The lash of... something... never mind.
Sep. 27th, 2012 01:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rbandrewsI noticed this last night but I didn't believe it; I assumed I was measuring it wrong. But other people have had this problem and it's not the potentiometers.
The distortion isn't on the y axis, it's on the diagonal line along the x and y axes. It's caused by something called "backlash":
See, the extruder is mounted on some metal rods that it slides along. There's a pair of rods for the x axis and another pair for the y axis. Motors pull the carriage along by turning gears that move belts. The problem with this is, it doesn't change direction easily: the first little bit that the motors turn doesn't move the extruder, it just stretches the belt. Just a tiny bit, but enough to make circles distorted. It's a universal problem with stuff moved by belts.
The good news is, you just have to turn it a little more when you change directions to compensate, and there's a setting for it in the software. So, one more round of tweaking and I ought to have it dialed in. Just in time for it not to matter, because of another secret project I'm working on that should complete tomorrow.
The distortion isn't on the y axis, it's on the diagonal line along the x and y axes. It's caused by something called "backlash":
See, the extruder is mounted on some metal rods that it slides along. There's a pair of rods for the x axis and another pair for the y axis. Motors pull the carriage along by turning gears that move belts. The problem with this is, it doesn't change direction easily: the first little bit that the motors turn doesn't move the extruder, it just stretches the belt. Just a tiny bit, but enough to make circles distorted. It's a universal problem with stuff moved by belts.
The good news is, you just have to turn it a little more when you change directions to compensate, and there's a setting for it in the software. So, one more round of tweaking and I ought to have it dialed in. Just in time for it not to matter, because of another secret project I'm working on that should complete tomorrow.
