Lot of thread hijacking happening with digressions around FreeCAD so I believe having one topic with some general FreeCAD discussion might be beneficial for us all

Some general data for the first post on the topic

URL: https://www.freecadweb.org/

The releases download:
https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/releases

All releases (including pre-release) are rather old, and since this is rather active project using "latest and greatest" is useful even if there are few bugs in the "nightly" version. The problem is that there is no system generating nightly builds so you have to build it yourself. Not super complicated task and requires all free tools but it can take a while, it is fully explained here (you need to follow steps exactly):
compile on windows
compile on linux
compile on macos

I'm compiling it myself for windows 10 64bit, but so far did not figure out how to make installer but if you have any previous version installed just unpacking my archive anywhere and running from there works. I will update this post from time to time when I compile new version I will be adding new builds as I make them on meganz so check for time ti time. File name is informative enough :).

Documentation is decent and there's a number of YT videos too

If you want to help the project out and speed up the maturity there are number of ways you can help out the project, from setting up the nightly build system (this would be awesome), writing documentation, translation, donation, writing code...

As discovered by ppl with better eyes than mine the dev pre-release placeholder that's old actually host nightly builds so no need to compile ourselves

p.s. I think the reasons for moving to FreeCAD are irrelevant so let's keep focus on FreeCAD here. Noone is forced to migrate and all other tools have their place..

is it worth learning freecad: https://youtu.be/udIBhVIy5MI

IMHO if you need to store babystep value you are doing something wrong. Baby stepping is there so you can "compensate" for the bad repeatability of your Z probe.

what do you mean by "many printers not accepting arc g-code", all of the mainstream ones do, marlin supports it, rrf supports it, smoothieware supports it ?! iirc (have not tried myself) also the redeem (replicate stuff) and klipper support it too ... so where dis "many printers" that does not support arc g-code come from?

Repeatability of the endstops is rather high, even for high quality spring microswithes, let alone good optical endstops. Now, I personally never printer PEEK, PEKK.. (I machined them few times) but considering price of that filament why would anyone use open loop driver for any axes?!?! Conversion to high precision silent servo's or closed loop steppers cost less than one failed print with those filaments.

@Kolbi step works. Unfortunately, there's no (yet) option to detect features like what solidworks know how to do but ...

FreeCAD can import both mesh and solids by default without any additional "workspaces"

imports step, iges, inventor, dwg, dxf, 3d studio, obj, brep, svg, ply, pov, stl, obj ....

can export everything you can think of probably .. the file format's are not a problem... but for solidworks -> freeCAD I'd say step is the way to go

IIRC it's around 200k steps/sec, with some round 100steps/mm number your minimal "make sense" segment of 0.1mm would be 10 steps, so just for stepping we're talking 20k segments/sec/ Everything else needs to be done too (parsing, pathfinding, buffering..).

I have not run a test with DUET but Smoothieware on comparable cortex M3 32bit LPC1769 (compared to duet2 cortex M4 SAM4E8E that's a bit better but for this purpose more/less same, or duet3 cortex m7 ATSAME70 that's a lot faster) and it can process 2610 "simple" gcodes/second, and that's trough USB (from sd card should be faster, here you have overhead of calculating CRC, ACK-ing every message...). With full calculation, trough USB, controlling laser drawing raster (so very small segments) the team tested successfully 1000 pixels / second if 1 gcode per pixel (it can go 5-10x faster if you compress more pixels into single G-code using non-standard G-code extension available in one of the forks)

if you switch to RRF3 there's a trick I'm using

before you run any probing you reconfigure treshold:

G31 P{sensors.probes[0].value[0] + 5}

it reads current value and sets treshold to +5

works like a charm (you might want to use +10 depending on what type of interference you have on orion)

@CTRDevelopments old TT printers have something similar made, not the 2 extruders, but something similar. With DUET you can setup push-pull as you got already explained as a mixing extruder. I think you need to setup firmware retraction there and it should work great. The issue can in theory happen if one of them skip steps and they get out of sync you can have some tension in the filament inside the tube. Anyhow, that part is already explained and @deckingman have ton of exp there so he can help you with any issues if you go that way.

I chimed in for the TT way.

Old TT UP printer (UP Plus 2 is different) had a push-pull configuration. On the hotend side you have standard direct drive, there is a ptfe tube pushed into extruder (not fixed!! so not like bowden, just pressed on to the extruder, if you remove the filament it would fall off), on the other side ptfe tube is attached to the "push" mechanism. Push mechanism is a DC motor with a rubber wheel pressed on with a bearing between which is your filament. So when DC motor run the filament is pushed from the spool and pulled into the ptfe tube. No speed control, motor is either full on or full off. Motor is controled by the microswitch, when motor pushes filament into the tube the tension lifts the tube from the microswitch and it turns off the motor, when the extruder pulls filament and there's "slack" that presses the microswitch and DC motor is turned on to grab more filament from the spool and push it towards extruder.

It supposedly work great, I never tried myself as I started with UP Plus2 that does not have that mechanism (supposedly new extruder was much stronger / using much stronger motor and did not need that system to feed in the filament, downside is that pla got impossible to print with it as motor was heating up so the heat break was too hot for the PLA, but UP is mainly ABS printer so noone cared).

it's this thing on the left

@JohnOCFII I was having similar issue and I assumed it might be 'cause I'm using too precise encoder (600step/rotation) but you have 2.4mm/pulse, that's 2 or 3 orders of magnitude less precision than mine so there's no way duet is not able to handle the pulse train (I believe I was maybe sending too many inpulses so some got eaten away) ...

