Random 3D printing chatter

[ChrisLX200]

Am using Octopi with the Sidewinder X1, and a webcam temporarily attached to the build plate (it's a MS LifeCam and it's rubbish for this job - need one with manual focus). Waiting on delivery for a new one for the CR-6 SE.



Currently printing a little boat model on the Sidewinder, a lot of bridging involved with no support. OK so far

 

[deuse]

Yes....

Thanks

 

[deuse]

https://gist.github.com/Sebazzz/ff4d716c8d2ad9bab1e87b3fc4238281

Think I will wait till Creality fix the problems.

 

[Cenedd]

Am using Octopi with the Sidewinder X1, and a webcam temporarily attached to the build plate (it's a MS LifeCam and it's rubbish for this job - need one with manual focus). Waiting on delivery for a new one for the CR-6 SE.

What did you go for in the end? I'm running a Sony Playstation 3 EyeToy because it was on the OctoPi compatible list and could be had (at the time) for a tenner. It has the manual focus - or rather I think it's fixed focus - and it'd fairly wide angle, which is good if you're mounting it quite close. What it doesn't have is an onboard encoder so the Pi has to do the processing and the quality isn't fabulous - you can make out if it's printing spaghetti but none of the finer details.
Did try borrowing a Logitech C920 which is a decent cam but like you experienced, it constantly autofocuses on a moving target. PiCam isn't really a great option for me as I don't think the ribbon will reach from the top of the frame to the inside of the case - USB is much more attractive for that reason alone.

 

[ChrisLX200]

What did you go for in the end? I'm running a Sony Playstation 3 EyeToy because it was on the OctoPi compatible list and could be had (at the time) for a tenner. It has the manual focus - or rather I think it's fixed focus - and it'd fairly wide angle, which is good if you're mounting it quite close. What it doesn't have is an onboard encoder so the Pi has to do the processing and the quality isn't fabulous - you can make out if it's printing spaghetti but none of the finer details.
Did try borrowing a Logitech C920 which is a decent cam but like you experienced, it constantly autofocuses on a moving target. PiCam isn't really a great option for me as I don't think the ribbon will reach from the top of the frame to the inside of the case - USB is much more attractive for that reason alone.

Well you can get stupidly long Pi ribbon cables - I have 3x 40 inch on order from Amazon and should arrive by Wednesday. They were dirt cheap so I will try the various Pi cams I have lying around

The webcam I bought was this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07DLT4FQY/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 which is manual focus and has a decent wide angle lens (allegedly). What attracted me was it specifically mentions compatibility with Linux and Ubuntu in addition to the usual. Priced mid-range at just under £50 and half the price of a Logitech 920.

 

[andy_mk3]

I have a C920, you can manually focus with Octoprint.

 

[deuse]

No not from Kickstarter, guys are still waiting for them there.

You need to sign up to Tomtop, as a new user you will get a 60$ discount on the 6SE.
Go to new user offers its in there.

Need some help please.

I did sign up and got some coupons to use.

But I can't see new user offers?
Maybe it was a one time thing?

edit=Did you mean New Buyer Zone?
If so it's not there now

edit 2. I used Honey plugin and got it for £260
Thanks dude.

 

[Troop]

Yes, sorry new buyer zone, click on that and it's the first one, first row on the left, shows 60$ off the 6SE just click on use the coupon.... I just checked.

Congrats on your new 6SE, comes with 200G of PLA. and a really, really nice tool kit that's built into the printer.


@Chris, boat is printing well with no supports.


Filament anyone using PETG have a sample on the way , never used it before.


My 6SE has over 30 hours of printing time on it now, no issues.

Been Using North Cube 95A TPU, so impressed with it and so ***** strong its hard to believe.

 

[ChrisLX200]

Boat turned out good - just a few stray strings and some zits that came off with my fingernail Amazed at the detail you can get out of a 0.4 nozzle and 0.15 layer height. I might try a 0.2 nozzle should be awesome if it doesn't get blocked all the time!
Trying out the new webcam but realise it's not in an ideal position - too close it needs moving further away. I'll have to wait until current print finishes before I can adjust it again.

 

[ChrisLX200]

Just thought I'd check the temperature spread on the Sidewinder X1 bed while it's running. Apparently not a good even temperature lol. It's set for 58degC so some parts are certainly reaching that, but others look to be nowhere near. I need to do a better analysis but just the one image is pretty revealing. Also, the new webcam is pretty toasty too!

