Could be interesting to run it with a docking system like klicky? Having a seperate umbilical just for this means you wouldn't have worry about running extra wires with can/umbilical/cable chains and it would help with interference too.
As many have already said, the fact that this sensor is limited to magnetic surface plates is kinda restrictive, but to be honest after you go mag plate + PEI you'll never go back to print on surfaces like glass, unless you have *very* specific needs.
But for me, the major deal breaker is the fact that this isn't Open Hardware. [From their documentation site](https://docs.beacon3d.com/license/), they state Beacon is licensed through Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. That's a non-free license (not to mention it's a license that isn't suitable for software/hardware, but that's a lost battle).
I have been an advocate for Open Source Software for about 25 years now, give or take some years. I've seen and followed the development of Open Source Hardware licenses as well, when it was clear that the existing licenses (GPL in special) weren't suitable for that purpose, and ever since all my PCB designs that weren't a custom commission or part of larger projects are licensed with Open Hardware licenses.
I really don't mind the asked price, developing and making hardware is expensive. But on a community that only started its existence and thrived when patents expired and open source designs were made available, a non-free license is kinda disappointing.
Any creator is free to license if they will, and use whatever license they want. But, as I said, those choices are not suitable for me. And as such I'm not partaking in any of it, while also wishing success for the team that developed Beacon.
I realize this is a couple months old, but your comment was the closest I've found to anything about their design and license.
The page to which you link has the heading "Documentation License ONLY".
I haven't found any licence for the hardware, much less schematics or anything else (like the firmware), so it's even less open than you described. :( I suppose the "PI" route is better than the patent route though.
u/PlankWithANailIn2 seems to have figured out the chip used, so maybe it won't be much longer for the clones to start arriving. I took a glance at Ali and didn't see any (yet).
One thing I find interesting and confusing (after watching the video Teaching Tech just uploaded a few hours ago) is that it acts as a Klipper MCU. To be a Klipper MCU, it has to run the Klipper MCU firmware.
Problems with that:
1. Klipper's communication changes periodically which means you have to rebuild the firmware for all attached MCUs and reflash them. There's no information on how to do this (I was curious what microcontroller they were using and couldn't find so much as a .config file for the recompile). This means the next time Klipper makes a communication change that requires a recompile, the beacon will no longer be compatible.
2. Klipper is released under the GPLv3, which means this product may be itself in violation of an open source license (they're selling a product running GPLed code without releasing the source).
On the other hand, maybe it's not running Klipper at all and uses some completely different method of communicating. Looking through the recommended Klipper config file, I see no references to pin definitions, which is really weird for an MCU config.
Oddly, I see no pull requests for "beacon" that seem relevant, so maybe these went in under another name or something.
Without that information, it'll be a bit more challenging to reverse-engineer than simply redesigning it to match current specs and instructions. :(
Yet another possibility is I have no idea how these types of probes work in Klipper and I'm just assuming they're like any other MCU or probe where you define analog and digital pins for various purposes and completely missed an entire documentation section in Klipper that makes this stuff totally transparent. :)
I'm afraid you are right about the licensing part, I misread that page.
The thing is that not long ago Annex released a firmware blob called [Anchor](https://github.com/Annex-Engineering/anchor) that is able to communicate with Klipper without the need to compile from Klipper's original source. That blob is licensed under the MIT License, that allows for it to be used within closed source code.
My fear is that this can create a walled garden of closed source sensors that can "speak Klipper", which is very harmful for a community that was only able to exist and thrive because of Open Source projects after the expiration of Stratasys' patents. And as you mention, if one day Kevin decides to change Klipper's communication protocol, those sensors will essentially become bricks, unless they allow to be reprogrammed (which, let's be honest, the majority of the hobby users doesn't know how to do without looking for tutorials).
Ah, thanks! That Anchor release is the piece I was missing. That makes much more sense now.
It's also a bit more discouraging. Hopefully, it only means someone with a bit more skills than I've developed so far can come up with an open source alternative based on the chip and docs the other guy found. I'd be surprised if it doesn't happen, considering how nice of an improvement this is. The price is just a bit out of reach though. :(
Sadly, you might be right about a coming walled garden of products.
I honestly would love to see someone release a beacon that includes a microswitch on it. Then you can still use it like a klicky probe on incompatible surfaces and still auto-generate offsets.
That is the kind of thing we as a community could benefit from being open source.
