So after another frustrating morning re-levelling my bed I've once again been thinking about auto bed levelling.
The matterhacker solution is pretty cool, but requires more hardware (and a different board) and is also quite slow.
So my idea was to place 4 washers in each corner, each gripped by a bulldog clip. These are wired together and then to the ground of the bed heater or bed thermistor.(or I run another wire up to a 'clean' ground).
Now using the spare 'probe' wire on the extruder I connect this to the hot end.
The probe wire goes back into the .... ZSTOP connector? on the Melzi.
So, if the hotend comes down and touches a washer in the corner, the ZSTOP SIGNAL is connected and we know what is Z0 (minus the thickness of the washer).
The head moves to each 4 corners and checks each height, like the matterhacker probe.
The hotend obviously needs to be free of plastic, but I can wipe it first.
So for hardware I only need 4 washers and some wire.
The firmware would obviously have to be altered.... which is where I would need some help....
So, can it be done?
Is there any reason we couldn't use the z-max stop as the z-min stop too? If it's going down doesn't it know the z-stop means it's touched the bed...
If someone knows how to write the firmware to make this work I'll be the first guinea pig :)
The matterhacker solution is pretty cool, but requires more hardware (and a different board) and is also quite slow.
So my idea was to place 4 washers in each corner, each gripped by a bulldog clip. These are wired together and then to the ground of the bed heater or bed thermistor.(or I run another wire up to a 'clean' ground).
Now using the spare 'probe' wire on the extruder I connect this to the hot end.
The probe wire goes back into the .... ZSTOP connector? on the Melzi.
So, if the hotend comes down and touches a washer in the corner, the ZSTOP SIGNAL is connected and we know what is Z0 (minus the thickness of the washer).
The head moves to each 4 corners and checks each height, like the matterhacker probe.
The hotend obviously needs to be free of plastic, but I can wipe it first.
So for hardware I only need 4 washers and some wire.
The firmware would obviously have to be altered.... which is where I would need some help....
So, can it be done?
Is there any reason we couldn't use the z-max stop as the z-min stop too? If it's going down doesn't it know the z-stop means it's touched the bed...
If someone knows how to write the firmware to make this work I'll be the first guinea pig :)