but need a lot of sanding to get it to work right. so as i now have a super fine detail printer. why not make it out of resin.

In the end, went for the yet another camera mount which i cut from acrylic and blogged about on here its good but the head hits at the bottom of the bed if door is shut on the cutting bed so have been thinking about ether modifying mount or designing another one.

I was chatting with a fellow laser cutting community group user who was asking for my advice and was going to buy this mount off an Etsy shop. This got me thinking what if i printed this in resin would be nice and smooth and easy to put together.

Model is available off Thingiverse link here.

Fired up Chitbox and dropped in the components for the mount had to rotate some bits and then ready to slice with standard 0.05mm layer hight profile standards

this is my first attempt ad printing in sla other than the test samples in the previous review

Now not sure how well it will run as haven’t added rafts or supports but why not just go for it going to cost me the minimal amount in resin. hoping this comes out well.

wish me luck will be back in the cave in a 2hrs to see how it does.

The machine is all ready to go all i have to do is select mode off the U-disk and 2hrs later should have bits ready to clean and cure.

Total fail 1:

Print stuck to the build plate but had layer shift and the part was flatter than it should have been.

wish me luck lol

Fail Number 2:

Printed raft and supports then failed again this time leaving a residue on the print surface this required a big clean up to remove have also marked the print surface.

What Next:

As i am about to get on a jet plane for a week away will do some reading on supports and print methods to see what i can do. as i am sure it’s more my error than the printer.

will update this post on my return as will be a little bit less stressed than when i was doing this first run project as had a large amount of bit to make for my day job so it’s on a shelf till i get back then will make a proper space for it to live.

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New project time: Dual temp gauge and mA meter housing.

One of the first modifications i did to my machine used a 3d printer to make an mA meter housing. So i could stick on to the top of the laser cutter as don’t want to drill/cut my laser yet.

I finally decided to make something a little nicer. still not drilling my machine i know very unlike me lol.

my existing housing.

As the UK as the summer finally hit 32C warmth at last. but my water tank temperature has gone through the roof. so until i can afford a CW-5200 Chiller. Have gone back to 15L paint bucket and will be adding iced bottles every night so i can keep the temperature below the dreaded 25C, Unlike the last few days of 34C. So I have decided to design my self housing that is going to house a dual temperature gauge and my mA meter so i can monitor the temperature of the water coming in and going out of the laser tube.

Wiring up the wires:

Temperature Gauge water input/output temperature wiring:

I brought an inside-outside panel mount temperature gauge off amazon a few weeks back as like to keep an eye on water temperatures link for this here.

new temperature gauge red is tank temperature blue will be returning water to tank temp.

the downside is it comes with only 1M lead for each probe. i have ordered some 2M long ones from China but for this idea, i need them to be at least 3m long if not more. so i am going to make some extension leads up, I have ordered a box of JST-XH 2.54 connectors from amazon prime as wanted to knock this out of the park quickly, As from previous posts you might guess i am doing quite a few things on at the moment but love the pressure. link for parts here.

Time to make some extension leads. As a some one who like to make stuff, I have lots of wire kicking around going to start with the panel end of the extention lead, i am going to use red and black wire start off by crimping to JST-XH connectors to wires female crimps for the panel end. I then insert them into the 2 pin housing. you will need a JST crimp tool to do this.

crimps done and first wire inserted in to housing
Fist crimp completed

now to probe end i am going to solder this and heat shrink it. So to do this plug the probe into the male connector then using my solder workmate. First of all, i tin the wires i then i run 3 pieces of heat shrink over the wires, 2 small to cover the pins after soldering and one larger one to go over the housing make it look nice and give it some strength. Then using my gripers I line the pin and wiring up before soldering them together.

Then using my heat gun i shrink down the 2 smaller bits over the freshly soldered joints. I then i slid the large bit over housing and using heat gun shrink it to the base of the housing is covered and connected to the wire.

ready to solder the first pin.
Both soldered now to heat sink the connectors
Now for outer heat sink.
Heat shrink installed ready to test
Tested and working one down now to repeat
both prob cables now done now just to run them.

now to get power for the temperature gauge going to use 5v off laser power supply from 4 pin connector, not in use on the 50watt PSU so will use the Ground pin and 5v supply.

will use 5v and G to power my temp guage as will run on 5v minimal mA to power.
power cable made for temperature gauge with pin crimps make it all match on the Laser PSU.
power wired in for temperature gauge
right ready to go just need to cut my design

mA Meter Wring:

This is just a recap as did this a few months ago.

pinout for k40 style psu

If you look at Laser PSU diagram above you will see L- on pin 1 this is were the mA meter will sit between. this wire comes from the low voltage end of the laser tube. (Laser PSU might be different from machine to machine) the principle will be the same though.