 

[deuse]

Yes, sorry new buyer zone, click on that and it's the first one, first row on the left, shows 60$ off the 6SE just click on use the coupon.... I just checked.

Congrats on your new 6SE, comes with 200G of PLA. and a really, really nice tool kit that's built into the printer..

Thanks dude.

I will be taking the back off first to make sure I have a 32bit motherboard and not a mega.

@Troop do you know what board you have?

 

[Cenedd]

I have a C920, you can manually focus with Octoprint.

I'd not spotted that. I'll have another look. Can't run to the current cost of one of those and can't pinch it as it seems to be on involuntary permanent loan to my wife for work. Might make ones with autofocus useable though.

My print finally finished after 33½ hours! I've printed me some Maleficent horns!
Plenty of pre-dribble - for those of you not au fait with the latest technical terms* that's when it's finished the layer on one horn, retracted, moved to the next horn but unhelpfully started feeding (or rather undoing the retraction) before it gets to where it's going to start printing. This results in a small string of spaghetti that then gets wiped onto the leading edge of the next horn as the head arrives. Not too difficult to trim off but irritating nonetheless.

@ChrisLX200 Boat looks good. As does the hand-vise. What else are you into to be tooled up as such?
Jealous of the thermal camera too - can't justify the cost for the casual playing about I'd mostly end up doing with it.


*ie ones I've just made up!

 

[Troop]

Thanks dude.

I will be taking the back off first to make sure I have a 32bit motherboard and not a mega.

@Troop do you know what board you have?

Not checked but on the listings someone asked what board it shipped with, CS said 32bit. (Tomtop)


"Q Which version of motherboard is used for this printer ? 8 bit or 32 bit ?
By Zoltan October 15, 2020


A It is 32 bit , thanks .
Reply By Customer Service Center October 16, 2020"



Chris the boat came out well, is that natural colour filament or a light wood?.

Shame it was a long print or it would be a good comparison to do the print again on the 6SE to compare.

 

[ChrisLX200]

I'd not spotted that. I'll have another look. Can't run to the current cost of one of those and can't pinch it as it seems to be on involuntary permanent loan to my wife for work. Might make ones with autofocus useable though.

My print finally finished after 33½ hours! I've printed me some Maleficent horns!
Plenty of pre-dribble - for those of you not au fait with the latest technical terms* that's when it's finished the layer on one horn, retracted, moved to the next horn but unhelpfully started feeding (or rather undoing the retraction) before it gets to where it's going to start printing. This results in a small string of spaghetti that then gets wiped onto the leading edge of the next horn as the head arrives. Not too difficult to trim off but irritating nonetheless.

@ChrisLX200 Boat looks good. As does the hand-vise. What else are you into to be tooled up as such?
Jealous of the thermal camera too - can't justify the cost for the casual playing about I'd mostly end up doing with it.


*ie ones I've just made up!

Hmm that's odd. You might want to check if your teflon tube goes all the way down to the nozzle and not letting the molten plastic pool below the end of it.

I'm into all sorts of maker/DIY type stuff, have a workshop and recently added a little 3020 CNC mill/router (which I've done nothing with so far other than set the thing up)

 

[ChrisLX200]

Not checked but on the listings someone asked what board it shipped with, CS said 32bit. (Tomtop)

...

Chris the boat came out well, is that natural colour filament or a light wood?.

Shame it was a long print or it would be a good comparison to do the print again on the 6SE to compare.

It's this stuff: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0842NNFLM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and although really good filament is a bit expensive so currently researching cheaper alternatives. I have 5 different (cheap) ones delivered recently to try out

 

[deuse]

Not checked but on the listings someone asked what board it shipped with, CS said 32bit. (Tomtop)


"Q Which version of motherboard is used for this printer ? 8 bit or 32 bit ?
By Zoltan October 15, 2020


A It is 32 bit , thanks .
Reply By Customer Service Center October 16, 2020".

Great.

I will check all the wiring just in case.

 

[Cenedd]

Hmm that's odd. You might want to check if your teflon tube goes all the way down to the nozzle and not letting the molten plastic pool below the end of it.

I'm pretty sure it is because it previously wasn't. I took it out when I was faffing with something and only reinserted it part way as I wasn't sure how far it should go in. Then saw on a random YouTube video that this was wrong and shoved it further in while it was hot. I'll double check it though. I'm using Fusion 360 to slice since it's convenient to slice directly from CAD where they are things I've designed (and I use the term loosely!) myself. You can watch it pull a fast retract when it stops doing one of the towers, start moving to the next one and while it's travelling it starts undoing the retract. I guess it has to do that before it starts printing but it seems to be too early and that causes a mid-air dribble. I have the starter spool of white Creality filament I can try testing with and it's probably worth checking there's nothing amiss with the config of the extruder - some Googling to do in some of that mythical free time!

