General guidelines for accessing tool board I/O

Phaedrux

Yes you got it.

If you want examples, I suggest creating a config with the online tool. You can add expansion boards etc and assign their pins to things and see the final config.

https://configtool.reprapfirmware.org/Start

kb58

Duet 3 6HC v1.01 (3.3 release) + Toolboard 1.1 (latest sw release)

Much of the toolboard-controlled I/O is starting to work, thank you for the mentoring. This includes the hot end heater, thermistor, and X endswitch, so I know that adding the CAN address prefix is working.

What's not working are the fans. I thought they would be a no-brainer:

M950 F0 C"121.out1" Q500
M106 P0 T55:60 H0 C"Part Fan"

M950 F1 C"121.out2" Q500
M106 P1 T45 H1 C"Hot end Fan"

Sending an M106 P0 (or P1) S1 has no effect.

The part cooler fan connects to the 4-pin Out1 connector, with fan+ going to +VOUT, and fan- going to out1.

The hot end fan connects to the 3-pin Out2 connector, with fan+ going to +VOUT, and fan- going to out2. I am assuming that the driver is intended to pull the fan- to ground, especially since there is no ground pin.

These fans worked fine when connected to the 6HC board using the very same config code, so I'm stumped.

[edit] The fans are 24V, and the toolboard jumper is in-place.

kb58

Well I'm half way there. Giving up getting the fans to go on with the M106 command, I was surprised that the hot end fan went on correctly when the extruder heater reached its target. The mystery for that is how come it goes on as it should in normal operation, but I can't manual command it on or off?

The other half - the bed fan - still does not work. It's very odd how they're both being initialized at the same time with nearly identical configuration commands, yet one works and one doesn't. I shall persevere.

Phaedrux

@kb58 said in General guidelines for accessing tool board I/O:

The mystery for that is how come it goes on as it should in normal operation, but I can't manual command it on or off?

If you want to command it manually you have to turn off thermostatic control with H-1.

I'm curious to know why you'd want to the part cooling fan to come on when the bed heater does.

kb58

So these are the two remaining troublemakers:

M950 F0 C"121.out1" Q500
M106 P0 T55:60 H0 C"Part Fan"

M950 F1 C"121.out2" Q500
M106 P1 T45 H1 C"Hot end Fan"

Commanding different G commands, they don't complain about the above not being defined, making me think that the M950 definitions are probably correct. Likewise, manually sending G106 commands to turn the fans on or off don't error out, either, but they don't do anything. I suspect I'm not referencing the fans correctly, like maybe it needs a "121." in front of something...

kb58

@phaedrux "...I'm curious to know why you'd want to the part cooling fan to come on when the bed heater does..."

I'm just getting everything up and running. I understand your question, but I first want to ensure that "everything is responding to reason" before fine tuning what happens and when. I agree that the part cooler should be coming on only after X layers have been deposited, but right now I'm obsessing on why it's not working at all. Ironically, the BLTouch, the thing I most worried about fussing with, worked right away, and yet the silly fans are having fun with me.

Phaedrux

Usually the part cooling fan wouldn't be thermostatically controlled at all, it would be gcode controlled by the slicer.

The other thing missing from your M106 lines is an S value to use.

Try this to test the fan M106 P0 H-1 S1

kb58

@phaedrux Ah, okay, shows how new I am to this. I'll look around in PrusaSlicer and see where that can be enabled... once I know the fan control is working. And thank you!

Phaedrux

@kb58 said in General guidelines for accessing tool board I/O:

PrusaSlicer and see where that can be enabled

The filament tab has the cooling options. It automatically targets the default fan0. So as long as you just have fan0 left as normal manual control it should "just work" if you have it configured in the slicer.

M106 P0 H-1 S0

S0 so that it starts in an off state.

dc42

@kb58 there are some restrictions listed at https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/Duet_3_firmware_configuration_limitations. One of these is that a thermostatically-controlled fan driven from a CAN expansion board can only be controlled by a temperature sensor connected to the same board. This will be why you were unable to make the part cooling fan turn on depending on the bed temperature.

DIY-O-Sphere

@dc42

I have converted my machine to toolboard.
Everything works without problems. I have found a few small things that could be improved in the documentation.
However, I came across the limitation "The main board does not react to heater faults on expansion boards by pausing the print" which frankly bothered me. And I wonder if there is a date for a relase that will remove this restriction.
Is this a security risk?

dc42

@diy-o-sphere this is scheduled for fixing in release 3.4.