New Orion user - first impressions and feedback...
(This is fairly long, so if you're only interested in the Orion itself, please skip 3 paragraphs.)
I had been using a Titan Aero direct drive extruder on my delta printer, with FSRs for bed leveling. While others have had great success with FSRs, I haven't been so lucky. With the FSRs on my printer, things were inconsistent enough that even 2 days after manually setting the trigger heights on every location in bed.g, I'd end up with a not quite "flat" Z plane (which, as far as I can tell, is a result of duet auto-calibration and inconsistent Z probe triggering.) I actually had better luck using probe type "0" and manually finding Z0 on auto-calibrations (and then NOT doing an auto-calibration each build.)
My first idea for "fixing" this was to somehow get a precision piezo system working with the titan aero. However, that's really not easy when the titan aero (and stepper) is hanging from a delta effector. I'm sure someone with better mechanical engineering skills than I possess would be able to figure it out, but I took an easier way out:
I purchased the precision piezo orion, and "downgraded" my titan aero to a simple titan extruder with a genuine E3D V6 heatsink/hot end. I lost about 44mm of build height in doing this (which leaves me with a mere 411mm in the center of the delta and about 50mm less at the edges.) I see/hear no performance or noise difference whatsoever in regards to the extruder/heatsink setup. I will mention that I've seen two benefits of the "downgrade": First, I prefer the more controlled airflow of the heatsink fan and second, I like that I can actually see the tension adjustment in the little titan extruder window.
As for the Orion itself, my very first impression was NOT positive. In order to properly attach the base part of the orion to the genuine E3D heat sink, I actually had to clamp it closed with a pair of vice-grips. Without doing that, the orion "sandwich" wouldn't go together as the 4 holes wouldn't line up. This was much more force than I expected to have to use and I'm relieved that the plastic didn't break as a result. (The inside of the base piece didn't seem to have any stray plastic in the channel for the heatsink. It just looks like the gap/channel might be very slightly too small.)
However, once I got things physically assembled, I have to admit that this thing is absolutely incredible (at least compared to my experience with FSRs.) My first attempt had the sensitivity a bit too high, and the V6 heatsink fan vibration would trigger the piezo. After turning that down a bit, I have an extremely consistent trigger height of 0.065 +/- 0.002mm with a 195C nozzle pressing on a 65C PEI/glass/aluminum heated bed. (I've actually adjusted the trigger height to 0.068 in my G31 in order to produce a very near perfect first layer height.)
Not only is the trigger height consistent, it's consistent all over my heated bed. The entire 300mm diameter plate has the same trigger height. I no longer need any "H" parameters in my bed.g file, and I can actually use mesh compensation if I want to. My method of checking consistency was to check the trigger height at each of the locations used in bed.g, and the ultimate test of printing several single layer, single line/wall "rings" around the build the plate, letting it cool, pulling it off, and spot checking with calipers.
I have to admit - I'm impressed. Thank you, Idris.
