Hello,
I purchased the K8203 0.35mm direct drive upgrade (September 2017) and am having problems. My set-up notes are listed below. Can anyone or any of the Velleman technical staff help as I would like to get this working.
Firstly, I suspect the new firmware is not taking effect.
Secondly, the new stepper driver board is perhaps not working.
Have assembled the head and it is in position on the K8200.
Firstly:
Uploading the firmware.
I’m using a Windows 10 PC with arduino V1.0.5-r2.
The Velleman firmware_k8200_v2.2-marlinv1 has been selected for the K8203 only upgrade and extracted.
With the correct board selected, COM3 port selected and JPROG pins connected, Marlin.ino compiles OK and uploads to the board. The leds flash as data is received.
DO NOT FORGET TO RELOAD EEPROM SETTINGS:
I close the arduino program and open K8200 Repetier-Host V0.95F and follow the instructions to reload EEPROM settings.
I choose Config → Firmware EEPROM Configuration → Restore factory settings.
Anyway, I took a screenshot of my orignal firmware settings before uploading anything
and then one afterwards
I can see that the extruder “steps per mm” value has changed from 600.00mm to 150.00mm and the three PID values have also changed.
Below is the (new!) firmware title I get in the Repetier log:-
19:23:32.043 : FIRMWARE_NAME:Marlin V1; Sprinter/grbl mashup for gen6 FIRMWARE_URL:http://www.k8200.com/ PROTOCOL_VERSION:1.0 MACHINE_TYPE:K8200 EXTRUDER_COUNT:1
Is this any help in identifying the newly installed firmware?
Compensation for the new thermistor characteristic should be included in the firmware upgrade to display the sensor reading at a room temperature value on the temperature trace screen.
However, on the temperature screen I see the new thermistor (at actual room temperature) showing around 220 degrees C - way above 190C for PLA. And even without firmware compensation, the temperature trace should remain relatively level but I’ve observed sometimes it is steady and other times hugely erratic, once reaching MAXTEMP cutoff even though the heating element is NOT turned on.
(Question:- what make/type thermistor is supplied with the K8203 kit?
The new K8203 thermistor measures 118kohms at 17 deg C.
The old K8200 NTC thermistor measures 146kohms at 17 deg C.)
Secondly:
At this artificially high temperature of 220 degrees C, the extruder motor “advance” and “retract” should be controllable manually. So I try these buttons, without PLA filament inserted, to see if the new stepper driver board functions correctly. The log shows the commands being accepted but there is only a tiny click at the motor and another tiny click as I choose the “Turn motor off” button. There is no spindle motion from the extruder motor. I have set the board voltage to 0.9V and it is inserted the correct way around.
If I revert back to the original stepper driver board, the extruder motor works as it should (allowed by the artificially high thermistor reading).
Note:
LD5 red and LD6 green flash together briefly once every 2 seconds.
Many thanks in advance.
HLH
