Stepper Smoother Box by printingotb

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

What
Ventilated and self-locking box for home-made TL smoothers.
Why
The commonly used drv8825 driver can be missing steps resulting in "salmon skin". [Not to be mistaken for ghosting/ringing and other mechanical noise].
A stepper smoother / TL smoother fixes this by adding resistance (in this case by the use of diodes) to the motor, smoothing out the current. I'm no electrician but this article explains it in detail and how you can make your own:http://www.engineerination.com/2015/02/drv8825-missing-steps.html
Oops, the site seems to be down, try this instead:https://web.archive.org/web/20171127173338/http://www.engineerination.com/2015/02/drv8825-missing-steps.html?m=1
You don't have to build your own, you can buy finished smoothers online (and then you don't need this box). Just make sure that they have 8 diodes and not just 4.
And here is a thing you can print to test if you have the issue, use a silky filament if you have one:https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1997411
Performance
See second picture, the issue was mild on my printer to begin with.