I ended up configuring the sensor to use high span, minimum 20% and maximum 5000% and I reset the sensor on every layer (I added the script in slicer) and that solved my problems making it properly trigger if filament jams or snaps

@Infinitysnek your schematic was very close to the real thing ...

here's my take

@omni IIRC panel only sends M24 to the board and board then calls resume.g and resumes the print after M25/M226. The way to cancel is iirc M0/M1/M2/M112 ... again just sending code from panel to board... what you could do is add some M117 to the resume.g and cancel.g to display some debug message to know what script was executed by the RRF so you will know what code was sent..

I know I myself often click on cancel instead on resume on octoprint web interface (printer not related to RRF in any way) 'cause the buttons are not logical at that point .. maybe it is a human error

@T3P3Tony said in PanelDue designations:

@arhi its an option for a display controller thats on the market. These chips sit between the PanelDue or other controller and the LCD screen itself.

cool, so duet has nothing to do with that design it's just a type of LCD .. clear

(I'm rather inexperienced with all the cpld/fpga stuff .. I learned it and do use them in my projects from time to time but even after years I'd not call myself even a junior in that field due to really low number of projects I used them in ... so wherever I see interesting application of them I try to get as much data as I can so I learn / gain some new ideas)

@dc42 said in PanelDue designations:

@arhi there is or was a 7" display that used a CPLD chip instead of a conventional display controller.

Interesting This was designed by you/duet or was some off the market display? Never seen one of those, thanks for the info

@dc42 said in PanelDue designations:

7C is for a 7" display with a CPLD controller

CPLD ? Is there a schematic available for this somewhere (super interested to see what you used CPLD for on paneldue) ? Thanks

@crookid the 15$ board from TL is amplifier for PT100 that should be a copy of the ultimaker PT100 amplifier.

On the marlin you would connect the output directly to a analog input pin (no 4k7 voltage divider resistor) and you would set the RTD type to 20. If you look at Marlin source:
https://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Marlin/blob/57ca996c31e39b6935e2a24451040fa4379dc23e/Marlin/Configuration.h#L515
you see that

 *    20 : Pt100  with circuit in the Ultimainboard V2.x with mainboard ADC reference voltage = INA826 amplifier-board supply voltage.
 *                NOTE: (1) Must use an ADC input with no pullup. (2) Some INA826 amplifiers are unreliable at 3.3V so consider using sensor 147, 110, or 21.

so, in order to use this amp board (from triangle labs or from ultimaker or ..) you need clear analog input pin on the DUET.

If we look at the duet schematic:

the thermistor0,1,2 have 4k7 to advref (pullup/voltage divider) so you cannot use them, but you should be able to use any of the thermistor4-7 pins to feed in the output of that amplifier board.

That should work wrt how to connect. Now, how to configure PT100 amp in the firmware to show proper temp values - I have no clue, someone else will have to step in

@hestiahuang said in Does anyone here work on Superslicer?:

@dc42 said in Does anyone here work on Superslicer?:

able us to display thumbnail images on Panel

Sounds great! Only SS and PS? How about S3D and IdeaMaker?

Both s3d and IdeaMaker are closed source so none of us can add anything to them. When at least one other slicer support this and the paneldue is parsing this we can request on the s3d and ideamaker forums for them to support this feature too.

Now, s3d is dead so nothing will happen there for sure, IdeaMaker is awesome (my slicer of choice) but they are pretty slow to implement features that are totally unusable for their own printers. They only recently added octoprint integration (they had network upload and network printing with their own custom printers for years) .. but since they already embed some image in gcode if I remember correctly for their own printers this might go faster than octoprint integration

@o_lampe said in Duet 2 Ethernet and SBC:

@arhi @PCR @deadwood83
Sorry for digging out this old thread, but I was curious if it would make sense to make a Duet2 adapter board for the RasPi Zero 2W?

I have very bad experience with rpizero boards so...

As for the duet2+sbc, I made this for test, it worked and I let it be, I focused on making some adaption software as external network app and not something that would run on sbc... and that was looong time ago (from when this thread was live) and since then I maybe had 2 hours of printing time total .. too busy with work ... hopefully I'll be able to come back to 3d printers in spring but I got me some resin printers dunno if I'll spend much time with duet boards I want to spend some time with them first

@jazbaatbadalgaye each of those links show you where the page moved?!

https://github.com/Duet3D/RepRapFirmware/wiki/Building-RepRapFirmware
https://github.com/Duet3D/RepRapFirmware/wiki/Notes-on-using-FreeRTOS
https://github.com/Duet3D/RepRapFirmware/wiki/Adding-New-Kinematics

@dc42 there's an issue with https://github.com/Duet3D/RepRapFirmware/wiki/Notes-on-using-FreeRTOS does not allow me to view it

@petriheino said in PA tuning:

Hi, Im trying to repeat this test and trying to find solution.

@arhi did you found any solution for it or which way did you go with retraction/PA settings?

did not turn on any of my printers for almost a year.. too much work to be done, no time for hobbies so nothing done about this

@masso said in Configuring S42B Close Loop Stepper Controller:

@arhi check if ..

not running marlin, was stepping from my own rig, very slow, like 1sec on, 1sec off, so that was not an issue... configuration and calibration were all ok, oled on all 5 drivers ... it's just not working ok, skipping steps, missing positions .. dunno if it is firmware or hw problem I gave them away my time is waaaaaaaaaaay to valuable to be wasting them on debugging PRC hw