2018-02-28, 04:16 PM
(This post was last modified: 2018-03-01, 10:26 PM by mr_intensity.
Edit Reason: Minor tweaks/spelling.
)
Electronics II
Damn! I forgot my small screwdrivers.
Something I forgot to mention in last week's stand build: After I put the stand together, I did one last thing before calling it a night. I got some masking tape and made labels for all the wires, so I know what is what.
Well, okay, I labeled everything with a plug on it. That meant that the extruder heater and the extruder fan went unlabeled. However, these are four wires that are very different. So I know what is what.
Anyway, I got to build night early. Good! The first thing I wanted to do was get the "factory settings" for the potentiometers on the Pololu A4988 drivers.
I set my cheap-arse Cen-Tech multimeter to 20V, and had at it. Using Q3D's wiring diagram, I knew which A4988 went with which axis. And I took notes:
+--------+----------------+
|Driver | Reading (Volts)|
+--------+----------------+
|extruder| 0.66 V |
|Xaxis | 0.64 V |
|Yaxis | 0.66 V |
|Zaxis | 0.68 V |
+--------+----------------+
Right! With that out of the way, unplug the thing from the wall, and start plugging motors and stuff in to the RAMPS board.
I plugged in the Y-Axis motor first. Then, I thought about it.
Maybe I should put this thing in its place in the stand before I put all the wires in. I tried to do this with the Y-Axis motor plugged in. That didn't work too well. For starters, the fan fell off the board as I started to contort it to get it in place with the Y-Axis motor cable still connected.
Out came the Krazy Glue™ pen to make the motor mount permanent. Also, out came the Y-Axis motor plug to make the electonics board mount easier.
With the electronics board properly mounted, plugging in the wires went without incident. Then, it came time to do the screw terminals.
"Damn! I forgot my small screwdrivers."
Luckily, my chapter had some small screwdrivers, so I went at it. First step: Strip some of the insulation off the extruder heater wire, and screw it into the terminals. It was actually a pain in the tukkus to get the wires to stay in the hole. But that was nothing compared to the extruder fan wires.
There was nothing in the wiring diagram about the fan. So, I just treated it like the cooling fan on the electronics board. I hooked it in to the screw terminals on the RAMPS board at one of the 12V rails. Big mistake.
Tip: Once you have the power rails wired up to the green connector on the RAMPS board, ***NEVER*** touch those screws unless you absolutely have to.
I could not get the damned screws to hold the wires after I pulled them to twist them with the fan Wires. Something that should have been very simple was a battle royal.
Smoke Test II: Okay, now that I plugged a bunch of stuff in to RAMPS, and since I messed with the power connections, it was time to run a second smoke test. Plug the thing into the wall, and...
No smoke.
Whew! Now all that is left is to plug in the netbook, and fire up Knoppix...
Damn! I forgot my small screwdrivers.
Something I forgot to mention in last week's stand build: After I put the stand together, I did one last thing before calling it a night. I got some masking tape and made labels for all the wires, so I know what is what.
Well, okay, I labeled everything with a plug on it. That meant that the extruder heater and the extruder fan went unlabeled. However, these are four wires that are very different. So I know what is what.
Anyway, I got to build night early. Good! The first thing I wanted to do was get the "factory settings" for the potentiometers on the Pololu A4988 drivers.
I set my cheap-arse Cen-Tech multimeter to 20V, and had at it. Using Q3D's wiring diagram, I knew which A4988 went with which axis. And I took notes:
+--------+----------------+
|Driver | Reading (Volts)|
+--------+----------------+
|extruder| 0.66 V |
|Xaxis | 0.64 V |
|Yaxis | 0.66 V |
|Zaxis | 0.68 V |
+--------+----------------+
Right! With that out of the way, unplug the thing from the wall, and start plugging motors and stuff in to the RAMPS board.
I plugged in the Y-Axis motor first. Then, I thought about it.
Maybe I should put this thing in its place in the stand before I put all the wires in. I tried to do this with the Y-Axis motor plugged in. That didn't work too well. For starters, the fan fell off the board as I started to contort it to get it in place with the Y-Axis motor cable still connected.
Out came the Krazy Glue™ pen to make the motor mount permanent. Also, out came the Y-Axis motor plug to make the electonics board mount easier.
With the electronics board properly mounted, plugging in the wires went without incident. Then, it came time to do the screw terminals.
"Damn! I forgot my small screwdrivers."
Luckily, my chapter had some small screwdrivers, so I went at it. First step: Strip some of the insulation off the extruder heater wire, and screw it into the terminals. It was actually a pain in the tukkus to get the wires to stay in the hole. But that was nothing compared to the extruder fan wires.
There was nothing in the wiring diagram about the fan. So, I just treated it like the cooling fan on the electronics board. I hooked it in to the screw terminals on the RAMPS board at one of the 12V rails. Big mistake.
Tip: Once you have the power rails wired up to the green connector on the RAMPS board, ***NEVER*** touch those screws unless you absolutely have to.
I could not get the damned screws to hold the wires after I pulled them to twist them with the fan Wires. Something that should have been very simple was a battle royal.
Smoke Test II: Okay, now that I plugged a bunch of stuff in to RAMPS, and since I messed with the power connections, it was time to run a second smoke test. Plug the thing into the wall, and...
No smoke.
Whew! Now all that is left is to plug in the netbook, and fire up Knoppix...
![[Image: avatar_23.png?dateline=1515658171]](https://fabric8r.com/community/uploads/avatars/avatar_23.png?dateline=1515658171){kind=avatar}