This what will most likely happen this week in the cave depending on life as son had a temperature last night hoping its still just teething.
Monday
Monday Night Going to upgrade the firmware on my CR-10 as version TH3D_UFW_U1.R2.10 is out and mine is running a really old version of the TH3D firmware around 1.6. have already installed the boot loader back when I first got the machine. so will be a simple flash.
Will then look at the probe set up as I think it needs some adjustment as was moved from one bracket to and different one and I never adjusted the sensitivity.
then to calibrate Z offset to make sure system functions correctly on the new bed surface without trashing it. like I did to the magnetic bed.
Hoping to get this all done tonght and get a few calibration prints done. Then i can move on to the mods list of parts that i want to print.
New Raspberry Pi 3 frame Mounted Case for CR-10
Chain Support for the Z-axis ( not sure about doing this or not)
EZOUT filament sensor mount cip
I will be adding an EZ OUT filament sensor to the CR-10 shortly as waiting for it to come over from the USA to the UK so maybe the end of the week might be longer.
Tuesday
If all went well on Monday will start first long print on the CR-10 the Gramazon Print for my amazon dot. will be a few days and nights on this one. but will hopefully have a working copy of octoprint up and running so I can set up some time-lapse videos for your enjoyment pleasure. will post a story on it once it’s done.
Wednesday
Tonight operation is to fix my Original Prusa Mk 3 as it got a filament jam in the extruder so will sort this out. pending on temperature in the cave as if it’s below 10c makes life hard to print. as there’s a thermal cut out. roll on summer can print without issue.
Time depending time I am going to have one last go with the Original Prusa i3 mk2s MMU machine that kicking around the cave floor as I have no space to house it. if I can get it working will then make some space to use it. if not going to pull it apart and place it in a box for a project I will do down the line.
Friday
Will be spring cleaning in the cave as have a few hrs to get things ship-shape ready for hopefully a test of the streaming system again pending on how things go this week
Warning Do Not Attempt this if you do not have any wiring knowledge this is done at your own risk as this I a non-approved manufacture item. I will not be held responsible for any damage done to you or your machine this is just covering my arse. But you will be fine as was a doddle to install and now hit 60C in less than 30 seconds. The links are for cr-10 and cr-10s with 310mm x 310mm bed. I have no affiliation with links.
This guide is based off a Nexi tech video i saw on youtube about upgrading the heat bed. my heat bed now heats up in 30 seconds flat the hot end takes a few mins to heat but much better than the 10 mins the heat bad used to take to heat. link to Nexi Tech video
I did have a few issues that are covered in my guide and I would not recommend the Magnetic bed I will be swapping this for creality official replacement bed instead. should have itmonday. will update the review tommorow.
Some wire for low voltage link to the control board.
2.1 x 5.5 connectors male and female for EZABL probe(not needed unless your hard wiring probe)
Pin crimps for the controller board.(Optional)
Tools required.
Soldering iron
Screwdrivers
Alan Keyset
Cleaner suggest isopropyl alcohol
Wire cutters
Small black heat shrink.
Crimper for Pin Connector (optional)
Right first things first I am going to send the z axis up
high to make sure I have everything clear for removing the heat bed.
Z axis raised hight off bed
I have taken the glass bed off I will be removing the current
LokBuild surface off the class and installing the new creative magnetic bed to
replace it. out with the lemonime to remove all sticky stuff. Now the cave smells
of oranges remanence from the Lemonime.
removal of build plate material i am now regretting doing this.
I then removed the 4 screws from my machine. Now you will
notice that I do not have springs on my machine but solid aluminium blocks as I
am using the TH3d EZABL probe I don’t need the adjustments. Also stop it moving
after long prints.
my bed spacers as i dont need to manually adjust time to clean my bed.
I have then removed the heat bed connector from the back of
the control box.
all clean of thermostats and just about to de solder heating wriring
Now to disassemble the heat bed on with my soldering iron to
remove the Red and black wiring. Then removed the thermostat from behind the
heat proof tape. Out with the isopropyl alcohol to clean the bed before I attach
the new silicon heated bed.
Silicon bed stuck on top of original bed
Then added the self-adessive
cork insulation plate on top of the silicon heater.
installed bed then realized my bed bracket will not worktried to cut the cork looked crap so went with putting bed brackets under the cork will replaced some point in the future but for now its fine.
