Latest Firmware for TAZ5 - advanced development version

Hmm, not sure if I did something wrong or the K value isn’t needed with the Titan extruder. From left to right (preview rotated bottom to top): Stock, K0, K15, K30 printing now but looking identical to these three.
Using Simplify3d, 0.2 layer height, 205 temperature, 50 mm/s print speed, 1.5mm retraction (not firmware). Thoughts?

It’s very likely the Titan helps with bleeding edges, but that much. .?
Two ideas:
Are the outer perimeters really printed with 50mm/s or only the inner ones?
Is the print speed slowed down due to cooling settings?

Forgot to come back and say I have gotten rid of the gaps I was originally getting in fine detail by turning on firmware retraction and getting my esteps properly tuned. This firmware is great. Nice job Sebastian. My Taz is finally printing things correctly.

Ah, that might be it. I’ll turn off cooling speed reduction and have everything print at the same speed and reprint.

Thanks, it’s always good to have feedback :slight_smile:

sigh I’ve got good news and bad news:

The Good:
Updated the gcode to print entirely at 60mms, was working great. Got K0 and K25 test prints done and was working on a K50 print.

The Bad:
My TAZ 5 has released the magic smoke and no longer works. =( The Z-Axis driver burnt to a crisp, and I found the heatsink that should have been on it with some black smoke around one edge.

Time to go cry into a beer.

That’s bad! :frowning:
The “good” news: that’s not due to the fw change, i changed non of the xyz stepper code and i paid attention to keep the current settings at stock level (all axes,bed and nozzle)

This problem can be found too often in this forum, maybe Lulzbot should check their used glue… Or was your printer inside a box or heat chamber?

Edit: even when the heat sink comes down, the driver should be ok because it has a built in over temperature protection. It disables the stepper until the temperature goes down again. Do you tried reattaching the heat sink, let it cool down and try again?

Ya, I don’t have an enclosure and the printer is in a spare bedroom where it’s 76F. Also no need to wait for it to cool down. It’s definitely fried. I actually heard the noise of it frying a few rooms away.

Now I just need to decide if I want to spend $220 on a new RAMBo board or a different board like the Azteca X3.
tmp_26389-20160608_06541653848403.jpg

btw I don’t want to sound like a fanboy but this firmware has totally fixed my printer. I had corrected all the mechanical issues of the Taz 5 but was still getting substandard prints when compared to my Makerbot R2. Both printers have been heavily modified to correct all their mechanical faults, but while my R2 prints are perfect my Taz prints always had strange issues, with warping, bulging at corners, overhang issues and problems with retraction, just to name a few.

Since updating to this firmware my Taz 5 is now printing better than my R2 and believe me the R2 prints amazing. I am getting really good prints now out of the Taz 5. Finally after a year and a half of banging my head against the wall. This bugfix branch needs to become standard for Lulzbot. I hope they are paying attention.

ps I am using the standard k values for PLA on ABS and it’s perfect.

Hmm, maybe it’s time for me to try this one. I kind of don’t want to redo all the blinky light modification firmware stuff in it though heh.

You might try it first without your mods and decide afterwards?
There is a chance that this feature will be merged into the next official Marlin release, so maybe you also want to wait for your mods until this comes out. Nobody can tell when this will be, but I think it will be this summer…

I’m not a basic user for most things but I’ve only been in printers for a couple years and haven’t dived much deeper than changing everything (really everything) in my slicer, a bit of gcode, and some soldering on a previous printer.

Is this firmware ready to be a daily driver with only undiscovered bugs, or a development version with things that still need to be fixed?

Seeing your photos and other users’ testimonies I really want to upgrade because I feel like my Powerspec 3D put out better prints than my Taz 5 that cost 3x as much. I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty but I don’t want constant issues. Thanks for all the work you’ve put in on this you wonderful human being!

This code is based on a marlin release candidate, so there will be some smaller bugs. But i couldn’t find one since I’m using this versions, in most cases they happen with printers using Corexy setups or bed leveling.
I’m using it for daily printing, but just have a copy of your current firmware on you computer. If you see some bugs, you can restore your old firmware within 3 minutes. :slight_smile:

I’d already installed it, I just got too excited. Good to hear though!

I’m on my 8th 20x20x20 cube, the first 5 were calibrating before the update. Post upgrade there was an immediate improvement, the only thing I changed was my z offset by +.01. I’m currently testing FW retraction with Simplify3D, I’ve found out that retraction must be checked and the following has to be added to the “Additional terminal commands for post processing” under the “Scripts” tab:

{REPLACE "G1 E-1.0000 F6000\n" "G10\n"}
{REPLACE "G1 E0.0000 F6000\n" "G11\n"}
{REPLACE "G1 E0.0000 F1800\n" "G11\n"}

Cube 6 is the first one printed after the update, these pictures aren’t really doing it justice. I ended up at 50mm/s and 30% speed on the last outline loop which probably isn’t as important with the advance feature, but prints are turning out nice. after a few bigger items I’ll play with making it quicker. Pardon all of my notes on the cubes, I was keeping track of my changes.


One note to the k values (remeber it can be changed with a M905 Kxxx command), I have a new value for nGen so to have a complete list valid for a TAZ 5 stock extruder and simmilar ones:

PLA: K=75
nGen: K=150
ABS: Maybe in the range of nGen?

Retraction can be very low with this feature enabled, I’m using 0.5mm for nGen at the moment.

btw I am using an E3d V6 extruder.

Hi!

Just gave the FW a try. Don’t mean to be a pain - just a couple questions.

Having an odd issue where the extruder stepper is making a loud clicking sound and vibrating when the print head goes around curves. I’m attaching a movie. You can hear it well when it gets to the third curve.

I am also experiencing a second problem. The extruder makes odd movements beyond the bounds of the print while printing.

One last small issue. Gaps at Layer starts. Especially on perimeters.


Thak you for your hard work :slight_smile:

J

Your video links are not working for me?
Have you changed something like the k factor, the communication baud rate or have you enabled more features? Which filament are you printing with?

Wired moves can occur when there are communication errors, and your other two problems sounds like the extruder is missing steps. But that shouldn’t occur with this fw config…

Sorry!

The video links should work now.

To answer your questions: I used your pre compiled hex, with no changes. I’m using hatchbox pla which is my go-to brand. It is consistent and works quite well.

what do you think the problems might be?

J

Are you printing from an SD card or over USB? I guess USB, because I think you have communication errors. What print host do you use, is it showing some error strings during the prints?