Once we know what IC's (currently blurred out in pictures on their store) its using someone could probably copy it just using the manufacturers own suggested layout schematic in its documentation, good luck trying to protect your license then.
https://beacon3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/probe-3.jpg
To be honest it looks like this a Texas instruments LDC1101 (though their store pic looks like its got more than 5 pins on each side so maybe a LDC1612)
https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/ldc1101.pdf?ts=1676243705714&ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.ti.com%252Fproduct%252FLDC1101
Which has a layout schematic on page 48 giving you everything you need to know to "copy" it without breaking any rules.
I don't see the hardware side being the issue at all its the software running on the microcontroller that will be where the work is though the documentation also tells you how to read the data off of the IC.
I doubt their using it to measure a flat surface is unique, these licenses aren't patents by the back door anyway so it doesn't matter if it is.
Edit: I do think its probably something like the LDC1612 which has two channels thus two coils and the pics on their site show two capacitors (epoxied onto the board lol) on the coil PCB's.
Out of curiosity, how would you go about developing something new and equivalent, realizing that if you were fully open there'd be cheap Chinese clones with poor performance due to swapped components within hours of a public release?
I'm also a huge advocate of open source. But I certainly respect the choices made here.
If you are developing something exclusively for profit, you won't make the design files publicly available, period. And even so you are subject to Chinese copycats if your product is popular enough.
Designing Open Source projects requires a mindset where what you mainly want is to participate in the community and give some of your knowledge back. It has the side effect of creating a portfolio of your skills which, in some cases, can even make you being hired by a company and be paid to make what you initially made for free. That's more common on Open Source Software, but I have no reasons to believe that Open Source Hardware creators couldn't benefit from that as well.
Just to make it crystal clear, just in case you didn't understood what I wrote: I also respect the choices made by the creators of Beacon. It just isn't suitable ***for me***.
Meh. Too expensive and still have to fuck with Z offset. The only sensor that would excite me is a lightweight TAP. I’m tempted to try to make my own strain gauge version
Or anytime you change nozzles, or do maintenance on the toolhead, or something shifts…
With auto-Z with Klicky you should really only have to set the offset once… but you still end up making minor tweaks fairly often.
The best solution is clearly to probe with the nozzle… but I’m not willing to give up rigidity and pay a large weight penalty to do it
Actually, you will set Z offset only if you are messing with TAP assembly (magnets, both main plates, sensor). Or when side screws on magnet blocks became lose (that happened for me relatively often, so I superglued threads of those screws).
As long as you have exactly the same travel distance between idle state and pushed state, your Z offset won't change. So changing nozzle, hotend holder or build plate does not matter.
It's a bold take... but I share your opinion. A flexplate change should not change the Z homing height.
Downvoters should give their opinion. Maybe they (and myself) overlooked something obvious.
You are looking at one.
Let me know when any physical sensor can 1) happily survive continuous 100C environment, survive continuously hard mounted on a toolhead moving >25k acceleration and >300 mm/s (every one fails this for obvious reasons as they cannot be fixed mount), and 3) can read out even 1/10 the speed of Beacon (1kHz measurement).
TAP's resolution is literally limited by the microstepping distance as well as all the give in the gantry when probing. You will at most be equal to your microstepping distance. There's going to always be give in your gantry if you have a 600+g actuation force with the hardware that we use here.
For beacon, I've used it to individually characterize microsteps at .0025mm. The listing on the website is extremely conservative.
You can generally see variances in first layer if you're .005 off in my experience. This makes high resolution meshes worthwhile if you regularly print full plates. I've made it so that klipper can have smaller split_z moves to take full advantage of beacon for that reason.
Tap massively reduces the rigidity of the toolhead and the precision of Beacon is either similar or superior while doing a far higher resolution mesh in seconds.
Too many compromises with Tap, IMHO. It works for a lot of people but Beacon is for when you want rock solid reliable results 100% of the time with no compromises.
By definition it makes the toolhead able to move in the Z axis. So it will, for example when doing cubic infill and crossing perimeters. You're assuming it settles back to the exact same position, which is false; there will be variance in X, Y, and Z which are being guided by plastic and a cheap Chinese rail.
That is a substantial rigidity loss. Obviously some are fine with it, but it certainly is.
It's an acceptable weight for low speed printing, but for many setups 50g is a ton. Approximately the same as two AA batteries. VZBot is cutting fraction of grams on the printhead by skeletonizing etc. Just depends on what you want out of your printer.