Now for the wiring. I have disassembled the aviation 4 pin connector
and de soldered the wires from the plug. Making note of what pin does what
Pin 1 = Thermostat
Pin 2 = Thermostat
Pin 3 = Heated Bed
Pin 4 = Heated Bed
Then I soldered new heat bed wiring to old and pulled the
new wiring through the wire management sleeve. I then taped the thermostat wires
with old and new and did the same so now the new wiring ins in the sleeve.
I then cut the wires to length and solder them to correct
pins before I do this I have also added heat shrink to each wire to protect
from shorts.
I then re install the bed to the printer adding back my abs printed bed holders and wire management couple of cable ties later and we are ready for the rewiring of the control box. Oh wait one more job.
Time for magnetic bed I have already cleaned the glass off
after last build surface was removed.
I removed the sticky backing of the magnetic bed under sheet
and applied it to the glass centrally re attached the glass to the printer and
placed new build surface to printer.
All done now I can move on to the control box.
I am going to disconnect the wiring from the printer so I can
bring the control box to the work bench.
Now to take it to bits also going to clean up wiring for the
EZABL as power was done in a rush. So going to install a 2.1mm x 5.5 power jack
in the back of the machine from the EZABL probe you wont need to do this but as
I have it in bits going to do it.
Getting started there are 5 screws or hex bits on the bottom
of the control box these need to be removed the bottom cover will now come off.
remove 5 hex screws from around the edge of control box.what you you will see when you remove the metal plate
Next remove 4 screws/hex bits from side of machine this will
release the power supply.
Once they are out you can swing the power supply out.
heat bed wiring removed
Next will need to disconnect the existing heated bed from
the mosfit and power supply. Follow the black and red wires from the aviation
plug to mosfit and to power supply disconnect them.
Then its time to install the Solid-State Relay on the back
of the power supply there are 2 screw holes this is what I have used to affix the
relay.
Taking the red wire from the aviation plug I wire this in to position 1 on the solid-state relay (SSD) position 2 I use a off cut of heated bed wiring to mains power AC positive connector side of the power supply. Then using the black wire from the aviation connector to the ground side of the AC wiring. This gives you a mains supply closed loop.
Now to install the wiring that will switch on and off the heat
bed relay. Install 2 wires in to connection 3 and 4 on the SSD these 2 wires
will now be connected to the control board. See image
Remove the 2 wires from the control board and install the 2 control
wires in pin 3 and 4 of the control board bank of 6 screw connectors see image.
You can now de install the mosfit and any wiring connected to it. the 2 wires you removed from the control board can also be removed.
All done but as I am going to install a quick connect for my
EZABL Probe power.
Taking a centre punch and marking a location with no wires
around it I then drill a pilot hole before drilling the 6mm hole for the
connector after installing the connector I bring the solder iron out to solder
power to the connector. From the existing installed wires, the centre pin is
the positive and the outer wall is the negative.
pilot hols drilled not straight i know but its not seen now for a 8mm drill to make the final sizesoldered the connector now to wire them upall wired up
The other end I will solder connector to connect in to it.
now all done time to re assemble calibrate and test.
Nice and neat time to see how she works. A nice quick modification to do. Total cost around £53 and a few weeks of delivery time.
Now, this took a little longer than I thought it would about 2 hrs in total but that was as I was doing other things around the cave. I managed to calibrate the machine yesterday but I will be removing the magnetic bed as its shockingly bad going to order a new glass bed with a coating on it. £28 off Amazon will review that instead, UPDATE: ok it’s not as bad as I thought originally it’s just silly the way it mounts will be running tests but still going with a fixed bed in the meantime will revisit the magnetic bed but got to get some air bubbles out of it. and figure out how to remove the embeded plastic from it.
I am about to run some calibration tests to make sure all is right. Then i have some modparts to run as going to start some long projects on my cr-10 I am going to start on the big print stuff this week hopefully. i have the gramazon print that I have been meaning to run for some time, but never got around to it as printer broke didn’t want to have to print the small parts version.
Next, I have to fix my Original Prusa i3 Mk3 as got a blocked extruder. I will also be printing a Raspberry Pi 3 Mountable enclosure for the CR-10 and rebuilding my pi install. I will also be building a new pie set up for the Prusa Mk3 as looking to be able to monitor all remotely and get some nice time laps for some of my blogging.
So its bye bye to my Budweiser sign for the man cave as i needed the wall space for a second monitor as makes life easier when i am working.
