You showed us WHAT it can do, now show us HOW it can do it What do the graphs mean? How do you interpret the results? How do you actually practically optimize your motor with this
Just a point of clarification: the 7-30V rating is for the power input to the device, NOT for the stepper voltage. The current measuring device is rated for over 3KV but the limitation of the device is based on isolation of the PCB traces. Current estimate is that up to 100V 'should' be ok, but this has not been tested. Based on that estimate, you shouldn't have any issues with 48V stepper motor voltage.
As others have noted I'd love to see you use this to tune some of the printers you currently have. Especially a V0. Would be interesting to analyze with this, the max speed/accel macros you've used, then input shaping. Look at all the results and see if this device and analysis can help improve those other results. Like getting higher max velocity/access. Could this help with tuning belt tension?
@mikhailbakunin6746 I don't know what you mean. The video is about optimizing motors. The tool helps see what's happening with motors while they're running. I'm suggesting using it while running max speed/accel and other tests to get insight into the motors state when they start skipping.
@@BallisticTech in case skipping even shows up in a detectable way in the data. The driver is sending power to the motor, which then turns that into an electromagnetic field and that's happening whether the motor manages to turn or not. Really interested in what you can actually do with the data.
Honestly I think closed loop steppers would be the best way to analyze a motor because they are constantly tracking its own position is and where it's position needs to be if it's not where it's supposed to be. Dummy open loop steppers just send one signal to move in a certain direction and the board/driver has no way of knowing if it actually moved to the correct spot it told it to
As others, I wonder what you would use this for. Sure, the graphs might look nice, but as I'm not going to create my own stepper drivers, what would I do with these. And even if you could use it to tune something, would spending some extra money on closed-loop steppers not be a better option?
@@mikhailbakunin6746 This video is about optimization. You get the analyzer, look at the graphs and then what? Kind of useless if nobody understands what the graphs actually mean and what can be done to improve them.
Nah this is just using an off-the-shelf ESP32, using some digital interrupts to count the step pulses, and perhaps an ADC channel to measure the current (or maybe it's just guessing/assuming what the current is based on the motor voltage + duty cycle). Something you could probably throw together on a weekend pretty easily. I'm not really sure what the use case is here. To *actually* do any motor tuning, or tuning a TMC driver, you need to use an oscilloscope and actually look at the waveforms. Not just step counts/direction on a fancy graph.
@@potatomeatlabs I thought/hoped his board could produce similar tuning results as an oscilloscope setup could. Just to give Adam more reference: I was hoping to finally be able to tune iholddelay, tpowerdown, tbl, toff, hend, hstrt etc. Something that Prusa does set on the MK3 but no Voron config ever makes use of this low level driver tuning to get optimal motor behavior @vector3d
@@MatSmithLondon it doesn't but it actually tunes your drivers for your specific motor specs. Those graphs look nice but that's only helpful if there's an issue that shows up in the graph or some way to judge if one of two graphs is in some way better. Seeing that different settings look different isn't helping much.
@@zapl80 "Seeing that different settings look different isn't helping much" -- not sure I understand this statement, but did you see what the analyser actually does? The histogram bar charts at the bottom actually show you how much of certain distances / velocities accumulate over a given time, which could potentially help in a lot of ways, depending on the type of problem. As for tuning, it doesn't actually increase the overall performance of a stepper motor, it can reduce noise and do other things regarding noise / efficiency etc. That's somewhat separate to the analysis process though.
@@MatSmithLondonI'm really interested in the practical application of this analyzer. But the data more or less logically follows the slicer output converted to microsteps with acceleration applied. Whats the extra insight of that compared to e.g. the slicer predicted print speed
@@zapl80 Well - for one, I'm making a self-lowering ceiling mounted projector mount, using stepper motors to determine its precise position. So an analyser like this could be really useful for that. I agree with 3D printing it may not offer much more. He talked about slippage at the beginning of the video and yeh, unless there's a way of getting positional feedback, then I don't think it could actually help determine slippage - that would require current AND positional feedback analysis. Maybe I've misunderstood.
