Added Blower Fan

[New Passion]

I just upgraded to a blower fan for part cooling. Does anyone know, If now that I have a powerful enough fan, does the printrboard allow me to adjust the fan speeds in my slicer, or do I have to run this fan full all the time. I am using simplify3d, for example could I run the fan at 50% for most of a print and bump it up to 100% for bridging and overhangs, or are my only controls on and off.

Thanks
Mark

[RetireeJay]

I guess it depends on your slicer and your User Interface. Slic3r does allow you to have different fan speeds for the first layer, other layers, and bridging. The Repetier User Interface makes it easy to adjust the fan speed to your liking manually at any time. I'm not saying other software doesn't have these features; poke around the settings and see.

[New Passion]

Thanks RetireeJay, I use Simplify3d for my slicer, and the software does allow me to adjust the fan speeds for bridging and short print time layers, and It allows me to enter multiple processes on the same print. I just needed to know if Printrbots printrboard allowed me to vary the fan speed. Thank You for the quick response.

Mark

[Mooselake]

The Printrboard (pre G) uses Marlin. Fan speed control is a standard feature of Marlin. The complete g code reference is here. It's a bit old, but so is the firmware Printrbot uses.

It's getting harder to find out what's going on with Marlin. The last time I paid attention there seemed to be a bit of a developer snit, not sure just what's happening these days. Tim might know, but he hasn't been here in a while. To be honest I don't care a whole lot. Like many great computer software projects it's time has passed. Marlin takes old slow hardware (it was even old and slow when adopted...) and does miracles with it after great effort. The future is becoming faster cheap hardware that pushes the need for miracles off into the future, when it'll be in the old and slow devices. Gosh, it did't print straight from your brain?

Back in the day I wrote X.25's HDLC LAP-B for a 4K word microcontroller, in bit-slice assembly. Gosh, how we used to torture ourselves in front of the big array of blinken lights and shiny toggle switches. That's what Marlin's becoming, minus the lights and switches. Likely when they slam a door the wires don't fall off the wirewrap controller boards, either.

Kirk

[New Passion]

Thanks Kirk for the link to the g code. I have been using a different source for g code commands, this is great.

Mark

[RetireeJay]

Be a bit cautious about the G-codes listed in the github location Kirk (Mooselake) pointed to, or anywhere else for that matter. For example, the Printrboard does not have the native capability to turn the power supply on and off (M80 / M81) nor does it have the capability of turning the on-board LED on or off (M42). There are a number of other features not supported by the native Printrboard.

On the other hand, the list given there is incomplete regarding some specific Printrbot implementations for the Printrboard.

M211 X(value) Y(value) Z(value) for setting the boundaries of the printable volume in EEPROM. This command is not present in all Printrbot versions, and rarely if ever in mainstream Marlin; unfortunately the boundaries of the printable volume for most versions of Marlin is set in source code and you need to re-compile to change the boundaries. Printrbot's M211 is not compatible with the G-code at RepRap.org/wiki/g-code.

M907 X:(value) Y:(value) Z:(value) E:(value) sets the digipots. X, Y, Z, and E are all optional. Value is 0 to 100 (percent)
M909 Read the Digipots
M910 Save the Digipot settings.

Note: in a manner similar to Active Values for calibration, digipot settings can be changed with M907, but will be forgotten after a power-down. M910 saves the values in Digipot EEPROM (which is separate from all the other EEPROM storage).