Before the new monitor was installed afterwards will take a better image.
So weekend plans if time permits going to hit my 3d printers as i need to clear a blockage on the Prusa i3 Mk3 extruder and going to swap heated beds on the CR-10 for a silicon heated bed. so should heat up in 30 seconds, not 10 mins.
So when are you going live?
Just need to build my OBS studio and configure my stream deck and we are about good to go live added new camera lighting and mic to the cave. touch would i should have some broadcasts soon as well as my regulare tinkering blog posts.
Well was a working week in the man cave dident post as gifts for the wife so dident want any spoiler alerts for her.
Monday i remixed the lightburn camera mount as i only had some small screws to fit the mount so resized the hols to 1.2mm and made some cutouts in the base to allow it to fit in the middle of my handle nuts I might change this in the future to have holes through the base but wanted this to be quick and easy so I could calibrate the camera and getting all up and running nice and quickly.
remixed camera base cutting as this is not for looks just cut and glued as needed to get on.Modified Base with cutouts for handle nuts.
I then calibrated the camera in lightburn. this took some understanding but that was down to me not looking at the calibration video on you tube correctly. It worked very well on my second attempt. i then aligned the camera using the alignment patten. once this was done the camera was set up for camera control.
So what is camera control? it’s using the camera to aligned materials for engraving its also used for tracing designs. for example, I wanted a design to be close to the edge of material I am using as didn’t want to waste any. so I updated image this places the image on the background of my work area in lightburn.
Image captured on lightburn camera and design positioned near the edge.Cutting done nice and close to edge of material.Finished voucher for the wife going to make it less sharp if i run it again.
Tuesday
Tonight’s little project was for a game of airsoft I was attending at the weekend. I need to patch for a jacket in hind site I should have just done it straight to the jacket as my sewing skills are not as good.
so i decided to experiment with denim had seen a video online of some one using a fiber laser to age and cut out denim jeans. so this gave me the idea for doing the same to some old jeans i had. i cut a test sample. ran my calibration matrix for it. i dident picture it as was a lot of burn through from anything below 200 mm/s and over 40% power. i setteled on 400 mm/s and 20% power.
using my camera I positioned the cutout piece of jean leg on the table. I then focused the laser. I ran the frame option to double check the position of material and hit play. i had also placed a box around the design an put the power at 40% 20mm/s this cut the denim very cleanly.
think i will now do it directly on the jacket as my sewing skills ere not up to much as image beneath shows.
cannot sew next up will be me doing this directly to jacket.
Wensday
today project were some more gifts for mothers day. so I had brought a load of slate hearts last year when pound land was doing them cheap. so I had a seen a design online so I decided to do something similar I changed the text a bit as the wife does not like mum or mother so mummy it was changed to that.
i then did another screen update to show material on the bed and aligned my design to it last week i ran a test matrix on slate pictured below now it was cheap Spanish slate were as the slate i was using was the more expensive welsh slate but gave me the speed and power.
Cheap Spanish slate hence the browning of sample.
I decided on 65% power with a speed of 400 mm/s as gave the cleanest pass worked a charm. see picture below the final item.
bit of slate engraving
I then decided to run some fun glass coasters for my wife. so did mummy est 2017 coaster and a mummy gin only coaster. decided to used laser bond 100 on one coaster to see what it looked like I settled on the speed of 300mm/s and 55% power as I had run a test matrix as well on glass. I tend to do this on all the materials I own as means get them usually right first time then.
Looks better in the flesh bit hard to photographagain looks better in the fleshdid it in wood to show it off better.
just adding another monitor in the cave and clearing up more as need to make some space so i can get every thing up and running.
going to have a few days off as need some rest and relaxation as got a lot going on in the day job back next week with more fun stuff.
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.
Got my light burn camera with a £21.45 import duty today have decided to go with a different camera mount so it currently printing on the cr-10.
new mount off thingvers
do not like it a nice tight fit but will need alot of sanding to become ajustable so I think I am going to run with a different holder for the camera and cut in out of acrylic tonight.
Next up mA meter i have fitted the mA meter in the housing added the 2 nuts to hold it in the houseing.
Now for the wiring going to run 2 wires through the housing of the laser down to the electronics of the laser. I will then crimp the 2 wires and attach them to the mA meter the + sign side i will attach some red heat shrink to to represent live side.
positive connection cripmedadded some heat shrink to make it easy to identify after threading through the machine.bot ends attached this meter only shows – so that will be going in to the psu
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 psuremoved wire joined with temp connector will take the blue covers off tonight and add some as happy it works.Working like a champ.
