Hi I've been having a few issues with my MakerBot so I wanted to print directly from the SD card and I've been using a crappy old computer and I've been getting all sorts of slip and step issues with my Um stepper. Motors So I'll look into fixing that, but I thought I'd build the Gen 4 interface board the uh little external keypad so you can operate the MakerBot directly from the keypad. You don't need a computer, you can print directly from SD card. So here we go.

got to build the thing up and uh, hopefully fix the uh steer motor uh issues as well. We'll see anyway. let's build it. and now we have to get in inside our maker bot here.

So we got to take the damn thing apart and it's an absolute mess in here. But we got to plug this thing into our uh interface connector which is all the way in here. Oops. So he's pulled out a cable.

Lovely. Oops. Excellent. What did I pull out that thing? don't know how should have had a clip on that.

Anyway, got to wedge it all back together and this is messy. and there we have it. We now have our Gen 4 interface board so we should be able to operate this thing without the computer. Here we go.

Oh, blinking, that's good. Might have to adjust the contrast. I Assume that's what the pots for. Get out my Swiss arming knife, tweak it.

There we go. Oh well. there is no text. Might have to read the instructions.

Well, No. I'm getting absolutely nothing. It's just flushing the debug here and uh, pressing the reset button and I don't know says I need version uh 2.8 firmware or later in my makeer bot but I'm pretty sure I upgraded to latest firmware when I built the thing so beats me H yeah debug time all right and I checked there it is motherboard version uh, firmware 3.1 so it should support this LCD so don't know why the damn thing is uh, flashing debug back to the instructions Tada Finally got it. There we go it.

uh, looks like it was, um, something to do. maybe the uh uh, ribbon cable crimp or something like that I went in there and sort of Rec crimped it and fiddled around with it. gave it the old uh, percussive maintenance and uh, seems to have come good so looks like we have a winner. Now if you have a look at a uh microscope adapter, I'm trying to print for my Olympus uh microscope, you'll see it's supposed to be a a uh a cylinder basically and uh, it's it's not.

it's stepping out the edges like that. There seems to be, uh, some slippage in my um in my maker bot and you everyone has said uh, something different oh it's uh, there's not enough Drive current going to the stepper Motors the boat. the belts are slipping, there's backlash and that sort of stuff. uh, some people have said that it's um, the fact that I'm printing from the USB instead of from the SD card.

There's you know, a buffer problem sending via USB which I find hard to believe. But anyway, I'm going to act First thing I'm going to do is just try and not build the same thing again. But uh, from the SD card using my um uh Gen 4 interface control. Okay, what I've done is generated the necessary Uh file for my adapter here and I'm going to go build from SD card microscope adapted to that's the only file on the card.

Excellent. So I'll select that. Oh and there goes my makeer bot. It's starting and you can see it's starting to ramp up the temperature there as it actually moves the uh platform.

So it's got a target of 225 and uh, we'll see what happens that'll take some time to warm up. Do it. looks like I screwed this connector that uh came out that was uh, goes to the heated build platform and that's why the heated build platform um was showing the incorrect temperature. It doesn't plug into this connector here even though it's a per.

it's the mating connector with the lockin, everything that's the Quadrature output. It's got to plug into this header over here. Ridiculous. All right, let's try that again.

Monitor Mode 20. There we go. Much better. All right.

So we'll start our uh, start our build again build from SD card and I think that's why it didn't go. ahead cuz it was waiting to uh build up, waiting for the Uh platform to build up to temperature and it never did. So we'll go. Yep, there we go.

All right. The target temperature is 100 so it should start There we go. it's jumping up and the target temperature for the tool head is 225 C So once it reaches those temperatures, it should start the build. No I think I'm just going to stop there because uh, cancel the build I can see some uh uh step in the pattern on the Y mode.

so let me just uh, go into jog mode here and I like this control panel I can just manually tweak things up, take it out and yep, a problem on my y. I'll show you that up close and you should be able to see that stepped pattern over under my finger there. so it it's definitely way off on the Y AIS So my next step is to check the Uh voltage or the drive going the current Drive which you measure uh by measuring voltage on test points here on the board. Um, this is the Y stepper motor controller and uh I've the instructions say it should be uh 0.6 Volts for ref and it certainly is.