Why so complicated? As you already use a CB1/PI I presume it is running Klipper firmware. There are a lot of macros on the internet that show how to measure the step-loss at a certain speed and velocity with your printer hardware to figure out where the limit of your system is.
That's kinda weird toy, if you have layer shifts, than most definitely you already know that either you don't give enough current or pushing motor beyond it's limits
Great device. I’m new to 3d printing but have background that carries over. I’m curious, with the real time current used by each stepper motor, is there some way that that info could be taken from the extruder stepper to allow for real time calculation of pressure advance, not just the calculated approximation that is currently used?
Very interesting! Does this have a documentation wiki, GitHub, etc. for the firmware and any configuration or hardware specifications? Do you think it may be possible in the future to have this reporting aggregated/used by some of the other 32-bit firmware for built-in compensation/calibration?
Do you have one that support 22awg wires? Am I going to have to desolder the headers and solder directly to the PCB? Also, the exports don't see to have the time in microseconds. Can that be added?
One question why 30V only and not 60V? Some of us are moving to 48V on Vorons A/B motors. Which is the limiting factor (I'm a mechanics guy not too much into electronics).
I had the same question as my new build is 48v on x/y steppers. I was assuming the measurements were taken similarly to an oscilloscope, but the max motor voltage is not listed on the github or sale page. Would this tolerate upto 60V on the motor? Pure curiosity at this point.
@@Novacat170 There is a limit, but its not limited by the components, mainly by the isolation of the PCB traces. Having spoked to the designer, somewhere up to 100V 'should' be ok, but this hasn't been tested. 48V will probably be ok.
This is great mate, youve saved me some work. I cant say it will replace using a scope, but looks like the logging will be handy. Any way we can scale the input with a preamp or attenuator to use with 48V systems? will be handy for y stepper driver development, but i'm using 48V. I would expect you would always get best results feeding from the same power supply, so you couldnt just use a dedicated PSU for this board and attenuate the input? I mean even with 48V drive, the signals arent swinging 48V, so maybe i'm overthinking it and you could just use one of your printeres 12 or 24V outputs and connect it up to 48V motor without an issue. I presume it has overvoltage and reverse polarity/esd protection anyway and clamps input voltages that are too high?
The components will work ok with 48V, actually rated to like over 3KV, but the limitation is the PCB trace isolation. Somewhere around 100V will probably be the limit, so 48V for sure should be ok. Be aware that this is untested though.
@@ThantiK but then not all servos are derived from stepper motors. But it’s not really about that, my response was that if you change to use closed loop stepper motors or servos if you insist, it’s about getting the highest performance out of a stepper motor and not lose steps. So my question remains, would a closed loops stepper motor do this for you?
@@grandmastersreaction1267 ooo duh i normally don't see this style printer and say "that looks cool and fast" ,they remind me of the 100$ mini ones honestly lol, idk how i missed this one not like i haven't seen a ratrig before lol
V3d, I would be interested in seeing you use this to tune your Vzbot after it’s built.
one problem, the vz is a 48V system
You showed us WHAT it can do, now show us HOW it can do it
What do the graphs mean? How do you interpret the results? How do you actually practically optimize your motor with this
search for ble stepper motor analyzer.
Just a point of clarification: the 7-30V rating is for the power input to the device, NOT for the stepper voltage. The current measuring device is rated for over 3KV but the limitation of the device is based on isolation of the PCB traces. Current estimate is that up to 100V 'should' be ok, but this has not been tested. Based on that estimate, you shouldn't have any issues with 48V stepper motor voltage.
As others have noted I'd love to see you use this to tune some of the printers you currently have.
Especially a V0. Would be interesting to analyze with this, the max speed/accel macros you've used, then input shaping.
Look at all the results and see if this device and analysis can help improve those other results.
Like getting higher max velocity/access.
Could this help with tuning belt tension?
@mikhailbakunin6746 I don't know what you mean. The video is about optimizing motors. The tool helps see what's happening with motors while they're running.
