I figured it out. I was poking around and saw that somebody else had an issue with the electrolytic capacitor and how it had lifted off the board. I re-soldered the capacitor down onto the board and thought I fixed it. It seemed to work, but once the board heated up from the residual heat I was still having issues.

I decided to look at the IR LED's through my phone camera, and only one was lighting up. As I pressed on the unlit LED, it lit up. I re-soldered the unlit LED, and now they both light up, and the LED doesn't lift off the broken solder joint as the board heats up.

If anybody else out there has issues with their boards and wants to check that the LED is working, look through your phone camera in the dark. It should show up as a pink/purple light on the screen.

I figured it out. It's crashing the head on the X-axis due to the probe point for the leadscrew being slightly off. I just need to adjust that.

@Phaedrux Added M558 with just the H parameter to my G29 macro and now it works perfectly. Thank you.

@T3P3Tony None of the resellers in the USA have the 6HC in stock, nevermind there is about a 20 dollar markup through them.

@DIY-O-Sphere Okay, this is what ended up working.

; Heaters
; Bed
M308 S0 P"e6temp" Y"thermistor" T100000 R4700 B3950 ; configure sensor 0 as thermistor on pin bedtemp
M950 H7 C"!exp.heater7" T0                           ; create bed heater output on exp.heater7 and map it to sensor 0
M307 H7 A223.1 C298.7 D1.2 V22.8 B0            ; Disable bang-bang mode for the bed heater and set PWM limit
M140 H7
M143 H7 S80                                   ; set temperature limit for heater 0 to 80C

The naming conventions for pins and thermistor inputs, as well as having the number offset for them seems like an oversight.

@mrehorstdmd @zapta @mendenmh @mwolter @arhi I just replaced the Igus bushings with the LM16UU I ordered. No more issues. Now I have no idea what to do with all these Igus bushings I have.

Hi all.

I have been using the differential IR probe for a while now and it has been working flawlessly. However, it has started to act up and I am not sure why. I changed my nozzle out to a bondtech CHT nozzle, re-adjusted the z offset, and now I have issues where the IR probe will not trigger. I re-ran a Z calibration to be sure, and I had some odd readings. With the heated bed off I was getting consistent readings between 1.55 and 1.56mm. I then turned the heated bed on, and as the temperature of the bed climbed, the z offset started to decrease. At 120C the z offset was reading 0.95, and I was getting some instances where the bed was crashing into the nozzle after the probe failed to trigger. I now have issues with printing because the probe will not trigger before it hits the nozzle. I have some pictures showing that the probe is definitely not too far away from the nozzle. I removed the probe and looked for physical damage on it and have found none. This issue was happening on RRF 3.2.2 and 3.3 (I updated in case maybe it was a bug).

The heated bed is a high temp e3d heated bed with borosilicate glass. I have placed a piece of matte black paper between the glass and the heated bed.

Could it be noise on the electronics? I've had issues with that before. Maybe I can change the mode of the IR sensor.

Any ideas on what the issue would be? I would like to continue using this probe.

Yeah, definitely my Z-axis. I ran some prints and changed my pause and resume to not lift Z and the indentation is gone. Looks like I need to get some pillow block bearings for the leadscrews and new couplers.

@wilriker Would help if we knew exactly what was going on.

Also, if all is he looking to do is change power at the heater block he can change the PWM duty cycle and get the same results. If he's looking to increase power draw on a FET or something then he would need some power resistors.

@tekkydave Yep, mine is fake as shit. Looks like I need to get some better ones.

Hi all,

I'm trying to set up the macro files in this thread Re: Single Macro for filament handling?.

I am using a simple filament switch. The issue I am having is the object model sensors.filamentMonitors[0].filamentPresent returns a null value when querying it with M409. If I query sensors.filamentMonitors[0].status I receive either "ok" or "noFilament". The issue is, I can't use this in the if statement. Is there something I am doing wrong here? I thought the filamentPresent key would work correctly, or is that only for the laser filament monitor or the rotating magnet filament monitor?

Thank you

@OwenD So what options are there for something that is as light and compact as a linear rail, but is actually straight? Trying to find straightness tolerances online for even basic stuff like aluminum extrusion has been a headache.

@JoergS5 The bed is isloated. The swiss clips are removed, the glass on top of the aluminum is 'floating'. The only force acting to deform the bed is the force of the microswitch on the euclid probe, which is negligible.

I've already determined that the rail is the biggest issue. I can slide a 0.1mm piece of paper underneath it with ease when I have it on a piece of ground granite. The thing is like a see saw. But apparently that is OKAY according to everybody I have talked to, because there 'isn't a tolerance' for straightness. So again, my original question, why does everybody use linear rails if they are as straight as a wet noodle.

@gloomyandy The wire loom on the old machine is stiffer than the new machine. The air tube is a cpap tube, it is extremely flexible. The CAN wire going to the head is a continuous flex IGUS CAN wire made for these applications. It's very flexible. The power wires are also silicone fine braid wires. I HIGHLY doubt it is the wires. I have tried repositioning them all over the place, and the heatmap doesn't change.

@mrehorstdmd I've run calibration after calibration. The layout of the heatmap is identical every time. The max deviations may vary by 0.005mm run to run, but I believe that is within acceptable error ranges to rule out the leadscrews.

For getting the bedframe to not fight itself, the screws were all loosely inserted into the bed frame, the frame was 4 point leveled, and then certain screws were torqued, bed was 4 point leveled again, and remaining screws were torqued.

