200-step stepper motor speed control

[Anonymous]

Hi
I’m trying Makelangelo on my machine which was running fine with Polargraph.

It’s using two Nema 17 steppers with an Arduino Uno and an Adafruit Mk1 driver board.
The machine is drawing as expected but the motors seem to be running two fast which
is causing lots of jumping and vibration on the gondola and on odd occasions,
the drive chains slip a tooth because of this.

I’m using 200 steps setiing to match these motors and I have an adequate power supply.
Is there a setting in the firmware to slow the motors anywhere?
The speed setting in the GUI (set at 6500) doesn’t make any difference when altered and saved…

Thanks for any help

Regards Phil

[Dan]

Hi Phil,

In the top of the Makelangelo-firmware you’ll find

// Marginally Clever steppers are 400 steps per turn.
#define STEPPER_STEPS_PER_TURN (400.0)

Change 400 to 200 and that should scale things down.

The top speed of the AMS1 and AMS2 boards is about 2500. In the current version of the software I don’t have a way to tell what board you are using so I leave it at the default for the v3 hardware. makes no difference to the v2 users, makes v3 users happy.

[Anonymous]

Hi Dan, thanks for the reply..

Yes, I had already altered that setting to 200 but it still
runs very fast and has a bad dose of the shakes 🙂

Is there no other speed setting?
I think in Polargraph, my speed was set at 700 IIRC

Hmmmmmm… will keep trying
Loving the GUI by the way, great stuff

Regards Phil

[Dan]

you can set the feed rate to be lower than 3500 and you should start to see a difference. The max speed bottlenecks in the AF_stepper library, but anything lower than the max should make a difference. Try 700 and see what happens.

[Dan]

adjust the feedrate above the manual driving buttons. type in a new number and click “set” next to “engage/disengage”. then moving the pen holder with the buttons should be visibly faster or slower.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Dan….

This is what is causing the head scratching….
I have tried all manner of speed settings with that control in the GUI, from 10 to 6000
and have clicked “set” each time.
No matter what setting I enter, the speed is exactly the same, no change at all.

Down at the bottom left I see that when I select say 100, it sends a Gcode of G00 F100 so
that seems to be working but it does not register a change on the Arduino Uno it seems…

Short clip of the high speed jiggle here…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzPbWzp1LmE&feature=youtu.be

Curious….

Regards Phil

[Anonymous]

Out of interest, this is the same machine running Polargraph software/firmware
running at speed 700 and acceleration 700…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCFiLstfYQM

Phil

[Dan]

Try this version of the firmware:
https://github.com/MarginallyClever/Makelangelo-firmware/blob/master/firmware_ams/firmware_ams.ino

[Anonymous]

Hi Dan
I’m getting a compile error….

firmware_ams:449: error: ‘d’ was not declared in this scope

pause(d);

^

firmware_ams:466: error: ‘d’ was not declared in this scope

pause(d);

^

exit status 1
‘d’ was not declared in this scope

Phil

[Dan]

updated. I replaced ‘d’ with ‘step_delay’.

[Anonymous]

Hi Dan, thanks for the update, it now compiles OK…

Makelangelo 7.7.1 seems not to like it though, guess it’s with it being an older version?

Error message is…
“The firmware is not the version I expect…I found V7” etc.

Phil

[Anonymous]

Dan

I looked and found an earlier version of Makelangelo, ver 7.6
and this runs with the firmware you linked me to…

Not tried it much but a quick test shows that the speed control works and
my machine is much smoother and controllable….
Will try a print when I get back in from work later….

Phil

[Anonymous]

Looking good Dan 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-F3qwU43-I&feature=youtu.be

Phil

[Anonymous]

Hi, geppeto, i have the same problem, the pen is crazy, it is very shake.

i used version 7.7.1 and have this problem and arduino mega (firmware_rumba)

You used the version 7.6 to resolve it ??

[Anonymous]

Hi

I used the firmware that Dan linked me to
https://github.com/MarginallyClever/Makelangelo-firmware/blob/master/firmware_ams/firmware_ams.ino

This didn’t work with 7.7.1 so I had to roll back to 7.6.
That firmware and 7.6 work well together. The speed control works which stops the shaking….

Note that I’m using an Uno and an Adafruit motor shield version 1.

I am going to try a Mega with a Ramps shield when I get chance and will post here if I get it working..

Hope you find a way to get yours working, well worth a struggle as the software is superb..
Good luck

Phil

[Anonymous]

Hi dan and geppeto

I’m used firmware_rumba in arduino mega, when i compile the code, get the error in image.

https://postimg.org/image/909qmg2lv/

Any help:

[Dan]

It doesn’t occur here when we upload firmware into new robots. :T

[Dan]

> the software is superb..

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

ok, i tried to use the version 7.6 but didn´t work, because of error above.

At moment i use the lastest firmware, makelangelo 7.7.1 and the velocity of stepper motor is very high, it cause shake of holder pen.

I tried to set new speed in “manual driving”, but i think that have a error here.

When i set 3000 in speed field, the value is converting to 3, when i type 30000 the value is convertion to 300.

I tried to set new value in DEFAULT_FEEDRATE and MAX_FEEDRATE but the makelangelo velocity of stepper motor is very high and cause shake of holder pen.

My friend change the CLOCK_FREQ the 16000000L to 36000000L, and MAX_COUNTER the 65536 to 955536L and velocity of stepper motor more low and the precision of draw is very better, but i think that it is no good idea.

What your opinion Dan ?

Tks

[Dan]

>My friend change the CLOCK_FREQ the 16000000L to 36000000L, and MAX_COUNTER the 65536 to 955536L and velocity of stepper motor more low and the precision of draw is very better, but i think that it is no good idea.

I have never tried this. I have tried 2x CLOCK_FREQ (32000000L) which made the machine 2x faster.

[Anonymous]

hi geppetto

did you get it running on the mega and the ramps ?? i have the same setup but my motors wont spin… although i can enable and disable them..

[Dan]

makelangelo-firmware is not officially supported on mega or ramps. we use a RUMBA board which is very similar to a mega. Very likely the pin settings are slightly different.

[Author]

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