Coming soon to a PanelDue near you...

On behalf of the Duet3D team I am please to announce the release of RepRapFirmware, Duet Web Control and Duet Software Framework 3.4.0 stable.

RepRapFirmware 3.4.0 brings more than 90 new and improved features and around 80 bug fixes. New features include:

• Input shaping, to allow faster print speeds without exciting ringing
• Thumbnail image display of print files in Duet Web Control and on PanelDue (requires a compatible slicer and PanelDue firmware 3.4.1-pre2
• Heater feedforward, to maintain more even nozzle temperatures on high flow rate extruders
• More flexible control of power supplies
• More control over machine behaviour when heater faults, stepper driver warnings etc. occur
• Support for the new Duet 3 MB6XD main board for use with external drivers, and the EXP1HCL closed loop stepper motor control board
• Coordinate rotation in the XY plane

Duet Web Control and Duet Software framework now provide:

• Thumbnail image display
• Improved plugin support and new plugin guides for DWC and DSF
• A new HTTP class library for remote control of Duets in standalone and SBC mode
• 12864 display support in SBC mode

Important! If you are upgrading from software 3.3 or earlier, read at least the upgrade notes section of the RRF 3.4.0 release notes to see what alterations if any you may need to make to your configuration and macro files. Users already running 3.4.0RC2 can instead check the abbreviated release notes.

Upgrade instructions:

• For Duet in standalone mode you can find the upgrade files here. Most users can just upload the Duet2and3Firmware-3.4.0.zip file.
• For Duet with attached Single Board Computer, upgrade from the stable feed on the Duet3D package server using apt-get as usual.

Please do not use this thread to report issues with this release that require a response; start a new thread for those instead.

On behalf of the Duet 3D team I am pleased to announce RepRapFirmware 3.2 stable. Here are the upgrade instructions:

• If you are running RepRapFirmware 3.0 or later in standalone mode, download Duet2and3Firmware.zip from https://github.com/Duet3D/RepRapFirmware/releases/tag/3.2 and upload it to your Duet via the web interface
• If you are using Duet + SBC, update from the package server in the usual way (sudo apt-get update followed by sudo apt-get upgrade)
• If you are running RepRapFirmware 2.x you will need to upgrade to firmware 3.0 first, then you can immediately upgrade to 3.2. Alternatively, if you are comfortable using Bossa, you can upgrade directly to 3.2 using Bossa.

Upgrade notes and change lists:

• RRF: https://github.com/Duet3D/RepRapFirmware/blob/v3-dev/WHATS_NEW_RRF3.md
• DWC: https://github.com/Duet3D/DuetWebControl/blob/master/WHATS_NEW.md
• DSF: https://github.com/Duet3D/DuetSoftwareFramework/blob/master/WHATS_NEW.md

If you encounter problems with this release, or problems upgrading to it, please start a new thread to describe those issues.

Edit: If you are on the unstable package feed (Duet + SBC), you can update to the latest version as usual again. The corresponding packages have been fixed.

These are our current plans for RRF over the next few months:

RRF 3.2: release candidate 2 appears to be very stable so we plan to release 3.2 final very soon.

RRF 3.3: this is planned to be a short cycle. Work on it has already started. The focus is on making Duet main boards easier to test using our new CAN-based automatic test equipment. As a side-effect of this work, there may be experimental support for using a Duet 3 Mini as a Duet 3 expansion board (see the M954 command), however functionality will probably be limited to driving motors and reading/writing GPIO ports. RRF 3.3 will also increase the maximum number of axes supported to 15, and I expect to provide support for tuning heaters on regular Duet 3 expansion and tool boards. Some other easy-to-implement features may be included. I hope to have a release candidate available by the end of January.

RRF 3.4: the focus of this will be the motion system. We will be looking at input shaping, S-curve acceleration, better cornering algorithms, and other mechanisms to improve print quality. Alongside this we will remove the limitation on using endstops connected to Duet 3 main boards to control motors connected to expansion boards. We expect to start work on this in February. We have a long list of other new features for consideration in this release, including further improvements to the performance of the Duet 3 MB6HC board.

I finally found time to implement the new heater tuning algorithm. This algorithm is more accurate than the old one (especially in measuring the dead time), often completes more quickly than the old algorithm, and is more portable to expansion and tool board firmware.

The new algorithm also tunes the heater with related fans both off and on. The purpose of this is to allow the heater control to implement feedforward, which monitors fan PWM changes and adjusts the heater power in advance of the PID algorithm spotting that something has changed. Here is a temperature plot showing the effect on reported hot end temperature when a print cooling fan is turned on and then off, with and without feedforward.

The new algorithm is implemented in RRF 3.2beta3.2 which I hope to release later today. Subject to the feedback I receive from beta testers, I hope to include it in tool and expansion board firmware too in the RRF 3.2 final release.

I am pleased to announce the release of RepRapFirmware 3.0, the first stable release in the RepRapFirmware 3 series.

Users of Duet 3 with attached Raspberry Pi can upgrade to it using apt-get update and apt-get upgrade as usual, from either the stable or the unstable package feed.

Duet 2 users and Duet 3 users running in standalone mode can download it from https://github.com/dc42/RepRapFirmware/releases/tag/3.0. Most users should be able to upgrade just by uploading the .zip file to /sys in Duet Web Control.

If you are currently using RepRapFirmware 2.x, you will need to make significant changes to your config.g file when upgrading to RRF3. See https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/RepRapFirmware_3_overview#Section_Summary_of_what_you_need_to_do_to_convert_your_configuration_and_other_files for details. You should read this thoroughly and plan your migration to RRF3.