Now to test doing a test sample on some laser bond 100 with stainless steel as 1 i need to figure out speeds and powers. As i love how the guides all say 100% power and i know that will shorten the life of the tube.
primed in laser bond 100
Tonight will I will do a glass sample tomorrow night will just run raw laser sample as will do laser bond 100 as well another night.
Proves that from 65% power to 20% 400mm/s to 150mm/s works well. yes and i know its not laser ply was tired last night.
Tomorrow night i will be adding light burn camera and hopefully get around to calibration and alignment. will do some cable mangment on my newly installed amp meter.
After being ill for most of the day, I figured out that there is a blockage in my mk3 extruder but was feeling so rough I had to go back to bed. I am feeling a little more human and the wife and son have gone out so have swapped machines. As I need to take the CR-10 for a test drive so printing the mA meter enclosure for the machine and then a light burn camera mount.
cr-10 working great just need to swap the heating bed over
Watching remotely(in the warmth) via octoprint camera only as still need to do a rebuild of octoprint. if all fits will either spray it or reprint in black but for time being.
will post the wiring of the mA meter tomorrow.
5hrs later mA meter housing made going to run the wires thought the back of the enclosure and then down the gap in to the electronics enclosure.
now just finished printing a camera enclosure for the light burn camera that is apparently in the uk just waiting for a custom charge. looks like my pramiters are off by a little just manged to snap bits as i was taking it off the bed. oh well going to ajustaccordinly and re print tommorow.
have had to make some changes as was very weak managed to snap the model pulling it off the bed but tomorrow is another day.
had to do some wiring management with USB from CNC and vinyl cutter so made a start on that and installed another USB hub and Bluetooth dongle so can get some tunes on in the cave my built-in monitor speakers sucks big time. added some Kickstarter linkable speakers which work wickedly.
think the new heat bed and the magnetic bed will be done when I feel a little more human, hope to get this done before I go down to Wales for a long weekend.
Well nearly everything been getting drips and drabs from china over the last week so.
it alive again after year offline.
Cr-10 is working was a corrupted octoprint cusing it to time out so will be rebuilding it. now its working I might as well do some more tinkering so I have ordered solid state relay and a 750 watt silicon heated bed and cork insulation bed. As fed up of the slow heat up time of such a great machine. and a creality magnetic bed so will be stripping down the machine. probably Sunday and upgrading it.
new heated bed and cork insulation new magnetic bedsolid state relay
3D Printing a housing for 30 mA meter to add to the new laser as don’t want to risk frying the tube too quick. Well ifIi can get it to print as just tried to print it without much luck it looks like my bed need to be recalibrated on the prusa mk3 so will do that tommorow. hoping for a Sunday update on that.
New 30 mA meter ready to be wired.printing the new enclosure for the mA meter.Test print of front panel only to make sure it fitted.
CNC machine z tool probe working. need to play with soft limits to stop it crashing but getting my head around Mach 3 which is an epic program but has a lot to get your head around as not as simple as just running your 3d design through a cutter and printing it. but I will get there soon. As someone who loves to modifiy my machines. I am going to add some limit switches. as it doesn’t look that hard to do. Coming soon.
I have remixed a test card for engraving on materials on the 50-watt laser. So I will know speeds and power for my machine done ply and painted ply going to do slate, glass, laser bond 100 on stainless steel and acrylic maybe some laminated acrylic.
laser ply chalk paint calibration sample went with 50% at 300 mms/Cheep slate might try some actual natural slate but looks like 65% 400 mm/s
been doing some custom boxes for friends children so did some chalk painted box and cut some felt out.
two happy girls with there unicorn boxes this was before i cleaned them.
Waiting on the lightburn official camera to get through custom/charges to be issued so I can start using the camera control will make life easier for positioning of work pices.
Right been a long week for me as my boys been ill and teething so not got as much sleep and done as I wanted oh i am also rebuilding my OBS studio ready for some live feeds.
As I have re layed out the workshop over the last few weeks. I have started to get all the equipment up and running. so when the time finally comes for some live streams I can just walk in the press a button on my stream deck and boom we are live on youtube or twitch haven’t decided yet.
