Hello, experts!
I have the SKR 1.2 board from the V1e shop and trying to get it to turn on my spindle. I figured I could use the fan controls, but something isn’t working properly. I have a couple of fans in my controller housing on F0 which I can toggle on/off with the M106 P0 S255/M107 P0. But M106 P1 S255 doesn’t turn on the F1 pins. And F2’s pins are always on, regardless of the M106/M107 commands.
Any ideas why the 2nd and 3rd fan pins wouldn’t be working?
Are there any other board pins that might work using the M42 command? The board pins can be seen here:
(had to remove URL or couldn’t post)
They aren’t set up as logical fans in the firmware. You can set up platformio and add them. Make sure you build the code before changing anything to confirm your setup works.
The laser is enabled too. Do it may be easier to use the laser parameters. @robertbu would know more.
The mosfet outputs are low side drive. The (+) is always on. The (-) is tied to ground when on, or tired to 12V through an led when off.
Do it may be easier to use the laser parameters. @robertbu would know more.
Personally, I’d avoid the laser pins (enable and PWM) unless 1) you are trying to control the spindle speed, not just on/off, or 2) you want to use the M3/M5 commands generated by your CAM rather than using M107/M108 or M42.
Are there any other board pins that might work using the M42
It has been my experience that any unassigned pins, and many assigned pins, work with M42. Note that not all pins are PWM, so if you want more than on/off, you need to do some research. If I was picking a pin to drive a relay, I’d look at the pins on Extension-1. All the pins are available except for PC9. PC9 is the laser PWM pin. These are 5V pins.
If I was trying to make a 12V relay work, I’d try M42 with the fan pins. Jeff mentions them, but they map as:
Fan0 uses PC8
Fan1 uses PE5
Fan2 uses PE6
And as mentioned by Jeff, it is the ground side of the fan pins that is turned on/off.
Thank you all for the help!
I did manage to get things working and created some macros for it.
TLDR:
I used the third fan port, fan 2, to toggle a relay on.
M106 P2 S1 (Power on)
M107 P2 (Power off)
I originally tried to use the second fan pins, F1, but was unable to toggle it on/off. I found a post that stated that F1 was paired with the extruder 0 pins since it’s typically used like that for printing.
No idea why my F2 pins were “stuck” on when I first tried it. I power cycled it and it started working properly (or more likely, I made a mistake when testing them with my multi-meter).
I did try to use the M42 command with the extension-1 and extension-2 pins, but had no joy. For example, on extension-1 I tested the 5V and PF8 pins. I used “M42 PF8 S1” and didn’t get any action on the multi-meter. Anyone know if my testing was correct?
The ‘S’ parameter takes the values of 0 to 255. For a pin that supports PWM, the voltage is scaled in this range. For a non-PWM pin a value above 128 is necessary to turn the pin on. Typically values of 0 and 255 are used to toggle a pin off and on. Your value of ‘S1’ would barely turn on PWM pin, and would not turn on a non-PWM pin.
Thanks for the suggestion, Robert!
Unfortunately, using S255 didn’t seem to do anything either, so not sure why, but perhaps something in the V1e firmware’s settings isn’t allowing it to work.
Thanks for the help. Getting closer to a usable machine!
M42 does work with the SKR Pro board and the V1 maintained firmware. I’ve helped people using M42 to turn on and off the laser pin. I don’t personally have an SKR Pro to test. So, some random ideas about the root of the issue:
You’ve mis-identified which pin is PF8
There is something different about the pin naming convention for that board. Maybe PPF8 is the pin name.
The pin you are testing is burned out.
There is something wrong with how you are running the voltage test.
Above I show the mapping between the fan pins and the pin names. You could start by testing to see if you can turn on the fan pins using M42. This will give you more information about the root of the issue.
