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Titan Aero – Extruder Replacement Part 2
Let's return to the Titan Aero and further calibration
Welcome back,
In this post I would like to share with you my experience in adapting the new ectruder to Ender 3. I honestly admit that it has processed several problems for me but it seems to be good. Thanks to this I have future knowledge on how to deal with them. Of course I will describe how I dealt with them.
In the first part I described mechanically how to assemble the Titan, yes I know, not everything is super clear, but you could definitely draw some conclusions on my mistakes. In this step, I will describe how to set up the printer and slicer so that printing can take place smoothly. You need to spend a few hours because we have to do test prints here.
Useful links:
- marlin 2.0
- bootloader endera 3
- repetier host
3... 2... 1... start
Start by connecting our printer to your computer. Here we need two things cable and a program in which we will be able to control our printer.
Ender 3 has front inputs identical to those of digital cameras, you can also use a bootloader.
I personally chose the straight path with a standard cable, of course this has a certain limitation, i.e. we cannot upload another software, i.e. marlin 2
Printer drivers should install automatically on WIN10 operating systems. Now we need to choose a program to control the printer. There are quite a lot of them. It is worth reading about them and choosing the best for us. I used Repetier-Host.
It blows boredom, well such a life, there is always time to learn ...
After starting the program, we must connect to the printer. We go here in the configuration tab - Printer settings. Select the appropriate Port to which we have a cable connected. It should appear in the choice menu. We need the appropriate transmission speed for Ender 3 to 115200. This is one of the two used speeds the other is 250,000..
PLEASE NOTE THE WALL OF THE TEXT, BEFORE READING, CONSULT YOUR DOCTOR OR PHARMACEUTE
At the beginning I started by calibrating the stepper motor. It is worth using a new stepper motor here. Smaller, because it is placed on a trolley and we have gears used so you can afford a weaker engine. By reducing the weight, we will improve the inertia associated with the weight of the entire element. However, I used the current one but in the near future I will change it. Due to the fact that the gearbox is used here, we need to change the number of motor steps per mm. In the old version we needed X steps to pull 1mm and in the current X * Y steps where Y is the ratio of our gear. The easiest way to do this is by trial and error.
We start heating in this lid ... but first we will check the amount of filament served
Let's start by heating our head to 200 degrees so that you can easily have the material flow through the extruder. Of course, this applies to PLA. Then we need to set a marker on the filament to make the measurement. I have used the eye to pass it so I used it as the start of movement. Then turn on the 100mm filament extension in the program. After the process is finished, we again mark the reference place on the filament for me, i.e. the eye that passes through. It measures the position of the start and end points from each other. If it is too small or too large this distance you need to change the number of steps per mm.
We do it in the program, go to the Configuration - Configuration EEPROM firmware tab. We have here the number of steps xxx field. I had a default of 93. If we have too short distance, this number should be increased. The easiest way is to calculate the number of steps x real / nominal distance and multiply this result by the number of steps and enter it in the program. We repeat it until we get the best value close to ours. Set the E Axis resolution parameter.
Now we are warming up the fest
In the next step I decided to improve the heating of the head. I decided to replace the heater with the original one added to the extruder. However, here were my first problems. The temperature increased very rapidly and rose to 70 higher than the set value. Initially, I thought it was a problem with the parameters, but unfortunately not. After delving into the subject and checking everything including dismantling the extruder a few times. I found that Ender 3 works on 24V and the heater in the set was 12V. There was a problem with this. So if someone has a problem with too rapid heating check what heater you have and what it should be. If we attach a 12V to 24V fan, it will burn but because the heater is a resistor it will work. The only problem will be very hot. It is possible to configure it so that weaker heater can be used but it requires Marlin configuration.
I had to use another 24V here. I found that I would give better than the original, i.e. not like the nominal configuration 40W and 50W. so as to have some reserve.
The program has a temperature charts tab. On it we will observe how our head heats up. After turning on the heating, we can see how the graph is drawn. We want the temperature desired by us to persist. In practice it is impossible but we want to strive for the best possible state. I assumed that I want to have fluctuations + - 0.5 degrees.
We need to do PID configurations. These are the parameters controlling our heating head. We do this by entering the Command in the upper window (M303 E0 S200 C8) where:
- M303 E0 is checking the PID value,
- S200 is the set temperature,
- C8 the number of repetitions to be measured.
After completing this measurement we will get these three parameters that should be entered in the same window as the number of steps on the stepper motor. It is worth repeating this measurement several times to best match the parameters.
Phew, that's probably all ... and yet the nature of inanimate things
After setting all PID parameters and extruder steps, I started printing. And again there was a problem 😊 After releasing the first print, it turned out that the printhead was clogging. I started to delve into the subject. I changed the PID values several times, changed the number of steps, changed the filament but it did nothing.
Only after some time did I come to the conclusion that if we now have direct versions and a gearbox is used, then retraction may be too strong. So I turned it off. I was able to print it out I had the detail. Unfortunately qualitatively poor but I already knew where the problem was.
The original value for Ender 3 retraction is about 5mm (at least it worked perfectly at this value for me). After several attempts, I was able to determine the optimal value after changing to a direct type extruder, i.e. 1mm and a speed of 50mm / s.
Happy end Titan Aero founded and calibrated
Currently, I am still trying to improve my prints with the help of Tian, but this is cosmetics. Personally, I think this extruder is a very successful idea to improve the printer, although it caused me some trouble, but I think it is a lesson for the future.
I invite you to comment
PS .: I had one more problem with the clogging head, who would have thought that you could forget about the PTFE tube 😉
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