CR-10 Rebuild and calibration
I started with My CR-10 3D printer that has been offline for over a year. keep on making excuses why I haven’t fixed it to my self after destroying old hot end. I had installed a new OEM one and added different bracket EZABL braket after destroying my fangs just never got around to flashing and recalibrating now its easy access I had no more excuses.
have re-flashed the new firmware calibrated the TH3D EZABL sensor will be running a test print. as I realised my raspberry pi octoprint setup had no files sliced fro the cr-10 with the EZABL probe installed. so going use one of the bed levelling STL’s and Simplify3D to give it a test later.
OK did not go as well as expected not sure if i need to rebuild my octoprint install. as got to heat then stopped will look at error logs tonight as was getting late my little one had a temp of 39.7 was asking for dada and mama so had to cut my time on this short. will install a micro sd card and see if I can print that way. then can rule out it being a printer issue. see what the issue is.
it will then be ready for some long big prints as this is my 300 x 300 x 400 machine.
I have ordered some more bits for it as going to upgrade the heater in the bed with silicon bed heater. I will also be installing a magnetic bed as love the one on my Original Prusa i3 MK3. I may do a different Style hot end in the future but for the time being, will keep it stock.
Update some of the parts from supplier should be delivered for the bed upgrade today. but still will be waiting on the heater and the magnetic bed.
3040T Chinese CNC machine.
This has been a bit of a paperweight since I brought it last year. have had some issue with the software supplied I think I have overcome that. as the information on the internet sucks and the Chinglish instructions are not great.
hours of research and looking all over the internet. I have figured out the following as my card is a USB card cannot probe for pins like on the printer port versions of the card. I can, however, get the pins to recognise in the RNRMotion Plugin but not the software this as I realised that the ground pin I was using was different to the one needed by the mach3 card. so now showing connections for z probe and e-stop in the plugin. then reading over the Chinese pdf file supplied with the equipment I went over the setup steps I got to limit switches witch my machine does not have but noticed that numbers were different so port 3 is the port that is common thought out all input or output pins as my e-stop is on Input pin 1 I set it to port 3 pin 1 on the config for inputs outputs. then my e-stop switch started working so then I wired up z probe. port 3 pin 4
I then installed z probe script and fitted the probe to the machine – on tool and puck on the material. I pressed the button and it bloody worked. now that I have that working I am going disable the limit switches that are not there and use soft limits in Mach 3. might install limit switches as a project at some point as there are few good designs for my style of machine most of them are for air-cooled spindle types.
Now to make a quick G-code script to test it out will do this tonight if i get some time as my boy is not himself waiting for the call from nursery to come to get him.
if that goes well I will be adding a camera and some lights so can film it in stream assets for filming.
What else is going on this week in the man cave?
As long as that all above goes well I have some small commissions to run some dog tags for a band that got to be done this week.
After that will concentrate on the other bits I need to sort in the cave as want clear floor space and to add some on-off switches for the water pump for and vacuum for the CNC machine. adding lighting for my vinal cutter figure out how to add a camera to that as well.
need to find a place to put the original Prusa i3 mk2s MMU till I have time to make it work again with Haribo mod think i am going to flat pack it. also going out to play some airsoft first time in 2 years at the end of the month so need to dig my gear out and test it all won’t cover that and bore you all.
thanks to all that do read my ramblings hoping to go live soon.
I wouldn’t expect it to be as epic as some of you tube great bloggers out there. but will be a start hoping to chat online with you all soon and have fun doing some cool projects.
After installing my new 50w last wensday its been a struggle to do stuff with it as little one has been testing at times the but super cute at others lol such is life.
i managed to fire it up Wednesday got a test dot by 11 after getting a lift from a mate in to the mancave basically set it up
Thursday did first popper test was upside down back to front. I asked on the lightburn forum and by morning had a solution that I tested after work this cured the issue as the new machine had a different origin to the old machine. started on first test project worked ok needed to adjust speeds as much faster machine than my k40 so been testing to get the right speeds.
ordered a compatible EPL webcam 3d printed a bracket last night. camera arrived today so this evening fitted it to my laser
have done first calibration of the lens i have since figured out with Windows 10 to configure settings so will run it again as was low rez instead of hd. so will cover this tomorrow. once i have it all set up still works in low rez but want to get it working right before showing it off. i will record whilst cutting so can stream some project in action and also will allow me to align images to material. will put somthingtogetgher next day or so to show it in action
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