3D printing

[Darth Geek]

I don't know about your board but just about all the electronics I've ever flashed the longest I've seen it take is probably about 3 minutes.

If it's been over 15 minutes it's either bricked or hopefully just stuck in a reboot cycle.  Pull the SD card and cycle the power, hope it comes back.  Did it ever give a message that it was doing an update, usually they put some kind of message on the display. 

Both of my printers don't allow flashing from SD, you have to connect a computer via USB to do it.

After half an hour of nothing I turned it off. Took out the SD card and turned it back on, also nothing. Completely blank screen. Put the SD card back in and turned it on, left it running for over an hour and nothing.

Any idea what I did wrong? The articles I read said that sometimes doing this with SD cards over 32Gb can be an issue, but this one was only 8Gb.

And what do you mean bricked? Do I have to buy a whole new motherboard?

[MartyS (Gromit)]

I don't know about your board but just about all the electronics I've ever flashed the longest I've seen it take is probably about 3 minutes.

If it's been over 15 minutes it's either bricked or hopefully just stuck in a reboot cycle.  Pull the SD card and cycle the power, hope it comes back.  Did it ever give a message that it was doing an update, usually they put some kind of message on the display. 

Both of my printers don't allow flashing from SD, you have to connect a computer via USB to do it.

After half an hour of nothing I turned it off. Took out the SD card and turned it back on, also nothing. Completely blank screen. Put the SD card back in and turned it on, left it running for over an hour and nothing.

Any idea what I did wrong? The articles I read said that sometimes doing this with SD cards over 32Gb can be an issue, but this one was only 8Gb.

And what do you mean bricked? Do I have to buy a whole new motherboard?

Unfortunately that may be the case, see if you can find any support sites that say if people have found ways to recover from a failed flash.  Sometimes there are programs you can use on a PC connected to the board that get the board to boot and then get a flash to work.

Are you sure you had the correct firmware file for that particular board?  Loading the wrong firmware is a sure way to kill a board.  A lot of hardware like this doesn't do any kind of checking, it will replace the firmware with whatever you put on the card even if it's wrong or damaged.  You have to be careful about revisions, version B of a board might need a different firmware than version A.

This is always the danger of flashing firmware, if something goes wrong and the board can't even boot the board is dead.  A power surge or failure during a flash is a sure way to kill a board.  For expensive stuff I will sometimes plug it into a UPS just to be safe from a power failure.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Was making something out of brass and brass being brass it grabbed the tool and brought the lathe to a halt, busting off a tooth on the high-low gear.

So I downloaded a 3D model of one and printed it in polycarbonate, probably stronger than the original plastic one.

If this one ever breaks I'll go ahead and spend the $70 and get a set of metal ones.

Took about 6 hours to print, and since this gear is the one you have to completely tear the lathe apart to replace it that took a good 3 to 4 hours.

[RVR II]

Good thing it wasn't a rudimentary lathe
Wow that sux though.. Looks like a great replacement you made.

[Darth Geek]

I found out that the EZFirmware .bin file is only for their brand of board, which I am not using, I have a Creality brand board. So I contacted Creality and found out that they do have the firmware files for their board on their site (other places had said they didn't, and I didn't see them when I was looking). So I got the official firmware and will try flashing that.
  What's even funnier is that in the meantime I had decided to put the old board back in and just try hooking the fan up to the power input so it would run all the time. I had everything set up and just out of curiosity I tried using my new voltmeter on the progs I thought were dead. Turns out they are fine. There was nothing wrong with the motherboard, my old voltmeter was just not working. So all of this was unnecessary.
  There are still advantages to using the new 4.2.7 board anyway. So I will try to flash the new firmware to it, adn if that works i will use it. But if not I still have the old board I can use.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

 It does suck when your test equipment fails you.  Over the years I've noticed the really cheap meters tend to do that, they have poor connections for the leads and other issues.  I haven't seen those issues with meters in the $50 to $80 range.  I've got one expensive Fluke meter at work and that has never let me down.

[Darth Geek]

It does suck when your test equipment fails you.  Over the years I've noticed the really cheap meters tend to do that, they have poor connections for the leads and other issues.  I haven't seen those issues with meters in the $50 to $80 range.  I've got one expensive Fluke meter at work and that has never let me down.

The one I had was probably twenty years old or more, my Dad gave it to me a long time ago. I got a new one for about $50 so that should last me plenty of time.

[Darth Geek]

Marty, you were right about the residue on the belt pulleys. I replaced the current belts today with Gates belts that are supposed to be a better brand. And when I did I made sure to clean out the pulleys. There was a lot of residue in them. I don't know if that was the real cause of my rippling problem, but it does indicate that the belts that came with the machine were falling apart, probably a cheap brand.
After replacing the belts and the X and Z stepper motors I do seem to still have a little ghosting/rippling, but less than I did before. I think if I do get the 4.2.7 motherboard working that has TL smoothers built into it so that may improve it as well.

