Automatic top-vent opening and closing.
Now that in the new firmware the prompt for the top-vent dismisses after 60 seconds, I can open and close the vent remotely or automatically. I mounted a servo on top the lid (had no other way of mounting it out of sight) and I am going to connect that to the hackerboard so I can open and close the vent with some extra gcode when slicing for a specific material. I am using a Seed studio XIAO esp32s3 to run the servo, on a high or low pin the servo moves to a given angle. The high/low comes from the hacker board when I am finished.
This is just to show the auto opening and closing, it is still a work in progress but this bit works like a charm. 🙂
RE: Automatic top-vent opening and closing.
Ha! This is is fantastic. I've been noodling on my own similar solution, but I'm approaching from the angle of popping the whole top sheet up a bit.
RE: Automatic top-vent opening and closing.
Was thinking about that too, but my top-lid is closed with magnets so that didn't work for me. This was the next option for me.
RE: Automatic top-vent opening and closing.
I am still tempted to try a "passive" solution: Mount a little lever to the vent slider on the inside of the enclosure, and a corresponding tab on top of the Nextruder -- such that they can engage if, and only if, the Nextruder moves all the way to the front, outside of the printable area. Then add some custom G-Code which lets the Nextruder push the slider to the left or right before printing, depending on the choice of filament.
RE: Automatic top-vent opening and closing.
Oh that would be a clever (and cheap) hack!
RE: Automatic top-vent opening and closing.
Was thinking about that too, but my top-lid is closed with magnets so that didn't work for me. This was the next option for me.
Truthfully, I think your rack & pinion type setup is probably the sane approach.. I just kind of want to massively over engineer it for fun
RE: Automatic top-vent opening and closing.
I am still tempted to try a "passive" solution: Mount a little lever to the vent slider on the inside of the enclosure, and a corresponding tab on top of the Nextruder -- such that they can engage if, and only if, the Nextruder moves all the way to the front, outside of the printable area. Then add some custom G-Code which lets the Nextruder push the slider to the left or right before printing, depending on the choice of filament.
I couldn't resist and gave this a try... Described in a new thread to avoid polluting this one.