How can I command a single column's motor to move in a Delta printer

jvbiondo

Is there a command that will allow me to move only the A or B or C motor a certain distance in a delta printer?

For example, I wish to move column A's motor 32 steps.

Thank you.

Repetier

No, that is only possible internally and still difficult. You can disable a motor and move it manually

- M99 S<delayInSec> X0 Y0 Z0 - Disable motors for S seconds (default 10) for

given axis.
or with M17/M18

Moving motor some steps voids stored position and then you need to home to get position back. The only case where this happens is when the end stop offsets are applied after homing.

jvbiondo

Thank you for getting back so quickly.

jvbiondo

The reason I wanted to be able to do this was for Delta calibration. The suggested method of de-energizing a motor, moving it to a calibration point, and then re-energizing it suffers from the problem that when the motor is re-energized it moves slightly to the nearest magnetic detent location. This could be up to +- .9 deg for a typical 200 full step motor. This limits the accuracy of this calibration method. I would be interested in any comment on this. Thank you.

Repetier

Ok, yes motor driver just enables at phase it was on, that is correct. You can however change the steps afterwards in eeprom to fine tune from what you get. As said homing is the only place where this is done and changing the 3 offsets there is the only method at the moment.

Maybe I can add it in V2 somehow. Have to think about it. At least I there have a move steps function available.

jvbiondo

Thank you for commenting on my issue. It certainly is not a big problem for me and I indeed fine tuned it by changing the steps in EEPROM and using a vernier calipers to verify the distance between the carriages and the bed at datum points I designed in. Great software! Thank you!

zmisio

Hey.
Sorry for digging out an old post.
I was looking into controlling the motors individually, any chance a feature like this has been implemented already ?

I've got a printer with 3 Z motors and 2 Y motors, i would like to move them individually a few mm before end stop to make sure my X/Y angle and Z/Y angle are always 90 deg during homing.

Repetier

There are extra motor drivers for this. When you use motorized bed leveling, which is exactly what you want here, you need to mirror z to 3 motors. Add 2 extra drivers for this which map to the 2 of these z motors. Then the bed leveling knows how to control them to level bed physically.