Probe Drift: dc42 IR & Inductive, heat & no heat.

DocTrucker

@dc42 I'm now upto 1.11mm raise in bed level with not much sign of this slowing. How can I be sure this isn't a software bug and is indeed thermal issues?

I will try again at shorter time intervals to see if the change is definitely time related rather than number of probes.

I've attached my test sequence below. Set bed temp. Wait for temp. Home. Then run the below at 20 minute intervals.

0_1564903017610_ProbeTest.g

DocTrucker

All other things aside this may have shown why I can't run one build after another without re-checking nozzle height.

My suspicion is this is highlighting the thermal instability of my machine rather than a bug, but thought I'd raise the question.

dc42

@doctrucker, is the trigger height stable if you do repeated probing without heating the bed?

Inductive probes are known to be temperature sensitive.

A Former User

To make any sense of the data you really should distinguish between the difference in trigger height and the thermal expansion?

If you have a solid base to use as a refrence, most midrange chinesium dial test indicators are surprisingly accurate. I have some "saitek" branded 0.001mm stuff in the $20-30 range and they do their job according to the fancy Mitutoyo stuff we had at my old job. But at that scale you really need think through the whole test setup.

DocTrucker

@dc42 I think there certainly is some oddness with the sensor. The earlier linked Tom's review (will listen again very carefully!) seemed to indicate an increase in standard deviation with heat. I'm not seeing that but I am seeing a drift.

First tests this morning (85C) were ran over 3hr48 and showed a total movement in the average of the bed probes bed of 1.26mm.

Just re-ran back to back tests with no heat and in 1hr02 I saw a total drift of 0.442mm. The drift in the first test at 1hr09 was 0.399. This shows the readings have drifted more after a large number of probes in short succession than after a longer period of time at 85C with less probes.

Very peculiar! I would like to run the no heat tests at similar intervals as the heated test but I would also like sleep tonight so will leave that for another night!

DocTrucker

@bearer I am certainly thinking though the setup in a little more detail. This wasn't intended as a detailed study initially but has become so after observation of weird results.

I'll look at doing a dragging paper test to confirm whether this is a change in trigger height. Having said that given the thermal expansion of aluminium is sitting somewhere around 24 microns per metre for every degree kelvin increase I think it is becoming more likely that this is a drift in trigger height.

Edit: One of the next tests will tie the shell of the sensor to ground. Just tried some spare sensors and there is no continuity between the metal shell and ground.

DocTrucker

@dc42 I've repeated the tests today with no heat and I can still see a drift (not vague) in the average of each of the individual points. The average drift with the tests ran back to back is 0.45mm. When the timings of the tests are similar to before the drift was in the order of 0.25mm.

If this was a software bug I would have expected the time between the tests to have made little difference. The output on DWC is at times clipped with everything after deviation missing.

I'm now trying to reassemble the test rig as carefully as possible (as not to disturb the axis) and re-run the tests on the IR probe later today or tomorrow.

I will still write this up properly.

DocTrucker

I'm getting the same behaviour with dc42's IR probe.

Is this something to do with recording 30 points with G30 on a v0.6 board?

In DWC console I get some messages like:

G32 bed probe heights: 0.155 0.160 0.163 0.160 0.163 0.163 0.163 0.163 0.163 0.163 0.165 0.163 0.165 0.165 0.167 0.165 0.167 0.167 0.167 0.165 0.167 0.167 0.170 0.173 0.173 0.170 0.170 0.170 0.173 0.175, mean 0.166, deviation from mean 0.004
(-75,-75)

But on other tests they look like:

G32 bed probe heights: -0.278 -0.275 -0.270 -0.275 -0.275 -0.273 -0.273 -0.273 -0.273 -0.270 -0.268 -0.270 -0.270 -0.268 -0.265 -0.268 -0.268 -0.268 -0.265 -0.265 -0.265 -0.265 -0.265 -0.263 -0.260 -0.260 -0.260 -0.260 -0.258 -0.258, mean -0.267, deviation(-75,75)

The co-ordinate in brackets comes because I have the following code:

...clip...
G30 P29 X0 Y0 Z-99999 S-1
; Test (-1, -1)
M118 S"(-75,-75)"
...clip...

DocTrucker

Here's two big bits of data:

You can see a massive drift in the average of the five probed points. You can see this drift occurring within one data set.

Looking at these graphs at each time (x-axis) there are six data points. One is an average of the other five. The other five display the average of 30 probes at the centre of the bed and a the four corners of a square centred at (0,0) with a 150mm side.

I would of say the +1mm drift seen in the dc42 IR test is too much to be thermal expansion (but I may be wrong! ) when the only heat into the system is the steppers, and they aren't warm to the touch. The bed temperture only fluctuated by about 0.1C during these tests.

I have got a printed z-axis coupler which I will swap out with another machine. I would be surprised if this is the cause as it is small and 1mm is a massive proportion of it's own length.

I've yet to do the paper drag tests as I wanted to keep the tests as similar as possible to this point. I think it is fair to say the drift is unlikely to be purely down to either the inductive or IR sensor.

DocTrucker

Coupler was slipping!

Much more like it. 6 sigma tolerance now in the region of 10microns.

Edit: ...and yes I have now levelled my bed!