Tag: 3D printing

One and a half port charger on TP5100 module

Posted on by Ivan

WARNING: Lithium batteries can be extremely dangerous when handled unproperly and lead to fire hazard. Information provided as is, you can use it on your own risk.

Before last holidays I bought cheap Chinese action camera, which came without separate charging station. Camera’s battery could be charged only in camera, charging batteries via which have few cons:

  1. You can damage camera port
  2. If you have more than one battery, you can charge only one at time
  3. You need to watch charging process and change batteries
  4. The last cons depends on camera, but usually compact devices use charger IC with linear regulation and they have low efficiency. If you don’t have access to electrical line and you bound to use power banks, efficiency could be critical.

It’s turned out that a lot of cheap cameras use battery in the same form-factor, thus I decided to share my charger.
I think the most popular solution for single-cell DIY Li-Ion chargers is TP4056 module. It’s almost plug and play solution, usually it have USB port and protection circuit, but it uses linear regulation, so it have low efficiency. Since efficiency is critical for me, I choose TP5100 module, unfortunately it comes without USB port, but it based on buck topology and should be much more efficient than TP4056.
Unfortunately these modules come without USB port (at least I didn’t found TP5100 with USB port).

Thus that project was separated in two main tasks: design carrier board with USB port and design case for charger.

Carrier board is extremely simple, it contains only Micro-USB port and place for TP5100 module.

Case also has simple design, only curlpit which I had – contacts. I made them from nickel plated strips, which I bent once to make it bit thicker:

First I had design where contacts should be inserted from side, but it was nearly impossible because of  small gap between side wall and battery holder wall. I redesigned the case in a way when contacts inserted from bottom, un-fortunatelly I didn’t take into account that wires should be soldered from bottom, so supports under contacts should be re-designed or partially melted with solderer as I did it.
To make contacts stiff I glued them in. If they not feet freely into dedicated slots, use solder iron to melt them into slots.
Before gluing them into place, you should be sure that they are long enough and battery fits properly. I supported contacts with fingers during tests. If they have right size, battery should ‘click’ into slot. My batteries stayed in place even when charger with batteries was turned upside-down.

Upper case was printed in with ‘transparent’ plastic, so I can see status led soldered on charger module:

Here is start most interesting part. TP5100 can charge two cells connected to serial, but cells will not be balanced. With a camera I frequently have one partially depleted battery and one fully depleted battery, so I cant charge them in serial configuration without balancer.
Same time it’s not recommended to connect in parallel batteries which discharged un-equally, because current which will flow between batteries will be limited only by resistance of wires and internal resistance of batteries itself.
For myself I decided that it’s acceptable risk because of next reasons:

  1. Batteries like that is not high current, so they should have relatively high internal resistance which will limit current
  2. I especially use thin wires, which have their own noticeable resistance
  3. Contacts also have noticeable resistance
  4. When one battery charges another their potentials aligns. The less difference in voltage the less current flows
  5. I’m planning to connect batteries only when charger powered up, so up to 1A from charger will aligns their potential.

When I did the charger, I connected fully charged battery with battery which was just discharged by camera and measured the current, it was near 0.17A. Batteries like that should be ok at 1C current (0.9A in my case).
I will not agitate anyone to do the same, but I find it ok for myself.

Two more precautions, this charger can be connected only to chragers which are provide more than 1A current. Newer connect that charger to laptop or PC.
TP5100 usually come with maximum charging current set as 1A. If you put 1 battery, it’s a bit more than 1C (0.9A in my case), but I didn’t observed any noticeable warming of battery during charge cycle, so you can set charge current lower or use it with 1A on your own risk.

Here is stl files for  case
Board files: board

Upgrade XTLW3 with MKS Sgen_L & smoothieware

Posted on by Ivan

I own XTLW3 3D printer which come with MKS Gen_L  8 bit board and MKS MINI12864 display, out of curiosity I decided to try 32 bit board, one of the cheapest option is MKS Sgen_L  board. Earlier I used marlin firmware on gen_l board, but sgen_l come with smoothieware, so I decided to give it a try.

Looks like the most important advantage of smoothie firmware in comparison with marlin is ability to define your machine settings without re-compiling firmware. You can configure axis resolution, endstops, etc via regular text config file on a sdcard. That approach helps to fix mistakes during configuration or make experiments easily without re-compiling and re-flashing firmware.
Few weeks ago I mounted 3Dtouch sensor (BLtouch’s chinese copy), but I delayed moment of connecting it, anticipating related problems with re-configuring and re-flashing Marlin. Thereby it  was perfect moment to try new firmware.

There MKS provides example config which partially fits my printer, I managed to make it work and here is notes which may be helpful to somebody:

End stops and physical boundaries should be defined, my printer have end stops placed at minimal position for X&Z axis and at maximal position for Y axis. All of them are Normally Opened and connects sense pin to ground when activated, so pull up should be enabled. In XTLW3 hotend nozzle is not above print bed, because end stops misaligned. For me it’s even better, because I made printer dumps small amount of plastic during init procedure paste the table, in that way it doesn’t lie on the bed.
Here is my part of config for end stops and boundaries:

# Limit switch setting
endstops_enable true
soft_endstop.enable
soft_endstop.halt           true   # Whether to issue a HALT state when hitting a soft endstop

## X-axis
alpha_min_endstop 1.29^!
alpha_homing_direction home_to_min
alpha_min           -2
alpha_max           220
soft_endstop.x_min  1
soft_endstop.x_max  220

## Y-axis
beta_max_endstop 1.26^!
beta_homing_direction home_to_max #
beta_min -3
beta_max 224
soft_endstop.y_min          1
soft_endstop.y_max          220

## Z-axis
gamma_min_endstop 1.25^!
gamma_homing_direction home_to_min #
gamma_min -3 #
gamma_max 280 #
soft_endstop.z_min          1            # Minimum Z position
soft_endstop.z_max          285          # Maximum Z position

BTW, you should not exceed 132 characters per line. Also smoothieware uses different naming for axes in comparison with Marlin. For Cartesian based printer aplha means X, beta means Y and gamma means Z.
End stop value is just a pin name (mine placed right on the board), ‘^’ suffix enables pull-up and ‘!’ suffix inverts signal.
End stops configuration can be checked by issuing ‘M119’ g-code in printer’s terminal. You need to achieve all endstops to be reported as ‘0’ when they are not triggered and  ‘1’ when they are all triggered, ie:

X_min:1 Y_max:1 Z_min:0 pins- (X)P1.29:1 (Y)P1.26:1 (Z)P1.25:0 Probe: 0

Here you can see that X and Y end stops was triggered in opposition with  Z which was open.
You need to specify your homing direction in direction where your end stops are placed. I specified to home Y axis to max, because I had end stop at max position in contrast to other axis.
alpha/beta/gamma_min/max – options used to specify physical dimensions of axes. My printer has square rectangular table specified by two points (1,1; 220,220), but head can move besides that coordinates.
When head homed by XY it home outside of table space:

So when I set negative values or values larger than actual table, I just shifted origin, to make it placed on a corner of print table.
Soft limits just set boundaries for G<X> movement codes, they prevents movements which may damage  printer.

I don’t want to make a saga from that post, so I will  continue in the next posts.