I'm into all sorts of maker/DIY type stuff, have a workshop and recently added a little 3020 CNC mill/router (which I've done nothing with so far other than set the thing up)

Nice. My first thought looking at that mill was PCBs. I've got a manual mini-mill and used some cheap copper-clad PCB quite successfully to knock up a little PCB to mount the push-button LED on the front of my 3D printer. Just some through-holes to keep the rather spindly legs from getting damaged and mount a resistor into. Proper CNC on it would let you do far more complicated stuff. I only went down to a 2mm endmill at 2500rpm (max speed) and it worked fine - thin copper's cladding's not exactly fighting back!

 

[Cenedd]

Trying out the new webcam but realise it's not in an ideal position - too close it needs moving further away

I got excited and jumped the gun. That cam was delivered today and all is not as it seems. It proudly proclaims H.264 on the box and in the listing and I thought this would be the answer. Nope. As far as I can work this out the situation is this:

• OctoPi only supports MJPG compression.

• The Spaghetti Detective (TSD) only supports H.264 so it kills off OctoPrint's webcamd and runs its own if you're in premium mode. I think if you disable that, it'll convert the webcamd feed but only at 1f/10s

• This cam does seem to support H.264 but only on /dev/video2. By contrast, a Logitech C920 (which I refuse to pay between £80 and £200 for!) shows YUYV, H264 and MJPG all on /dev/video0 and hence works nicely.

Force webcamd to use that device and it doesn't like it because it only offers h264 and webcamd doesn't support it. TSD then doesn't stream because there's no cam.
Let it default to /dev/video0 and it'll work but it only offers 30fps in any resolution. Cue Pi 3b+ topping out its CPU trying to handle running an MJPG stream and FFMPEG convert it to H.264 for TSD.
For contrast, the Logitech C920 offers 5,7.5,10,15,20,24,30 in all resolutions and in any of YUYV, MJPG, H264.

So, the manual focus is good. The FoV is good. Quality seems ok too. But no use for TSD.
Just to add insult to injury, even with a C920, TSD seems to force it to 4:3, 640x480@25fps (which the cheaper cam wouldn't support anyway) and ignores any options such as manual focus specified in /boot/octopi.txt

If you're not running TSD in premium mode or are running a Pi4 (more power to throw at it) this may well not be an issue.

So, I'll be returning it, obviously. Well, that's what I was thinking up till a minute of so ago. With the Sony Playstation 3 Eye I can have a max of 640x480 but at silly fps that aren't any use. At 10fps it takes about 70% cpu usage to run the mjpg_streamer (for the cam) ffmpeg (to convert for TSD) processes. Quality is a bit fuzzy and low light is ...adequate. By low light, I'm talking about a 30cm strip of LEDs rather than having the room lights on. If I specify the options well, I can have 800x448@10fps with sharper picture courtesy of the manual focus, wider FoV (widescreen res) and better low light for 'only' 60% CPU....so I think it'll stay.

camera_usb_options="-d /dev/video0 -yuv -r 800x448 -f 10"​

Hope this is of some help to some of you!

 

[ChrisLX200]

Thanks @Cenedd you went into far more detail as to suitability! The cam is working for me with Octolapse and a Pi4 but the quality isn't amazing - not like this video I dropped across last night using the Pi HQ cam...Makes me wonder if I should have gone this route.

 

[Cenedd]

Very pretty. Mostly, I think, down to OctoLapse making the timelapses. I guess it depends what you're after. If you want a more studio quality build video that definitely looks the way to go. I'm more after something I can check in on it using OctoRemote for paranoia's sake and currently it's a bit too fuzzy to get more than "Stiiiiiiill printing - no spaghetti!". TSD is important to me because I had massive adhesion issues at first so paranoia kicked in. To be fair, I think most of those were that my print head was too far away from the bed - perfect at the edges but too far away in the middle where it's dished. The mahoosive print I just did with a 200-odd square by 10mm base plinth was actually quite difficult to get off the bed.....even with the removable magnetic layer. Thing is, it was clearly vital so I paid for it.....and I'll be damned if I then run it at only 1/10fps!