I'm suggesting using it while running max speed/accel and other tests to get insight into the motors state when they start skipping.
@@BallisticTech in case skipping even shows up in a detectable way in the data. The driver is sending power to the motor, which then turns that into an electromagnetic field and that's happening whether the motor manages to turn or not.
Really interested in what you can actually do with the data.
Honestly I think closed loop steppers would be the best way to analyze a motor because they are constantly tracking its own position is and where it's position needs to be if it's not where it's supposed to be. Dummy open loop steppers just send one signal to move in a certain direction and the board/driver has no way of knowing if it actually moved to the correct spot it told it to
As others, I wonder what you would use this for. Sure, the graphs might look nice, but as I'm not going to create my own stepper drivers, what would I do with these. And even if you could use it to tune something, would spending some extra money on closed-loop steppers not be a better option?
I would like to see what to do with the resaults🤗
@@mikhailbakunin6746 This video is about optimization. You get the analyzer, look at the graphs and then what? Kind of useless if nobody understands what the graphs actually mean and what can be done to improve them.
Ah i thought it was about optimizing tmc driver settings. Not so much about just speed vs motor power.
Nah this is just using an off-the-shelf ESP32, using some digital interrupts to count the step pulses, and perhaps an ADC channel to measure the current (or maybe it's just guessing/assuming what the current is based on the motor voltage + duty cycle). Something you could probably throw together on a weekend pretty easily. I'm not really sure what the use case is here. To *actually* do any motor tuning, or tuning a TMC driver, you need to use an oscilloscope and actually look at the waveforms. Not just step counts/direction on a fancy graph.
@@potatomeatlabs I thought/hoped his board could produce similar tuning results as an oscilloscope setup could.
Just to give Adam more reference: I was hoping to finally be able to tune iholddelay, tpowerdown, tbl, toff, hend, hstrt etc.
Something that Prusa does set on the MK3 but no Voron config ever makes use of this low level driver tuning to get optimal motor behavior
@vector3d
Why not just use TMC's tuning spreadsheet? Thats free, made by the people that make your stepper driver and actually tells you what settings to use.
How does that give you anything like the analysis provided here?
@@MatSmithLondon it doesn't but it actually tunes your drivers for your specific motor specs. Those graphs look nice but that's only helpful if there's an issue that shows up in the graph or some way to judge if one of two graphs is in some way better. Seeing that different settings look different isn't helping much.
@@zapl80 "Seeing that different settings look different isn't helping much" -- not sure I understand this statement, but did you see what the analyser actually does? The histogram bar charts at the bottom actually show you how much of certain distances / velocities accumulate over a given time, which could potentially help in a lot of ways, depending on the type of problem. As for tuning, it doesn't actually increase the overall performance of a stepper motor, it can reduce noise and do other things regarding noise / efficiency etc. That's somewhat separate to the analysis process though.
@@MatSmithLondonI'm really interested in the practical application of this analyzer. But the data more or less logically follows the slicer output converted to microsteps with acceleration applied. Whats the extra insight of that compared to e.g. the slicer predicted print speed
@@zapl80 Well - for one, I'm making a self-lowering ceiling mounted projector mount, using stepper motors to determine its precise position. So an analyser like this could be really useful for that. I agree with 3D printing it may not offer much more. He talked about slippage at the beginning of the video and yeh, unless there's a way of getting positional feedback, then I don't think it could actually help determine slippage - that would require current AND positional feedback analysis. Maybe I've misunderstood.
Why so complicated? As you already use a CB1/PI I presume it is running Klipper firmware. There are a lot of macros on the internet that show how to measure the step-loss at a certain speed and velocity with your printer hardware to figure out where the limit of your system is.
That's kinda weird toy, if you have layer shifts, than most definitely you already know that either you don't give enough current or pushing motor beyond it's limits
It doesn't have any sensor to know that the stepper skipped steps so it will just show things we already know.
does "updated 50 times/s" concern just the update of the graphs, or are samples are recorded with (for some CNC machines merely) 50/s?