The 4 small screws holding the bed to the frame are what is provided by e3d to mount the bed, and they are not tightened, as e3d says to leave them loose for the bed to float.

The reason I am using 4 points is to specifically eliminate any skew in the bed. I don't believe a kinematic mount will be beneficial here, especially seeing as I have no way of currently making one that would be able to withstand the max 250c temperature of the bed.

This is also a very similar mounting system that I have on my older machine, which once again is producing better results. The way I have measure each machine, the bed will not affect the results.

@moth4017 Do you have a post about it that you can link? If not you should make one and post some pictures of your setup.

@moth4017 I'm not sure if that would fix your issue. What exactly is the issue you are having?

@Tinchus Are you talking about these tolerances?

What I was told, is that the tolerance of width N and height H has no effect on the straightness of the rail, at least for the MGN series rails. There are some rails that are wide enough that there is a straightness tolerance, but everything I have been told is that there is no tolerance for straightness, and that there won't be any guaranteed straightness.

This is one response I received.

"So typically single bolt hole row linear guides do not have a straightness tolerance. The rails do have a dimensional tolerance which is typically +/-0.0002" or so for width and height. The reason for this is that at any significant length (ie 10x the rail width or so), the straightness of the rail installation is determined by the accuracy of the mounting surface or mounting procedure. It is a bit like asking the straightness of a piece of wet noodle. It can certainly be made straight, but it just depends on how it is aligned or what it is sitting on.

For super high accuracy applications, you would want to follow the procedure in the catalog where you machine a grooved shoulder that the rail sits within. You clamp the rail to the machined edge and then tighten down the bolts. This ensure the rail matches the straightness of the machined edge. In practice, very few installations do this especially with the MG series rails. Instead, you would use a precision ground parallel or some other straight edge and tighten the bolt holes sequentially while clamping the rail to the straight edge. Even then, this is uncommon. Many users just loosely thread the bolts in,push the rail fully against the bolts while tightening without any straight edge at all. This does get you straight enough for many applications. What are you aiming for on straightness and over what span?"

This is the response I received from a different company.

"Linear rails get their straightness from what they are mounted to. Linear rails should ideally be mounted against a reference edge, see here:

https://www.tuli-shop.com/blog/the-do-s-and-don-ts-of-linear-rail-alignment.html

Though some 3D printer designers don’t heed that, resulting in the alignment needing to be done manually.

The +/-0.023mm refers to something different than straightness. If the rail is mounting on a perfectly flat surface, the position of the carriage would be expected to deviate only 0.023mm in any direction while being slid along the rail. It is a measurement of the machining accuracy of the height of the rail. Some more reading here:

https://www.linearmotiontips.com/how-to-choose-linear-guide-accuracy/

guide rails tend to conform to the surface on which they’re mounted. In order to realize the full benefits of a higher accuracy linear guide, the mounting surface should be machined at least to the same standard as the guide."

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I have people telling me conflicting things, so I can't make heads or tails of it. I know there is a tolerance somewhere, or these rails would be shaped like a piece of wet spaghetti.

@mrehorstdmd Here's the old machine. Probably has 3k hours on it with no real maintenance to the motion platform besides oiling and cleaning up debris/dust.

Here's the new machine. Probably about 10 hours on it.

@dc42 I think it was just the toolboard. That toolboard was being warrantied for an accelerometer issue. I replaced it with a new tool board and it works fine. Is there a way to add this information to the warranty form I filled out?

@o_lampe no, but the numbers are there, and the crap machine has about half the deviation.

@T3P3Tony is mounted on 20x20 aluminum extrusion.

@mrehorstdmd I'll post those up when I get a chance.

@Tinchus see, that's exactly opposite of what two resellers have told me so far. Both of them have said that there's no tolerance for straightness on the rail, and that it's meant to conform to the reference surface. I know that's bullshit, because there HAS to be a manufacturing tolerance, even if it is just a general tolerance. So short of getting something specifically machined, it seems that I'm SOL.

Hi all,

I'm trying to figure out if what I am experiencing with linear rail is normal, or if I am just getting some bad luck.

I recently put together a second printer, to help support my business, in case my main printer goes down. My main printer is kind of my hobby printer, that has been upgraded and modified continually over the years. It's my own design, a corexy with 4 independent leadscrews, and a gantry utilizing linear rod. The gantry on this machine is heavy and bulky, so for my second machine I decided to re-design it to use linear rail, and so I could eventually incorporate a toolchanger.

The old machine, with cheap amazon linear rod, poor linear rod mounts, and really crappy 3d printed linear bearings has a maximum deviation of -0.017 / 0.045mm over the entire bed.

The new machine, after trying to align the linear rail as best I can, using a multitude of different approaches, isn't anywhere even close to those numbers. Maximum Deviations -0.052 / 0.055 mm.

As you can see, there is a massive low spot on the bed, and a visible high spot. Now, I know you may be tempted to say that it's my bed, or my build surface. However, I am probing directly onto a glass plate with a euclid probe on both machines. Both machines are using the same size e3d high temperature heated bed. I even take the glass plate from one machine to the other, and orient it in the same direction, and still get these results.

So my question is, why does everybody use linear rails, if it's basically like dealing with a wet noodle that can't be aligned properly? My first machine, which objectively has a worse design when looking at the machine as a whole, can hold tighter tolerance with cheap ass linear rods from amazon.

Any ideas? I'm pulling my hair out here and feeling like I wasted 3 grand for nothing.