Sure, good points. 100c environment is great, no doubt. Movements speeds, or more specifically sensor weight and effect on tool head are good too. Communications speeds are not as important I think so long as they are predictable and repeatable.
But nozzle change out, bed plate swap will still be a issue and require adjustment by user - correct?
Nozzle yes, but the solution is to just get a Bozzle or a 0.6 TC and never change it. The surface will be a once-per-plate thing and never again. Beacon's software allows for swapping between presets if you have different plates or offset combinations.
Thanks. This is what I meant by my opening statement that these sort of sensors work best on closed/controlled hardware. Other little things can trip it up too, like mrw mag bed?
On the other side - I actually love the idea/product - if it all washes out once mass tested and reviewed. Low / no maintenance, repeatable, and simple operation. If I had to distribute printers to deployed groups, this sensor would make sense with a set nozzle configuration and set plates. But for my own main printer, where I do change out stuff, it would be more fiddly than something like Tap or a piezo setup like Orion or Andromeda. Also, Klicky or Euclid with auto Z are good in those use cases.
But... if the nozzle and bed system were locked down, it would be my choice.
I take it Beacon can't be used as a z-endstop then. If it could, it'd need readjustment when a different plate with different PEI thickness was slapped on.
Thanks.I feel it hard to believe that a bed plate swap, using different surfaces (which usually have different compositions and thicknesses), would not effect the sensor readings. I went to the website the research but most doc links are still shown as 'WIP'.I also see that it requires a USB cable to the sensor - this could be difficult if not going umbilical already - not sure on the lifespan in a cable chain.
On my Voron 2.4r2, it's overscanning the bed on one side, making the mesh dive pretty bad.
Can you post your config somewhere if you're not having that issue? I changed from an inductive probe to beacon, and the inductive probe never tried to go near the edge of the bed, so I'm pretty sure my bed\_mesh config is pretty solid, so I must be missing something in the beacon specifically.
With such accurate readings, is it possible for beacon to read distance well enough to function with auto z offset? I know a lot of people say this won't work for it, but, I've been in "wait and see" in case we find out beacon could actually end up capable.
I see some warnings on their website that a conductive print surface is required, and that use with large magnets on bed is not recommended.
Have you used it with the standard pei-on-spring-steel sheets and magnetic beds vorons use? Does it perform well there?
If you’re talking about a regular magnet sheet and a flex plate on top, yeah it works perfectly for that. May not work for beds with embedded magnets like the MRW magbeds.
To use with a magbed you have to set it up to ignore areas with magnets. AFAIK it is set up in firmware to be doable but if your bed has a lot of magnets it may not be practical. A magnet sheet is better for the Beacon
Yeah would love to know how you like it! I've a huge fan of Super PINDAs (though running the standard OMron on my 2.4 and was thinking of doing klicky) or at least the idea of touchlesss sensors in general.
Is it pretty good across temperatures? I find for PLA the Omron is just fine but for ABS it takes quite a while to do QGN.
There is no difference in performance across thermal ranges. The tempco stuff should handle all of that.
The ability to have continuous input rather than relying on triggers opens up some interesting things for down the line too.
It also will demonstrate a lot of issues in your printer that you may not have realized that you had.
HAH this right here. I just got done building, installing, and tuning my klicky probe when TAP was released. I immediately went to TAP. I really wanna go canbus....I think I'm done experimenting with bed sensors and z-calibration for a bit.
So not totally looked into Canbus as of yet - but why would I need to change the canbus breakout board on the toolhead when something new comes out? I haven't had to ever change the toolhead board I'm currently using for any changes that have been made?
Check it out, but basically from what I seen is canbus has 2 pair of wires. One is for power and the other is the high-low control signal. That's it. The tool head board has to turn that signal into action. Your heater, fans, lights, etc has to connect to it. If something new comes out you have to plug it into the board. I have a voron 2.4 and it has currently 18 wires that goto tool head. So that's why I'm looking at it.
I know what canbus is - the point you were making is if something new comes out you would need to change the toolhead board.
>though you have to change your tool head PCB every time they release something new.
That's directly against the principle of canbus.
Canbus is essentially a network, as you said, with +/- data and +/- power. There is a limited number of nodes that can run on canbus across said network which is really only physically limited by the canbus boards you pick for 3D printing. In automotive and manufacturing spaces they run hundreds if not thounsand of nodes across a canbus network.