Now prep for the mA meter, As I have already did this so this is a copy from an earlier post.

The wiring I started by running 2 wires through the housing of the laser down to the electronics controller boards and power supplies of the laser. I will then crimp the 2 wires and attach them to the mA meter the + side i will attach some red heat shrink to represent the live side. on the mA meter, there is a minus sign telling me that the other pin is positive. as pictured below.

positive connection cripmed
added some heat shrink to make it easy to identify after threading through the machine.
both ends attached this meter only shows – so that will be going into the PSU ignore housing as new one will be installed later.

this will attach to the wire i will remove from the PSU going to use a terminal block for time being till i decide if i am going to cut a hole in my laser to permanently mount mA meter later on. the – side will go back to the PSU.

Wire to remove from laser psu
removed wire joined with temp connector will take the blue covers off tonight and add some proper bullet crimps to join the wires properly as happy it works.
Now you would never know it been done bar the box on top of the machine.
Working like a champ. in my soon to be old housing.

All wiring done ready for the new housing

Enclosure Design:

As i have designed control panels in the past for my k40 laser going to use these elements as a template for mA and panel mount gauges i am going to use them in this design.

Now that i have proven my existing elements fit i am going create a box to house them both so where to start with this Inkscape has a plugin that will do this or there are many online tools that you can create a box. i have decided to go with http://jeromeleary.com/laser/ as i could add a sloped face to the front of the box as shown below. i then save dxf file and imported into lightburn.

my sloped fronted box design

I then added the elements for the gauge and dial to the box and added a rear cutout for the 2 sensors and power plug. mA gage as shown in the picture. below.

re arranged and added my elements and wiring outlet for wires.

After doing initial design i decided to make some changes as once the housing will be glued together there would be no way to remove wiring so i added a brake out panel.

V2 of my design the square on the back is brake away if any wires come loose

going to make a mockup in wood first and make sure it all fits before i go out and by some acrylic for the job,

Note to self make sure laser is in focus as had it set for something else doh still came out ok
Well it fits together temp cutout is fine but the mA meter is to small
Wiring hatch is upside down so have now flipped it in the design will run again tonight.

Have redone file now the rear door emergency access doors are now better only 4 tabs to knock them out if any issues once glued. I have also changed dimensions on the mA meter as they were way off. I will test cut it again later and see if can get it to fit.

2nd attempt all fitting perfectly now to cut it acrylic

Now that I have proved it all fits together and works I am going order some acrylic to cut. I will be using 3mm acrylic in black so will look nice. I will also be using an infill process to make text stand out.

Acrylics arrived A3 sheet so now it is all fitting i can cut the final sheet

cutting time the smell of acrylic thankfully no complainants from the surrounding houses

time to pull out my trusty airbrush and some white paint. time to do some infill before removing the protective layer.

all sprayed up now to remove the protective layer
still got to polish and pick middles of some of the letters but you get the idea.

Now time to assemble using some PETG adhesive to hold everything thing in place.

glued and clamped on 2 sides
5 of 6 sides glued. going to leave the top panel lose as the original plan did not work.

now to test all components fit.

fits perfectly on the machine now to bolt let the glue all dry and then wire it up.

right now all wired up without having to cut any holes now to hold it in place now for the 3M tape. time to test power on making sure temp gauge lights up. it does and mA is working fine.

Ready to stick new housing
All installed and working
Rear wiring coming out of enclosure

all project files are available in Lightburn format and SVG, as i know not everyone, uses lightburn. link for lightburn software file and the SVG file

Thanks for reading next project think will be upgrading lighting in my 50w so i can get the lightburn camera working better thank it currently is for the camera. that will be once i find the roll off

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Little less stressed now after a few weeks being overworked.

Right as one on my side projects is now done for another month. i can get back to doing enjoyable bits and get to finally clean up my workspace. get everything up and running and ready to work.

So last nights and tonight project is a freebie for my son’s nursery sports day for the toddler group some medals. with the heatwave starting to rush in not sure how much i can do over the next day or so but going to crack on and get the last 28 medals run tonight water temps allowing.

Designed a 2D trophy to give to the toddler and baby rooms of son’s nursery 28 per sheet.

