Upgrading my Y-Axis rails, got something extra, project is now out of my league.

I ordered a pair of these (http://trinitylabs.com/products/linear-rail-and-car-418mm-no-mounting-hardware) because my Y-axis has been giving me a lot of trouble for way too long now. They arrived a couple of days ago and I've yet to install them because unlike what is shown in the product picture, they arrived with a motor and drive screw attached. I don't know if that was deliberate or a mistake, but I'm now expanding the project to take advantage of this lagniappe. This is about 40,000 leagues beyond my area of expertise, and I have some questions:

1) The motors have 4 pins coming out, like the RoBo's stock motor, but the wire colors are different. How can I find out which wire goes where?

2) Can I solder the wires from both motors together and run them both off the same port on the RoBo's Arduino board?

3) Do I need to adjust anything in my firmware to get these motors to work, or should they be fine out-of-the-box?

Thanks!

 

I'm guessing that one pair of red/green is one coil and the other pair is another coil. See if there is anyone model numbers on the motors and google to get more details about them.

 

Tesseract, what would be the best way to find out if they're using the same motion technology? These motors are driving a screw for motion instead of a belt, but I'm not sure if that's what you mean.

 

I ordered a pair of these (http://trinitylabs.com/products/linear-rail-and-car-418mm-no-mounting-hardware) because my Y-axis has been giving me a lot of trouble for way too long now. They arrived a couple of days ago and I've yet to install them because unlike what is shown in the product picture, they arrived with a motor and drive screw attached. I don't know if that was deliberate or a mistake, but I'm now expanding the project to take advantage of this lagniappe. This is about 40,000 leagues beyond my area of expertise, and I have some questions:

1) The motors have 4 pins coming out, like the RoBo's stock motor, but the wire colors are different. How can I find out which wire goes where?

You will have to find the specs on the stepper motors for the wire pin outs

2) Can I solder the wires from both motors together and run them both off the same port on the RoBo's Arduino board?

Would not recommend doing this until you know the steppers motor operating parameters. Most likely not, because of current and voltage limitations

Also you would only need one slide for the y axis. save the other for x axis upgrade. or for something else.​

3) Do I need to adjust anything in my firmware to get these motors to work, or should they be fine out-of-the-box?
Yes, these are linear slides ( SIMO™ linear actuators made by PBC linear) which are driven by lead screws attached to stepper motors. you will need to readjust your steps per mm to get the correct travel out of them. You may also have to adjust the drivers on the ramps board, but all this is dependent on the steppers drive parameters.

more info. on the website http://www.pbclinear.com/SIMO-Series-Driven-Systems

http://www.pbclinear.com/Download/ApplicationStory/Application-Story---Trinity-Labs-3D-Printing.pdf

By the way, trinity made a big mistake sending you these linear slides because i can tell you they are worth more than what you linked above. I would use them to your advantage. trinity labs aluminatus printer uses these slides in their machine if you can get a hold of their firmware, that would be an easy way to know what steps per mm you need but its not hard to figure out from scratch. The early versions of the aluminatus printer used the taurino ramps board because the smoothie board was still in its test phase, so it would be an easy setup.

link to firmware..... https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/trinitylabs-talk/thaXhqrFHB0/n2Qa4VEKrloJ​

here is a link to the machine that uses these linear slides.. http://trinitylabs.com/pages/aluminatus-overview[/quote]

these slides are a hell of a lot more accurate and rigid than belt drives you got a heck of a deal!! I gave you a lot of links above to help you figure out what to do with them but
If you dont want them or can't get them to work....i'll take them off your hands...

 

Thanks for the awesome info, everyone! Looks like I've got a fair bit of Googling to do. I'll post pictures of the smoking, charred remains of what used to be a perfectly good RoBo

By the way, here are the numbers on the back of the motors if anyone was curious (no idea why my pictures keep getting rotated):

 

Manufacturer: http://www.dingsmotion.com/

 

Can't find any info on the exact motor, but from looking at the other motors on their site, it's a Nema 17 260 is the length in MM of the motor, just the body I think. (I think this is right, you can measure to double check) 12 or 120 is 1.2 amps a phase. 4T is probably for the 4 leads (bipolar stepper motor) They should work. Maybe.

***Disclaimer*** I said maybe. ;P

I did a lot of research on stepper motors a couple years back looking for the right ones for a camera slider, But I forgot most of the stuff I learned.

 

I'll plug it in for a test run when I have a full night to spend on the project. I'm trying to figure out how to change the steps/mm. I see a window in Repetier that lets me set it, but everything is a zero.

 

On an unrelated note, I seriously need to get air conditioning in my garage. My IR thermometer is reading 42F in here...

 

You need to change it in the firmware under the configuration.h file

 

Will do. Thanks!

 

Specifically the line you need to change is

#define DEFAULT_AXIS_STEPS_PER_UNIT {80.69,80.69,2269.472,747.626}

The four numbers here are {X, Y, Z, E}

where X is the X number of Steps/mm, Y is the Y number of steps/mm, Z is the Z number of steps/mm and E is the Extruder number of steps/mm

 

What would be the best way to determine my steps/mm? Right now, the way I have in mind is to install the motor, print a 15mm calibration cube, measure its Y, and compare its difference to the stock steps/mm. Thoughts?

 

The new motor is wired to the RoBo. This thing runs very quietly. Managed to get the wiring right on the first try
My next hurdle is going to be mounting. I can set the rail on top of the black mounting plate running across the printer, but I'll be losing a lot of Z. I'm thinking about cutting a channel through the middle of the plate and setting the rail in there. Should save me .5" Z. The other problem is going to be attaching the birch to the rail car, since there are a ton of holes in the thing. I'm going to head over to a metal shop tomorrow and see if I can get something custom-made for a reasonable price. It'll be nice to have a perfectly-flat build platform for once.

 

scrap the birch ply and robos pcb heater.

Use boro glass with a kapton heater. that will guarantee flatter surface. When they custom make your part have them make mounting point for the boro to sit on or you can buy the y axis plate from trinity but you'd have to look at the dimensions to sure it will fit the robo.

 

Can you recommend a good source for a kapton heater (maybe a 15"x10" if they exist)? And would I need to get a new power supply as well?

 

Oh, and there's a glass store right next door to where I went for a custom build plate, so I have a 15x10" sheet of boro glass on order as well

 

Ouch, they quoted me $160 for the aluminum plate.