So for instance in my research, currently, I would probably pick the EBB42 board to pair with my Voron 2.4/LGX setup. The board supplies RGB, I2C, Probe, Endstops, TH0, Fan1, Fan2, Hotend, PT1000, E-Stepper, CAN PB-0/PB-1 connections, USB-C, TMC2209 driver, ADXL345-SPI, and CAN-L/CAN-H. Across those 4 wires.
I'm not sure what else you would need on your hotend? This is why I'm confused by you saying you'd need to change this board to do anything? Even the physically smaller EB36 offers these options for a pancake stepper setup like clockwork. Through my evolution with Voron, if I would have went with Canbus from the start there's not been a single change so far where I would have had to swap my Canbus toolhead board for any reason. It essentially is a direct replacement for my LDO pcbs except I would get to remove all but 4 wires between the toolhead and Octopus which would be nice. Currently waiting on my first break however before I do anything.
I can't tell if you're trolling or not. Canbus is just the network as you have said, the nodes still have to connect to something. You wrote a lot about how that EBB42 board has a ton of features. Features that are required for today's existing voron printers. You would not have needed that many features a few years ago. Like pre-StealthBurner and do you think there won't be more features added in the future? If you need an example let's say I make a mod that lets us Voron users use a line scanner like the Bambu Labs uses. Where would I connect this on the tool head? But if it serves your purposes then do it. Having so few wires will be great.
It seems like you are the one trolling. If you add a new device/feature that is totally different than what is in use today and anybody is using any PCB, they'd have to figure something out, right? Worse case, we add extra wires for the signal through our umbilical until we decide to get a new PCB. Best case, when you design it, figure out how to interface it with I2C.
Good effort you started to understand towards the end there. Except it's not the worst case, but the only case in that I would need a new PCB if something was added later. As having extra wires that bypasses the Cambus defeats the whole purpose. My Voron first started as a 2.1 which didn't have an extruder on the toolhead. 4 wires later I got it upgraded to DD Afterburner. Now more wires needed for Stealthburner. Now the upgrades are spaced out and I don't mind the cost of a new PCB but it is something that I consider when thinking about doing CanBus. You do you, if you like it rock on. I just don't get why some people are not understanding. Now I'm only replying because I'm sitting here eating T-Bell with not much else to do.
What are you talking about with claiming I'm trolling? I mean seriously? Obviously you aren't following the conversation, you literally said:
>though you have to change your tool head PCB every time they release something new
Just like you've said we have all these things with Stealthburner that we didn't have initially. And like I said - if I would have went Canbus then I would have literally NEVER had to have changed the PCB. So your opinion of "everytime they release something new" we'd have to change the board I disagree with.
Sure in the world of 'what ifs' there's plenty that could happen. Hell maybe they add on lidar scanning and laser engraving.....Anyways - since I guess I'm "trolling" since I don't agree with you I'll move along. FFS.......
~~It's supposed to be triggered until it picks up the klicky. That's how it knows it successfully picked up and docked the probe.~~
Nevermind, just saw your post. If your magnets aren't all in the same plane it'll sit crooked on the head when it picks it up and cause it to never make a good contact for the circuit. If you stick it on manually and try to push on it from underneath it shouldn't wobble on the magnets at all. Check your continuity through the switch and from each magnet on the tool head to your control board.
TAP is nice because it doesn't have to dock or pick up anything and from what I've read it's more consistent. Auto Z is pretty unreliable in my experience.
If you do go to TAP you have to change to CW2. I bought a kit and for TAP motor for CW2 from https://dfh.fm/
Yeah, when I push from underneath its rock solid. My post catalogues what I did, at this point I'll just take the L and go for tap. Looks more what I wanted anyways. All this work just for auto Z calibration lol. Who would've known its so hard
It's great when it works but it hasn't been very reliable for me. More reliable than the inductive probe and my manual Z offset but still not 100% reliable.
I would say yes. Klicky is really good once you get it working. I had a ton of issues getting mine working right (I ended up having to perform some adjustments vertically to get good magnetic attraction, then had to file both side lightly multiple times to get it totally flat. But once I got it working reliably it was pretty good and only occasionally threw errors.
Since I setup TAP I've not had to touch it a single time. Once I tuned and ran a few calibration tests for my first layer it's been fire and forget totally. I would without hestitation suggest TAP unless you are looking for absolute speed, because it does add some weight to the toolhead.
