Solved Newbie with two questions/problems....

Hi,

I received my new Robo 3D R1+ earlier today, and I've been setting it up and doing some prints with it. In the process of this, I've run into a couple of problems. I thought I'd ask for the advice of the experts here.

• I initially spent quite a while trying to get the printer to "talk" to MatterControl 1.7 running under Linux (Ubuntu 16.04, to be precise), with little luck; MatterControl simply sat there when trying to make the connection, with no feedback. Examining the kernel ring buffer (dmesg), I noticed some errors cropped up after a minute or so, but I didn't write them down. I eventually rebooted into macOS and got it working; and I had also bought a Raspberry Pi with the intention of setting up OctoPrint. (It's up and has detected the printer, but I've not yet printed via OctoPrint.) Thus, knowing what went wrong here isn't critical, but I am curious, and I'd like to be able to print directly from Linux on a laptop should the need arise. My suspicion is that I need some firmware files to store in Linux for delivery to the printer, but I'm not positive of that. (I've run into similar weird problems where a device seems to be present but doesn't work when firmware files have been missing.) If anybody's got any tips, I'd appreciate hearing them.
• The second problem relates to my print of a three-part top-mounted filament holder I found on Thingiverse. The print of the first part (the spool) came out OK, but I manually added supports to it. (I don't think they were needed, but I thought it was better to be safe than sorry.) Two of the four supports didn't survive the print process; they broke during printing -- see the attached photo. Although the print as a whole is acceptable, the broken supports are troubling, and I'd like to address the cause. My suspicions are that either I need to adjust the Z-axis a bit or the desk on which the printer is sitting isn't stable enough (it does wobble a bit, especially when the printer moves its head or base rapidly when printing small parts). Also, I sliced this piece using IdeaMaker, which I haven't seen discussed on this forum (search turns up just two passing references). I suppose it's conceivable that IdeaMaker's supports are just unusually delicate, or something about the print settings in this software were wrong.

FWIW, I also printed the MatterControl test ring and an oiler from Thingiverse, with no problems other than the Linux connection issues.

Now I'm off to clean the bed and print the support columns for the filament holder, this time via OctoPrint....

 

I discovered the solution to my Linux connection problem. I've detailed it in an answer to another user's question, here. In brief, it's a simple matter of lack of access rights to /dev/ttyACM0, the device file that Linux created for the printer. Adding my user to the dialout group fixed the problem. I'm recording this here in case somebody else has the same problem in the future and finds this thread.