I3 Pro B 3D Touch Installation Success

[Macca_001]

Geeetech I3 Pro B - 3D Touch Setup - my route to a successful installation

There are lots of posts on this forum regarding installation of 3D Touch and having just spent several hours installing a 3D Touch onto my Geeetech I3 Pro B I thought I’d share with you my route to success which might help you avoid the mistakes I made on the way.

All of the information is available, it just isn’t all in one place and isn’t all coherent. This isn’t a comprehensive guide but if you follow it, together with the resources I point to, I’m sure it will save you a lot of time.

Step 1 Establish what your hardware is.

Motherboard Version. There are 2 basic motherboard configurations which affect the installation. I’ll refer to them as 2560A and 2560A+. the significant difference for this installation is that A+ is physically configured to accommodate a 3D Touch while the A needs some work. The easiest way to identify them is by examining the end-stop sockets. If they all align then its an A+ if they don’t its an A. You may need to make up the extension cables differently depending on which version you have.

Two useful resources to help identify the boards are.

User manual A : http://www.geeetech.com/Documents/Geeet ... Manual.pdf

User Manual A+ : https://www.geeetech.com/Documents/User ... GT2560.pdf

b. 3D Touch wiring. The Geeetech 3DTouch cable colours, when viewed from left to right on the part are Brown, Red, Orange, Black, White. Mine was a TriangleLabs clone and the cable colours were Green, Red, Yellow, Black, White. This is important when installing on the board so make sure you note the equivalent colours before you make up the ends of the cables with plugs.

The black and white cables go to the Z-min socket. I recommend using a new plug rather than scavenging the one from the existing Z-min because if your installation fails you can simply revert back to the mechanical Z-min. The plug orientation is with the white cable to the outside of the board.
On the 2560 A+ , the 3 coloured cable goes to a straight 3 pin socket and my Trianglelabs kit came with a plug fitted. The sequence of colours in the plug is Br, Re, Or. The orientation of the plug on the board is the Br cable to the outside (Green in my case because of the equivalence note above).
On the 2560 A, the advice in the forum and the manuals is to desolder the Z-max socket so you can use a straight plug. My preference would be to leave the socket in place and replace the straight plug on the extension with one suitable for the existing socket. ( In this way there is no need to take the board off the printer or to use a hot iron on the board. The cable sequence for the 2560 A is Red, Orange, Brown with Red on the outside.

A useful resource covering both boards is : https://usermanual.wiki/Pdf/3DTouch20au ... 32969/html

c. Type of lead screw which drives the Z position.

This post explains:

http://www.geeetech.com/forum/viewtopic ... 66&t=69776

If you are still unsure which lead screw you have then when you have completed the installation, use the Repetier Host printer command to advance the Z height by 10mm. If it moves more like 60mm you will need to modify the GCode to change the default from 2560 to 400.

Simply enter the following codes [not the words in square brackets] into the Gcode Send line on the Repetier print page. Make sure you only use CAPITALS for Gcodes !

M92 Z400 [to set the parameter]
M500 [to save to EEPROM]
M501 [to restore what’s been saved]
M503 [to check M92 line is saved]

d. 3D touch attachment method. If you use the bracket referred to in the Geeetech manuals then the extruder offset values are already incorporated in the firmware I reference below. If you use another bracket such as the one I used from mrzed on thingiverse which incorporates a fan you will need to modify the x-y-z offsets in the firmware. The thingiverse description helpfully provides them here in the summary
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2329594

Step 2. Modifying the firmware.

At this point you should have established the board version, checked the type of lead screw on the z axis, wired the 3D touch, mounted it on the bracket of your choice and attached the cables to the board so its time to update the board firmware.

Most Important ….. To modify the standard of firmware I point to below then you will need Arduino which is available to download from their website. Don’t bother with the latest version (1.8.n) because in my experience the firmware won’t compile. I saw some forum posts which suggested version 1.0.6 will work but I went all the way back to 1.0.1 and I got a successful compiled code. The difficulty going this far back is that it was incompatible with my Mac operating system. I was fortunate to have an older OS on a laptop which managed version 1.0.1 so if you have the same problem of compatibility either seek a machine with an old OS or set up a partition into which you can load the old OS and run it separately in that partition….. I’m sure there are other solutions to this problem and maybe someone will provide an update.

The firmware resource I used was here:

http://www.geeetech.com/forum/viewtopic ... 20&t=17046


For the I3 Pro B (A and A+) there are files configured for both boards with the 3D touch. They include all of the changes necessary as described in the 3D touch manual but note that you may need to modify it for the bracket offset and/or lead screw (which is also highlighted in the same post ).

Compiling and Loading was uneventful with Arduino 1.0.1 with no errors.

Step 3. Testing

The 3DTouch User manual has a simple test procedure using the G-Code Send option in Repetier as follows:

M280 P0 S10 ; pushes the pin down
M280 P0 S90 ; pulls the pin up
M280 P0 S120 ; moves the pin up and down repeatedly until you run one of the S10 / S90 commands
M280 P0 S160 ; resets the alarm, which is a constantly flashing red LED if the probe sticks

G28 ; will move the 3D touch to the home position and confirm operation of Zmin
G29 ; will run a bed-level test. You can see the results in the log. Run it a few times to look at the repeatability of the probe.

Step 4. Finally - Printer settings

Update the printer settings in your slicer software as shown at the end of the 3D Touch user manual to make sure the start code includes G28 and G29

https://usermanual.wiki/Pdf/3DTouch20au ... .405132969

and that’s it you’re you’re ready to go.

I hope you find this useful ……. I wish I’d had it before I started.