I taped up some 3mm plywood after i had sanded both sides with 400 grit sanding disc. placed it on my honeycomb bed top left. hit play and away the 50-watt laser went. i decided to crudely wire up my water temp gauge the water temp had started out at around 22c when i started to engrave

around 1hr later after the hole sheet had engraved the water temp was up a 29.9c

My temp wired water gauge in side ambient room temp gauge

This is my first attempt at mass production of a product and was an approx 2 hr of engraving and cutting of the medals with the worry of water temp raising 33.2c.

getting hot need a chiller.

this fun little project had given me some worries about water temperatures in the man cave.

I had found an original CW-5000 for £399 they had 11 in stock yesterday went to order today and they have sold out argh so going to bag some ice tonight and add to my distilled water.

Day 2 of opperation sports day medals and getting the mancave to opperatnal .

27 medals to go do love my 50watt laser so reliable fired up laser loaded lightburn put the new sheet of taped plywood and away we go.

final 4 engraving before the cut out pass.

All done and now to take all the tape off them 1 down 37 to go

taken off the tape off yash medal. going to also wipe with wihite viniger.

been a busy night on the tidying the cave now have a clean work bench getting a lot or the draws labeled up as need some organisation in the cave. starting to come together.

That’s me done for the night next operation is sorting the large form printer and my Prusa Mk3 both back online thinking about making some wall mounted spool holders as my enclosed one seem to be jamming up on me. Need to get the CR-10 up and working as well have to calibrate the machine.

Next project on the laser I have a stack of placemats to engrave for our holiday let but going to have to watch the weather and clean out the water tank and replace the dirty water. so will be doing that over the next week will cover the process and the tidying up of the cave at the same time.

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Let’s start a fun project for a change. Part 3 (At last)

Sorry for the delays in getting part 3 out i have had some teething issues with the lightburn but i have got a new way of tackling the issue.

The plan

going to break the cost up into a matrix grid of 8 squares and then cut the outline this will then be glued on to a bigger ply board that has been washed in blue to give sea effect.

after that, i will then cut each individual counties for wales. and then apply them to the large scale map.

Ok so that is the map sorted its now road names and places that i have to figure out how to apply. one mode of thinking is that just engrave them over the top of the counties another one is cut them out and glue them on top of the map. this will be my next thing to play with will post images of progress and testing as i so please bear with me.

now to find a some one to cut me a 1001 mm x 909 mm 6mm bit of plywood to act as backing board wilts i play with ideas on adding roads names and places of interest.

the joys of developing Technics for this fun project. next part to follow soon.

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Let’s start a fun project for a change. Part 2

Managed to run the shading matrix now it’s not given me as many usable shades as i would have hoped but have a good 14 shades. think i need i have run the cutting matrix 2 times and will probably run it one more time to see if i can extract more shades in the future but for the time being i will run a total test. on 1 sheet of A3 wood but make it look as if 2 sheets. let’s begin part 2.

there was a error in my programming as 175mms line ran 2 times.

First run off the test matrix. can see the bottom scan line is way too burnt as predicted in last post.

tape removed form matrix

I removed the bottom line and made text bigger i also messed with speed of scan of text to make it clearer. Link here for SVG and here for LB files has been requested

modified file got at least 8 shades for counties

Still not happy with the overall test but i have identified the following shades for the map. i have named them so i can adjust accordingly going to run first a map just showing outline and counties.

  • 65% Power 400 mm/s Anglesey
  • 65% Power 350 mm/s Spare
  • 65% Power 300 mm/s Flintshire
  • 65% Power 275 mm/s Spare
  • 65% Power 250 mm/s Carmarthenshire
  • 65% Power 225 mm/s Ceredigion
  • 65% Power 200 mm/s Denbigshire
  • 65% Power 175 mm/s Powys
  • 65% Power 150 mm/s Gwynedd
  • 30% Power 300 mm/s South Wales
  • 30% Power 275 mm/s Conwy
  • 30% Power 250 mm/s Pembrokeshire
  • 30% Power 225 mm/s Spare
  • 30% Power 200 mm/s Wrexham
  • 30% Power 175 mm/s Monmouth

Now to assign the shades to the map. as i have divided the map into multiple layers this will not be too hard to do just a little time-consuming.

shading assigned to the map

now to save it for a scaled test run to 300 x 500 bit of plywood I will probably have to run it slightly smaller as layout as constraints of scale as the final map will be run on 2 x 300 x 500 sheets.