There it is .6 so let's check the other ones and uh, see what they are and I think I've got it. Figured there are different voltages here for the different types. The steer motor is either the MakerBot Neema 7 or the Moons brand Neema 7. and and if we look inside my MakerBot here, you'll see I've got a Moon brand if you can read that Moon brand motor.

So that's why I've got it wrong. I've got these set up to the um, the MakerBot stepper motor. so I have to adjust these and there is a fairly huge voltage here. There's it's currently set to ref is 0.6 It should be the moon's motor on the XY axis set to 1.68 It's getting nowhere near enough current.

Oh well. that certainly sounds, uh, different. Now it sounds like it does actually have more grunting there in each step. It certainly sounds louder.

so I'll let this go for a while. It's got a I think a 60-minute uh build time on my microscope adapter and uh, we'll see how it goes. By the way, this controller has actually got some hooks on the back. It allows you to just hook it up on the top of the unit like that, which is rather neat because it does, uh, slide around.

It's got no rubber feet on it. If you try and use it on the desk and you push the buttons, it just slides across the desk hopeless and it does seem to be working very nicely. I See no issues in the x or y direction. I Think we might have a winner and you can see it just about to fill in my second layer there.

So it's got the uh crosshatch underneath it and now it's gone for the solid next layer. Oh yeah, it didn't quite fill it all in. maybe it fell through, but uh, it should event well, hopefully eventually will fill in that Gap there I Guess it will uh put like a small solid uh section between there we go I Love the sounds there we go. If we go in this direction, we might uh yeah, there we go.

It's building up the platform there you can see it and this is building up the next level. which you'll have because it's not just a a uh, it's not just a single cylinder. There is a stepped uh aspect to this, but there you go and there it is. My first ever make your useful make Aot print and it looks absolutely spot on in the x-axis And more importantly, the thing I was having problem with was the Y axis and there it is.

It looks absolutely perfect, just like a bought one. I'm sure there's an art to ripping off these rafts on the bottom and yeah, I might have to. uh, get a knife in there and slice that out I Just realized I don't really have to take the raft off that um cuz it does seem very difficult even trying to get the knife in there. So I Guess the idea is not to print rafts but I don't need? um I don't need to remove the raft because this will sit on the bottom of the uh microscope adapter and you won't it'll be.

it is the bottom of it and you won't uh, you won't really see it. so all I've got to do is clean the edges up a bit and uh, make sure it's not fouling the inside there. and uh, that should should be right now. unfortunately.

um, it turned out perfectly but doesn't fit. it's too small and it doesn't fit my camera either. And the idea, um was to fit my old uh blogging camera. this is the old camera I used to use for the blog and uh, whole idea was for it to sit in there like that and for that to go on my microscope.

but the inner diameters are too small and I did allow half a millim uh, bigger. but obviously that's not enough. the uh I I guess when it squared to the plastic, it oozed out and made a smaller diameter hole. So um, yeah, bummer, it's a perfect print.

Other than that, I love it. but uh, just well. I learned something. it doesn't fit.

You've got to accommodate that. So what I'll do is I'll print a couple of test rings at various diameters just to get the exact fit on my camera and on the microscope. and when I've got that, then I'll print the final thing and uh, hopefully it should be good. I mean I could try and file it out or something like that, but uh, I think I'll just experiment some more with the Uh software.

So there's a couple of flat spots on it. Very, very small. Uh, flat spots. You? you'd really be uh, you know, so you can probably see a flat stop.

uh, spot up the top and bottom there. But apart from that, it's pretty darn impressive. I'm uh I like that a lot. I mean considering that how many tens of thousands of little micro steps did it have to do? and uh, considering that this is an open loop? uh, system.

Uh, the Makerbot's an open loop control system and there is no absolute positional feedback and doing tens of thousands of little micro steps. And after it built up, all of this, and to be pretty darn close to spot on like that I think is awesome. So there you go. um I had a hard time getting the raft off the bottom so I probably shouldn't.

uh, print the raft on future ones I think but that's really nice. First useful print and check this out. I Decided to print a spool holder to replace my bodgy cardboard spool holder on the back there that I've got so uh, that should mount on the top here and I should be able to have my spool on the top. Awesome! Let's break it off and give it a try.

Well that was a waste of filament. Unfortunately, it fits. It was a very tight fit in there, but the damn thing doesn't rotate. I've got to put a lot of force onto that to make the thing rotate.

it needs to be loose. It's crazy. doesn't work at all.