Great device. I’m new to 3d printing but have background that carries over. I’m curious, with the real time current used by each stepper motor, is there some way that that info could be taken from the extruder stepper to allow for real time calculation of pressure advance, not just the calculated approximation that is currently used?
still confused on what to do with this and how to use it.
So what's the process of tuning?
Very interesting! Does this have a documentation wiki, GitHub, etc. for the firmware and any configuration or hardware specifications?
Do you think it may be possible in the future to have this reporting aggregated/used by some of the other 32-bit firmware for built-in compensation/calibration?
For your first question I suggest watching the video.
Is there a way to grab the data wired per USB for example? In my company wireless connections are blocked basically everywhere.
Will there be EU based sellers? Importing this across the Big Pond will cost an arm and a leg
Britain is only across the channel:-)
@@Stahlfabrik But outside the EU. So who knows how the import fees will increase in the future, you know?
You gotta admire the dumbness of Brexit
Ok this video lacks a lot 😬
Can you please add a link to the Github? I can't see it on the video description
@vector3d please make a video on the VDE-100 extruder
Cool video shot, thanks for sharing, keep it up :)
homepage doesnt load from germany.. :(
Do you have one that support 22awg wires? Am I going to have to desolder the headers and solder directly to the PCB? Also, the exports don't see to have the time in microseconds. Can that be added?
you'll see better time data on the exported csv. 22AWG is fine, 24 was just a rough estimate for general use.
One question why 30V only and not 60V? Some of us are moving to 48V on Vorons A/B motors. Which is the limiting factor (I'm a mechanics guy not too much into electronics).
30v is just the input for powering the device, not for the motors.
@@Vector3DP so there is no limit for the motors voltage "to control/ track" by the device?
I had the same question as my new build is 48v on x/y steppers. I was assuming the measurements were taken similarly to an oscilloscope, but the max motor voltage is not listed on the github or sale page. Would this tolerate upto 60V on the motor? Pure curiosity at this point.
@@Novacat170 There is a limit, but its not limited by the components, mainly by the isolation of the PCB traces. Having spoked to the designer, somewhere up to 100V 'should' be ok, but this hasn't been tested. 48V will probably be ok.
The github link seems to be missing.
Nice, great work, thank you!
Good for nothing gadget
This is great mate, youve saved me some work. I cant say it will replace using a scope, but looks like the logging will be handy. Any way we can scale the input with a preamp or attenuator to use with 48V systems? will be handy for y stepper driver development, but i'm using 48V. I would expect you would always get best results feeding from the same power supply, so you couldnt just use a dedicated PSU for this board and attenuate the input? I mean even with 48V drive, the signals arent swinging 48V, so maybe i'm overthinking it and you could just use one of your printeres 12 or 24V outputs and connect it up to 48V motor without an issue. I presume it has overvoltage and reverse polarity/esd protection anyway and clamps input voltages that are too high?
The components will work ok with 48V, actually rated to like over 3KV, but the limitation is the PCB trace isolation. Somewhere around 100V will probably be the limit, so 48V for sure should be ok. Be aware that this is untested though.
@@Vector3DP Good stuff!! ok I reckon i'll order 1 or 2 with my next JLPCB order. Appreciate the work youve done for the community.
Great innovation.
Looks fun but mostly useless information
Can you solve this with closed loop stepper motors?
No because once you add a closed loop, they're called servos.
@@ThantiK but then not all servos are derived from stepper motors. But it’s not really about that, my response was that if you change to use closed loop stepper motors or servos if you insist, it’s about getting the highest performance out of a stepper motor and not lose steps. So my question remains, would a closed loops stepper motor do this for you?
Um what printer is that ?
RatRig V Minion
@@grandmastersreaction1267 ooo duh i normally don't see this style printer and say "that looks cool and fast" ,they remind me of the 100$ mini ones honestly lol, idk how i missed this one not like i haven't seen a ratrig before lol
If you are looking for more information google BLE stepper motor analyzer or simple stepper motor analyzer
Well done, i cant wait to use this.