Scaled for 1 sheet of plywood current size 350 mm wide and 380 mm in height

finished test run i will now add roads in different passes but before i do that i need to do a line test later on as i want the lines to be slightly different. but for the time being, going to test with the updated current setting. I also have issues with road names not showing right. as the images below the spaghetti junction so going to limit the map to show main roads in the area i really want to highlight in this map. also going to limit the name of places.

Roads added don’t look quite right.

Next Part: Coming soon

  • Adding Points of interest
  • Scaling and spiting the map over 2 sheets of 500 x 300 plywood
  • Making the map 3D by layering up the counties sea and mainland with roads and rivers i think but this is subject to change.
  • mounting it all in a frame ready to be taken to wales at the end of may.
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Let’s start a fun project for a change. Part 1

Think I have been doing too many mods to machines instead of using them for some fun projects as so I have decided to show you the working of a bit of artwork I am putting together for our holiday home in Wales. this will be multiple layered pieces of art.

I will only cover the basics of the project as if you are used to using Illustrator and light burn you will know what I am talking about if you want more in-depth instructions please feel free to comment on the post. this will probably be over a few parts as going to be some trial an error as never done anything this scale.

part of the map i purchased

So after buying a layered map off maproom.net I then stripped assets from it using the layer selection in Adobe Illustrator. for example, I took counties outlines, place names, roads, road names, coastline rivers and lakes allowing me to take it across to lightburn giving me multiple layers this took a few hours and then to some vector path editing to pull off. I also noticed some issues with some of the vectors not being closed correctly so I had to address them as well.

Carmarthenshire outline selected before export.

I then named layers in ligtburn broke it down into the following layers this point I have not configured powers or speeds. as each county will be shaded differently. and some assets will be lines only were as other assets will be filled or outlined within the program. So cuts are just for reference at this moment in time I will post final speed and powers once I have run the test matrix i have made below

The map looks like currently, it’s oversized as will be cut in sections as will be using multiple sheets of ply to generate different layering to build up the A2 frame it’s going to be housed in. I will be cutting different layers then layering them ie. sea, land, then counties etc will be a bit of experiment.

Map in current form in lightburn

now that is all complete I will be looking at power and shading for different elements. so to start I have taken someone’s design and remixed to show greater ranges and speeds so I can see what different power/speeds achieve. Have named it shading matrix pallet. if you ask I will upload it for testing pleasure.

This is taped so I will not have to clean smoke off the wood think the lower speeds might be charcoal but will see later on tonight. upload my findings in part 2

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As last week went to pot

Not setting any goals this week as its a busy weekday job and some RNR. I have got to go pick up some screws today so i can mount my baffle board to window for more tools and space for parts. then got to re assemble gun rack for my air soft weapons and hang some other bit. on new baffle board.

Then depending on time, it’s on to the Prusa Mk2s MMU as I am on a roll of fixing stuff the last couple of week. If I can/cannot fix it will be starting the mammoth print of bits for the Haribo edition as again its bits taking up space that can be used other projects.

Will also be my first time running PETG as a material. hopefully will be easy learning curve.

On other current projects:

Wist, I wait for the EZout probe to clear customs. I am going to run some more calibration prints probably tonight. as did try doing bigger print but had some issues with print sticking to the bed. probably just a tweek to the z hight offset.

over the weekend I have built octopi set up that I am currently getting up to speed via TeamViewer for plugins and adding stream feed to the studio might give it a quick test later see things are running right. once I have finalised that will clone the card and do it for the Prusa Mk3 using the pins off the controller board.

What next up in the cave:

Getting limit switches wired into the CNC machine. then I need to learn how to use it so will probably do this via stream so hopefully will get some help with getting all going.

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Acrylic wow never knew how easy it was to cut

Just a quick update as I didn’t do as much as I hoped last night the joys of life.

As I have decided to go with a predesign from one of the forum members for the light burn camera

I decided to give acrylic a go positioned the design in some 3mm acrylic I had in my stash of laser materials

Fist run did not go so well as stupidly I had forgotten to focus the laser doh second run was perfect.

the 50 watts DSP in action

All cut out find apart from me forgetting to flip the text but having to wait on some screws so will re cut that with a bit of blank I have spare.

have used some 3d printed spacers to hold the work off the bed.

I am also going to modify the design slightly for cable support that will be done with a drill as don’t want to have to bend wiring on jst connectors.

Will do that after I return from a long week end down in wales.

Think I will be doing more in acrylic think next up will be some acrylic signs as got some led bases I brought a while back and never got around to playing with the joys of so many good ideas but not always find time to do them all.