Now that RepRapFirmware 3 is released, I do not plan to do any further releases of RepRapFirmware 2.x or 1.x. But of course it is possible for others to fork the repository and do their own amendments to 1.x and 2.x.

On behalf of the Duet3D team, I am pleased to announce the release of software package 3.3beta3. This release brings the following:

• Global variables are now included in the object model. This means they can be viewed in the DWC Object Model browser and can be accessed by SBC add-ons.
• The DWC Object Model browser now provides a summary of what each value means
• RRF and DWC now support accelerometers (currently in standalone mode only) in preparation for the forthcoming support for input shaping. See https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/Accelerometers.
• Many other minor improvements and bug fixes

RRF release notes: https://github.com/Duet3D/RepRapFirmware/wiki/Changelog-RRF-3.x-Beta-&-RC#reprapfirmware-33beta3
DWC release notes: https://github.com/Duet3D/DuetWebControl/releases/tag/v3.3-b3
DSF release notes: https://github.com/Duet3D/DuetSoftwareFramework/releases/tag/v3.3-b3

Users of Duet + SBC can upgrade from the unstable package server.

Users of Duet in standalone mode can upgrade using the files at https://github.com/Duet3D/RepRapFirmware/releases/tag/3.3beta3. The IAP files have not changed but they are included in this release because some users may need to re-upload them to put them in the correct folder on the SD card.

A genuine Einsy Rambo board is $120 on Ultimachine's web site, and it has only 4 stepper drivers, an 8-bit processor and no web interface. So I think $130 is in the right ball park for a high-quality board that comes with support and a warranty. In time I expect the price will come down.

MKS can only sell boards as cheaply as they do by parasitising open source designs, violating the open source license agreements, offering no support and little or no warranty, and selling boards before they have got the design right (as happened with the SBase). We're not like that.

Our latest thoughts about this are to embed a MQTT client in RRF that publishes messages about the current state of the printer e.g. printer powered up, print started, print completed, print paused by filament monitor.

1. Are you using M501 at the end of config.g? You need to do that for your changes saved using M500 to take effect when you restart.

2. Are you calibrating with the bed and hot end at stable temperatures? Because deltas home to maximum, the Z=0 position may vary if the temperatures are not stable.

3. If you are calibrating with the bed heater on, have you allowed it sufficient time for the temperature to stabilise across the bed? It's not uncommon for bed plates to warp with temperature. Depending on the placement of the bed thermistor, it may take several minutes fr the bed to reach full temperature even after the thermistor reports that it has.

HTH David

@Gamefanatic3D that's correct, the syntax described at https://docs.duet3d.com/en/User_manual/Reference/Gcode_meta_commands#echo-command does not permit spaces after the > or >> or >>> symbol.

@luc yes MZV has quite a wide bandwidth, however the amount of reduction is not as great as ZVD. In your graph, ZVD cancels the 44Hz peak almost completely whereas MZV cancels it by about 90%.

BTW when dealing with such a sharp peak you may get better results of you reduce the damping factor from its default value of 0.1 to e.g. 0.05.

@ash100 the reason we haven't seen this before is that or recommendation us to home in open loop mode. You can do this by using M569 with D parameter to switch to open loop mode at the start if each homing file, and back to closed loop mode at the end.

Homing in closed loop mode may be possible with the right mechanics. The reason you get the position error is probably because after the homing switch is triggered, there is a latency of a few milliseconds before the command to stop the motor is received. If you can arrange your homing switch to trigger a small distance (2mm may be enough) before the physical stop is reached, so that the motor can overshoot the homing position slightly without hitting a hard stop, that may avoid the error. If it doesn't then I will need to amend the firmware to ignore position errors immediately after the motor is commanded to stop during homing.

@luc the movement of the belt over the toothed pulleys can also cause vibration. To check this, repeat the input shaping test moves at a different speed and see whether the frequency changes. Alternatively, un-check the box to take readings over the whole move and see if the peak goes away.

@luc did you have any fans running when you did the measurements? If so then the 74Hz spike may have been vibration from a fan. 74Hz is 4440 rpm.

@dhusolo you have a frequency to voltage converter, however what you need to interface the Duet spindle control to a VFD with 0-10V input is a PWM to voltage converter. See https://docs.duet3d.com/en/User_manual/Machine_configuration/Configuration_CNC#connecting-a-spindle.

Note, when fed from the 10V supply on the VFD these devices can't supply as much as 10V output, so the full spindle speed is not available.

With the frequency to PWM converter that you have, you would need to adjust the Q parameter in the M950 command that set up the port in order to vary the speed.

In future we expect to support control of spindles via Modbus RTU. If your VFD supports the Modbus commands described in the manual you linked to then control over Modbus may be possible in future.

@Eumldeuml said in Gradual layer shifts with integrated JMC stepper servos:

If I understand correctly, this means there won't be any direct connection from STEP+ on the driver/motor to STEP+ on the EBB? But the signals will still be differential?

That's correct. Drivers most commonly have opto isolated 5V inputs, which don't require differential drive. A few have RS422-compatible differential inputs; 3V drive is sufficient for those.

@Dlock34 said in dual motor z axis bed leveling not probing by lead screws:

M574 'z1 S2

The DWC message is provoked by that line because there is no 'z axis.

@p8blr if the axis is flagged as not homed then you can't assume anything about the value of that variable. If the machine has just been powered up or rebooted then it's quite likely to have the value zero. If the axis became un-homed because you disabled the Z motor then it could be anything.

One option is to reduce the motor current while you make that move, so that if it tries to go drop the bed lower than the minimum stop, it won't do any damage. Or you could configure that overtravel switch as the axis endstop temporarily, then use H1 instead of H2 for that move.