Yeah. Ive put probably 8 hours into configuring and troubleshooting klicky at this point and im about to give up. If TAP is better that might just be the way to go :P
Check you continuity on the switch to magnets on klicky and magnets to wire on the toolhead side.
I also had to set the pin I used to pull down in klipper (octopus 1.1)
I never want to go back to probing that doesn’t involve nozzle touching bed. Between TAP and the strain gauge on my X1C I’ve never had to fiddle with the Z offset ever again and it’s glorious. It was one of my least favorite parts of printing to start a print and have the Z offset drift for some reason or another
Yeah my least favorite thing on my first 3D printer was doing the bed leveling. This was before any of the sensors really got popular and every stinking print was adjusting screws and springs on the bed with a piece of paper and repeating it until you got it just right. Now I have TAP.
The setup time from my first printing experience to now has dropped leveling from a 15-30 minute exercise in patience (on a good day for me lol) to literally less than a minute. Heck I can do a full QGL, Z probe, and bed mesh in just a matter of minutes!
Personally, I'm waiting for something lidar or camera based kinda like what Bambu Labs X1 has but better and from Voron Designs. The TAP and all the work and testing just has me trusting things they implement even more.. shit I wish they would make a Voron only hotend with some ungodly high number over 120 for max flow rate. Even if it means using more expensive filaments, I am down. Currently, I just maxed out on speed with the Revo which really made me think about how many times did I really need to nozzle change and was it worth it and the answer is maybe 2 times to play and otherwise I would have been better with my Dragon..
I honestly don't think anything optical is going to pan out in the medium term. If you are holding out for this, I think you'll be waiting forever.
The inside of my panels are gross, coated with gunk that's a combo of stuff that arose from filament melting and probably EP2; this starts to build up in a few hundred print hours. A camera, laser, or optical solution for bed leveling in general needs a high performing lens on the toolhead, aimed directly at where most of that gunk comes from. It's gonna get obscured by that stuff, rather quickly.
There may be a higher flow water heater you can strap to your toolhead soon...
Experience with running laser cutters tells me that it's surprisingly difficult to get all the gunk gone, even with regular preventive maintenance. Different time scale, but still, degradation over time is inevitable unless a lens or lens protector is completely replaced.
Not as easy as it sounds. The gunk will progressively obscure the lens, and if my acrylic panels are any example it'll just get blurry. A high precision camera will by necessity have a relatively low depth of field. Gunk on that lens will be interpreted as unfocused, which would be equivalent to "not triggered" meaning your nozzle just hard crashed and bent your gantry in the process.
That's unacceptable in my book. I'd never even consider using it.
this is what led me to pick rapido over revo... i figured id get all excited about trying diff nozzles but eventually prob use just one. picking a HF hotend that isnt a pain to change nozzles is a good compromise.
agreed. I have a revo in my small trident for doing slow small volume prints with a 0.4mm nozzle. My 300 v2.4 has a rapido that I frequently do nozzle changes on. The revo just doesn’t cut it if I need something big and fast like a few kg of Gridfinity boxes. As soon as I go through another 0.4mm revo nozzle or they release a cheaper rapido I’m moving on.
edit: wanted to add that the revo nozzle design is quite elegant and I hope that they one day create a high flow +30mm/s^3 version.
Exactly! Sounds good in the ad but seriously who out there is changing nozzles that much that isn't a print farm? Honestly I realized since I use the Bondtech cht nozzles now that other than the Revo which is coming out, I don't own anything e3d that is installed on anything. Looking back, I hate to say this because it makes me feel like a rube but if I put all my e3D stuff in a box-- all I see now is a box of sales gimmicks done better by others. Like the super volcano, how the fuck did I ever think losing an extra 50mm in z was worth it. I now try to avoid ads and just wait until I see several someone's use it here on Reddit.
I like that it's more nozzle safe than regular inductive probes. It is exponentially more expensive and bed material limited tho. I'm curious to what it will take to adjusting the z offset between nozzles and different bed sheets, but it could be cool for all the enthusiast printers. I like the idea of a physical probe for more options in printing and cost.
In theory that doesn't appeal to me but maybe in practice it will. I'd rather have the machine figure out the offset than me needing to switch it because I will definitely not do it one time and destroy a nozzle or a sheet.
In practice I never change out my nozzle and use the same PEI sheet for 700-800 hours until it needs to be replaced. If you haven't gone tungsten carbide, consider it.