[Variety of Cells]

I like reading this thread for two reasons: 3D printing is cool and I want one someday, but more importantly, this thread constantly provides perfect examples of how I do not have time to do all the tinkering and troubleshooting necessary to run a 3D printer.  Just don't have time at all. So thank you for illustrating that for me.

[Darth Geek]

Well on the positive side I was able to get the new 4.2.7 board flashed with the firmware from Creality. And it works surprisingly well quieting the motors and they seems to be running very smoothly. However, for some reason the extruder motor is now reversed direction rotation, so it doesn't feed filament when printing it pulls it out of the hot end. This is very bizarre and I can't print anything without fixing it. I never reversed the direction of the extruder before so I don't know why it would be different now.
Most of the solutions I find online are about changing the programming, but I don't know how to do that, I'm not a programmer. And I hesitate to change the wires for fear of screwing something up.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

To reverse a stepper motor all you have to do is plug it in reversed, so just flip the connector 180° and that should solve it.

[Darth Geek]

To reverse a stepper motor all you have to do is plug it in reversed, so just flip the connector 180° and that should solve it.

The connector can't go in reversed. And it's six wires so I don't think it would work anyway if it could.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

To reverse a stepper motor all you have to do is plug it in reversed, so just flip the connector 180° and that should solve it.

The connector can't go in reversed. And it's six wires so I don't think it would work anyway if it could.

Then you will have to find a software setting, hopefully it's in a menu somewhere, otherwise you may have to resort to connecting a computer and using something like pronterface to enter M codes directly into the firmware.  Going that route you would probably have to flip a number from 0 to 1 or 1 to -1, something like that, then use the proper M code to save the changes so it doesn't revert when you turn the power off.

Not sure an extruder really needs a 6 wire stepper, but 6 wire and 4 wire are normally wired similarly and can be reversed by turning the connector, the center tap on each coil is just for adding more power to give more torque, but if yours are keyed that's not an option.  They do that to make it easier for people not to put them in backwards, but at times like this it would be so much easier to just swap the leads vs. hunting down a firmware setting. 

[Darth Geek]

To reverse a stepper motor all you have to do is plug it in reversed, so just flip the connector 180° and that should solve it.

The connector can't go in reversed. And it's six wires so I don't think it would work anyway if it could.

Then you will have to find a software setting, hopefully it's in a menu somewhere, otherwise you may have to resort to connecting a computer and using something like pronterface to enter M codes directly into the firmware.  Going that route you would probably have to flip a number from 0 to 1 or 1 to -1, something like that, then use the proper M code to save the changes so it doesn't revert when you turn the power off.

Not sure an extruder really needs a 6 wire stepper, but 6 wire and 4 wire are normally wired similarly and can be reversed by turning the connector, the center tap on each coil is just for adding more power to give more torque, but if yours are keyed that's not an option.  They do that to make it easier for people not to put them in backwards, but at times like this it would be so much easier to just swap the leads vs. hunting down a firmware setting.

Interesting. I just got an email response from Creality helpdesk and they directed me to this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms-rLplPOv8
Apparently switching the wires on the connector is surprisingly easy. I will have to try that tonight. It would certainly be preferrable to trying to edit the .bin file or recompiling the Configuration.h file.

[MartyS (Gromit)]

To reverse a stepper motor all you have to do is plug it in reversed, so just flip the connector 180° and that should solve it.

The connector can't go in reversed. And it's six wires so I don't think it would work anyway if it could.

Then you will have to find a software setting, hopefully it's in a menu somewhere, otherwise you may have to resort to connecting a computer and using something like pronterface to enter M codes directly into the firmware.  Going that route you would probably have to flip a number from 0 to 1 or 1 to -1, something like that, then use the proper M code to save the changes so it doesn't revert when you turn the power off.

Not sure an extruder really needs a 6 wire stepper, but 6 wire and 4 wire are normally wired similarly and can be reversed by turning the connector, the center tap on each coil is just for adding more power to give more torque, but if yours are keyed that's not an option.  They do that to make it easier for people not to put them in backwards, but at times like this it would be so much easier to just swap the leads vs. hunting down a firmware setting.

Interesting. I just got an email response from Creality helpdesk and they directed me to this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms-rLplPOv8
Apparently switching the wires on the connector is surprisingly easy. I will have to try that tonight. It would certainly be preferrable to trying to edit the .bin file or recompiling the Configuration.h file.

Just go easy on both the plastic and metal.  I don't think I've ever broken the plastic tabs on those types of connectors but I have broken the thin metal tabs on the wire crimp connectors, happens if you push them in and then have to pull them back out and they break from too much bending.  But I think the type in the video are fairly solid so harder to break, it's the Molex type that have thin metal tabs that hold the connector in the plastic.

If you have some tiny screwdrivers those work better than the blade they are using, and you are less likely to slip and cut your fingers.  Although poking a tiny screwdriver into your finger is only a little better than a razor blade cut.