These are a few notes on smoothieboard configuration for my Eustathios Printer. Keep in mind the date of this post as much of this will be out of date soon – things are changing quickly with the smoothie firmware and new improvements are added regularly. I may come back and update this as things change.
Configuration
Hardware Limit Switches – No soft endstops, add hardware limit switches and enable them in the config.
Max Temp – You can configure a max temperature setting, for the hotend / bed. This will prevent you from accidentally setting the bed heater to a hotend temperature. I believe newer versions may halt the printer if this temperature is reached.
Temperature Switch – The temperature switch is really useful for switching lights and fans on and off so they only run when needed.
Cooling Fans – Pin 2.6
Extruder Fan PWM – Pin 2.4, configure M42/M43 for manual control
Extruder Lights – Pin 1.22, configure M44/M45 for manual control
z_junction_deviation – make sure this is set to 0, otherwise the z-axis will not accelerate properly
mm_per_line_segment – make sure this is commented out
Hardware Hacks
Enable Low Current Microstepping – With my setup, I ran into some problems with surface ripples on surfaces that were slightly off axis by a couple of degrees, I believe they were caused by microstepping gaps at slow speeds. It doesn’t show up in most prints, but when it does, it’s a very regular pattern at 0.1mm steps (on the slow axis) and mostly visible with specular reflections on glossy filament. In the above picture, it’s the 3 lighter lines running at an angle to the layer lines. Enabling low current microstepping on the A4982 stepper drivers completely eliminated the problem (changing motors and gear ratios did not and never got around to trying different stepper drivers). On my board, I shorted R26, R27, R40, R43 and R19. The only downside I’ve noticed is the steppers may be a bit louder after the change. I don’t know under what conditions the change helps, it may depend on the motors, system voltage, and other factors. More info at:
http://hydraraptor.blogspot.com/2012/04/stepstuck.html
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/3dp-ideas/qqTGMIFCKpU
http://smoothieware.org/smoothieboard-schematic
Software Hacks
Smoothieware Edge – I’m not sure where the current stable branch is in relation to edge, but I’m running off edge.
Custom Hacks – added temperature PWM fader and extruder deceleration.
Gcode Preprocessing – Occasionally need to filter out excess gcode created by Simplify3D.