Is there a Data-Monitor?
First: I'm new here. Hi. I get my Mk3 in a month... or so. 😕
Second: A bit about me.
I used to work as a Maintenance-Engineer on C&C lathes, and quite enjoy the technical side of things... and PERFECTION. 🙂
So, I was curious if there was a data-monitor/developer-mode, of some kind where you can see the raw data/outputs from the assorted sensors/drivers/etc.
EXAMPLE1: For bed leveling, I would *love* to set the "zero" height to about 0.1mm, and then raise-or-lower-it-to-whatever-I-feel-like-when-printing, via-software. However on my *cheap* printer, which does not have a proximity sensor for bed-leveling, I find getting the bed within .1 from one-coner-to-the-other, rather... difficult. On the mk3, I could use the paper-trick to set the appox 0.1mm, at say, a front corner, and then take the sensor-readout from the proximity sensor, and move it to all 4 corners, and adjust height, until perfect. (should be able to get sub 0.02mm accuracy, and the actual "levelness" of the bed at that point, would be a larger concern)
EXAMPLE2: For people who are having issues with their prints randomly shifting mid-print, and unable to figure out why, hot stepper motors, etc. the "load" output from the drivers would be very nice to find what/when/where things are getting... sticky. It's also *very* good maintance. "Oh, hey, why is my X motor running at near max load... it never went above ____ before. Maybe I should ____ to fix it!"
EXAMPLE3: Oh noes, my transparent lime green PETG is invisible to the filament sensor!!! FAIL!!! Possibly you could adjust the sensitivity to remedy that? maybe? Not sure?
Thanks... go easy on me... I've read about doing some of this stuff in 'passing' without there being any detail. I don't have a Prusa, so I'm not really sure about any of these details... kinda complex.
ALSO:
@Josef Prusa if you read this. I bought my Mk3 (Not yet delivered) to support you, and your innovations. There are few people/companies in the world who are willing to push for change, improve and pioneer new "ideas". You are a bit of a hero to me! (that's also why I want you to sign my printer!!!)
Hi, I'm Sean. I used to work on CNC machines.
I try to not make mistakes, but the decision is YOURS.
Please feel free to donate to my filament/maintance fund.
Re: Is there a Data-Monitor?
I haven't seen any such information. I think there are several things pushing against it in the general Prusa release:
1) how to get the information out of the machine
You could put it over the serial port/usb, but that channel is already struggling a bit (see the octoprint thread).
You could stream it to SD, but again, that might interfere with SD card read and actual printing
You could put to to the screen (not very useful for rapidly changing info)
2) confusion for general user
Not very useful for the general user, and could end up being confusing if people tried to use it and read too much into varying readings between devices or over time. Prusa would spend a bunch of time helping people understand how to interpret the data.
Don't forget, the Prusa fork of Marlin is open source, as is the Einsy board. There is nothing stopping you from adding this functionality yourself (or starting a project to have like minded folks help out). However, I suspect Prusa has higher priority items (optimizing Linear Advance, other useability or print quality optimizations)
Re: Is there a Data-Monitor?
That's disapointing. However.
Your response #1, if possible solves 100% of my problems. The theory is not to "print all day" and watch the numbers. It's to simply setup the bed "perfect" or "Your printer is being stupid, check this, this and this!". I can't recall the thread, but this is why I said I've seen a mention... someone said their "motor" was at 1700? (Not sure of the exact number, this is what number comes to mind I think I read) but they said it was in the "good" range, is why I was thinking there was a secret (non-advertised) menu.
And heck yeah, that stuff would be rather confusing to the average "end user", but for a coder, (I'm not, but I have worked very closely with them in the past) it would be nothing but a thing, to make a "secret" menu, (say, long press on ____ for 5 seconds) flash a warning message like "WARNING ENTERING DEBUG MENU DID YOU MEAN TO COME HERE? YES ---- NO" and then simply name all the variables on the list, you select it, and it simply displays the raw-ish, output for the selected variable. Any "proper" Marlin dev (One that understands everything in the program), could hack it together, likely in just a few hours.
Sadly, I am *NOT* a programmer, and despite my mind being CRAZY mechanical... I can't program for squat. 🙁
Hi, I'm Sean. I used to work on CNC machines.
I try to not make mistakes, but the decision is YOURS.
Please feel free to donate to my filament/maintance fund.
Re: Is there a Data-Monitor?
What I can tell so far...
Bed Leveling
With bed levelling, the firmware performs mesh leveling
https://www.prusa3d.com/downloads/manual/prusa3d_manual_mk3_en.pdf?4
See page 21 of the manual. The mesh levelling can compensate for bed deviations of +/- 0.05mm. I can't imagine needing to make much more of a manual adjustment beyond that. In your slicer, you may be able to choose the first layer height which may help. I know CuraEngine and Simplify3D have a first layer height setting to help if the bed isn't 100% perfect.
Other diagnostic info
There is currently a readout on the LCD menu for "belt tension". I believe that is calculated based on the load angle of the stepper motors that the Trinamic drivers report back to the CPU. If the linear bearings are beginning to bind or the printer is misaligned this will have an effect on the number reported (when I get my MK3, I'll be having a play with this!) Apart from this and the Statistics page, there is not much else we can get, diagnostic wise at the moment. I'm also unaware of any manual sensitivity adjustment for the optical filament sensor - menu only has an enable or disable option.
Debugging
In the Marlin firmware there is a Debug option.
http://marlinfw.org/docs/gcode/M111.html
Gcode M111 (with the right options) allows debugging via serial link. The Prusa MK3 controller code is based around Marlin with their own modifications as far as I was aware, so it might work if PR have kept that in the code base. I haven't got a MK3 to try it on yet.
However....
I would take the debugging capabilities of Marlin with a pinch of salt, like paul.m27 said. The little Atmel CPU on Einsy is very heavily loaded when printing to the point where Linear Advance has been disabled for now, so it may fall over or reboot if it tried to send too much serial data back for debugging (if it even debugging works, which it may not).
Josef has said any suggestions for firmware should be emailed to them, subject heading of “Firmware improvements” so it reaches the right developers. Don't get your hopes up for n'th degree info though, given the lack of CPU cycles and memory left in the little Atmel CPU as it is!
Re: Is there a Data-Monitor?
moojuiceuk
Belt Tension
That is exactly what I was referring to regarding the motors.
Hey that ATmega2560 is surprisingly fast!
It runs at 16MHz.
It has 8KB of sRAM.
For comparision the first android phone back in 2008...
528MHz
256MB of RAM.
Hi, I'm Sean. I used to work on CNC machines.
I try to not make mistakes, but the decision is YOURS.
Please feel free to donate to my filament/maintance fund.
Re: Is there a Data-Monitor?
About EXAMPLE1: I'm pretty sure you can do what you want with the G30 command. This triggers a single Z Probe. You can move the Extruder wherever you need and then send G30 command. I use Repetier Host for such things. Has Machine Control and you an send G-Code Commands.
Look up https://github.com/prusa3d/Prusa-Firmware/wiki/Supported-G-codes and http://reprap.org/wiki/G-code