How to set the fillamnt fan on a CTC printer

[Trax]

Hello,

whatever I set in the software I can not get the additional filament fan to spin.
I use a CTC 3d Printer that is a makerbot dual clone.
It has a regular mighty board and i added a filament fan, it works when activated by the menu command in the printer.

When i set the fan my hand it runs and than stops it seams that the software tells it to, this does nto happen when printing with makerbot desktop.

any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Trax

[Trax]

com one no one here with this problem?!

[Retroplayer]

I'm going to guess most people don't have this printer so don't know how to help. I just received mine and have added the filament fan and a duct. But when I went to wire it to the board, I found that the FET was not populated for that output. I had to order the parts from Mouser (should get them in a day or two - I also ordered the missing parts to finish the RGB LED circuit while I was at it.)

Did you need to add a FET to your board? After I get mine installed, I may run into the same issue as you and we can try to help each other.

I have the CTC Creator Dual

[Trax]

I use the same printer.

I have the MOSFET installed already and I can turn the fan on by the Printers build menu while building.
but s3d will from time to time turn the fan back off :/ with makerware it did not happened.
And i cant make s3d to turn on the fan :/

how do you intent to populate the LED circuit one of the IC'S iirc the i2c LED driver is a QFN package, how do you intent to solder it?

btw: if you are that good with soldering SMD components how about a micro-controller upgrade to a ATMega 2560 there is a sailfish firmware with additional functionality for that chip.

My approach if i would want to use the LED's would be to build the LED circuit on a separate PCB with a component version that is a little bit simpler to solder and connect only +v5 +24v SDA, SCL and GND to the original board.

[Retroplayer]

I am an electrical engineer, so I have access to some decent tools such as a stereo microscope and a decent rework station with hot air. The U19 (74HC3G14DC125) is the part I assume you are talking about since it is the smallest part. It is an VSSOP-8 package, not QFN (which has pins on all four sides). Tiny pins, for sure, but not that big of a deal with the right technique even without awesome tools.

If you use flux, you just ball up a little solder on the pins in the row and then swipe it across quickly but carefully. Then touch it up with some solder wick to remove any bridges you might have created. Flux is the key here. With it, it helps the solder flow onto the metal. A reflow tip on your iron helps which has a little cup in it, but not completely necessary.

The hardest part is keeping such a tiny part in place. I use a tiny dab of white glue on a toothpick under the part to help with that. You could also apply it to the non-leaded sides of the part. You have time to align it before the glue dries.

As a side note, since your question made me go look again, I realized I ordered the wrong package. I had ordered the SOT package by mistake. GRR

I have soldered QFN parts before using the technique above, including the Atmega parts. But that's not an upgrade I plan to do (yet) on this. My next endeavor is to try to figure out how to get some DRV8825 stepper modules to work on the board so I can get 1/32 microstepping. The pinout is flipped around from most modules I have found.

[Trax]

Yea I was talking about the 74HC3G14DC125,
I have a quite good iron myself, so of thats all one needs for this package type I may dear to try it. And At my university I can also access a microscope's. So if thats all I need I'd dear to try it may be
Would you want to make a guide or a video of your procedure?

Trax

[Retroplayer]

I could do that for you, but there are plenty of youtube videos already showing the drag soldering technique.

This is a decent one... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Sfggumc-Tc and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu4rfutdm9g

[Retroplayer]

BTW, Mouser only sells the VSSOP package in minimum quantities of 3,000. Digikey has it for 73 cents a part, but a minimum order of $25. So, I am going to have to think of some more things I might need.

[Retroplayer]

A bit off-topic (ok, way off topic), but since you are the first person I have encountered with this printer in a forum...

Do you have any issues with the dimensions of your prints being way off? In one case, a part printed 6mm shorter than designed. I come from using Marlin based firmware printers, so I can't quite figure out how to calibrate this in the mightyboard. I tried doing the whole measure commanded distance vs actual distance formula and putting the steps/mm into the S3G dialog, but it seems to have no effect whatsoever on my prints. I even tried entering some crazy numbers to see if it made a difference and nothing...

It seems the mightyboard philosophy is to add this into the gcode for some reason and is not stored in EEPROM like on the Marlin. Is this true? If you had issues with this, how did you resolve it? Is it just that S3D ignores this setting? Pulling my hair out here.

[Trax]

I never head problems with dimensions on that scale, I would say my only issues ware from ABS shrinking a bit when cooling down, so like <500µm short on a 10 cm peace.

I selected Flashforge creator as preset in the s3d configuration wizard, afaik its identical to the CTC printer.