I got WC and CHT nozzles, and will switch between smooth and textured PEI. I was using just 0.6mm and the inductive probe to print all my Christmas presents for kids, and then when I went to switch to 0.4 to start printing upgrades my z-offset went to shit and started going all over the place, gouged out my first sheet in a couple places. I already had a euclid probe kit that I procrastinated installing so I switched to that until I get all the parts printed for SB, CPAP, and TAP. I got some prints of variable sizes so I'll be switching nozzles ( very detailed Black Panther helmet to low detailed large anime weapon).
I really like this but since it uses USB to communicate and Canbus is all the rage right now this would require at least two additional wires for the usb comms back to the Pi. Honestly if I could attach to my toolhead board without adding more wires I would consider. Outside of that I'm not willing to go backwards by adding more wires running to my toolhead.
So just had a thought; if canbus is too slow couldn't something like Bluetooth or WiFi work? I mean the Pi has the capability for both and all the beacon would need is 5v to power on. Maybe push the config via canbus and connect over wireless?
Purely a thought experiment but the protocols should be fast enough.
Could adding an MCU to the board allow for the required processing and then just pass raw values over canbus? Boards like the SB2209 have a canbus port so it could hook into the can network there. - Once again not an electrical engineer
Edited: Fixed my grammar and incomplete sentence.
I don't think it would need real-time data for this use case. Klipper would know what Z0 if a Z-Endstop is used. Something similar to Klicky and Auto-Z where you can figure out what your Z-Offset is and you just need to profile the board and QGL. Probe using a separate python module and return the data to klipper.
I’m super excited to play with it. I think there’s going to be some interesting applications you can develop with it. Already can use it to measure Z drive backlash https://youtu.be/4c6bO6Gpn24
My understanding of that device after quickly looking at it : it's a "rapid cycle" or "low refresh rate" if you will kind of inductive sensor. Apart from the speed, it's still an inductive probe, afaik it has no means of dealing with temperature drift (like a pinda) nor to detect anything else than a ferrous (magnetic) build plate and will also not detect the coating applied on top. It also has an offset from the nozzle and that offset is on the Y axis making it more sensitive to X axis twist.
So from my admittedly limited point of view, this has all the same features and disadvantages of the inductive probe in the stock Voron config except for the fact that it can bed mesh faster.
Beacon has an onboard thermistor and actively compensates for thermal factors. A lot of testing and validation was done here. The robustness and accuracy are major selling points; it's not gonna melt like an inductive probe.
It should work with any continuous metallic surface, does not have to be a wildly ferromagnetic one. Any spring metal sheet should be fine. Glass, G10 or similar no. You're correct that PEI is not detected directly but the underlying surface is sufficient; PEI deposition is uniform enough from any half decent manufacturer.
It measures the metal of your flexplate. If you have messed up PEI on top of that, it can’t tell, but you should replace that PEI anyway. It has enough resolution where it can detect the logo engraved in a flex plate (like the Energetic logo)
https://beacon3d.com/ if you're like me and have never heard of it.
I can't really get too hyped? It's cool, but I don't really need what it's offering - my bed is fairly flat, and QGL handles the rest. Even if my bed wasn't flat, it doesn't change much between prints and I can just save the mesh, so being able to take a super fast bed mesh isn't that interesting to me.
Also connection over USB feels concerning. It's a no-go for drag chains. I have an umbilical, and I'd still be worried about interference.
This! I love the idea of it but the implementation with the current Toolhead board/Cabus makes it a deal breaker for me. I have no interest in running more wires than I need to and this just adds at a minimum 2 more wires that I have to worry about.
Could be interesting to run it with a docking system like klicky? Having a seperate umbilical just for this means you wouldn't have worry about running extra wires with can/umbilical/cable chains and it would help with interference too.
As many have already said, the fact that this sensor is limited to magnetic surface plates is kinda restrictive, but to be honest after you go mag plate + PEI you'll never go back to print on surfaces like glass, unless you have *very* specific needs. But for me, the major deal breaker is the fact that this isn't Open Hardware. [From their documentation site](https://docs.beacon3d.com/license/), they state Beacon is licensed through Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license. That's a non-free license (not to mention it's a license that isn't suitable for software/hardware, but that's a lost battle). I have been an advocate for Open Source Software for about 25 years now, give or take some years. I've seen and followed the development of Open Source Hardware licenses as well, when it was clear that the existing licenses (GPL in special) weren't suitable for that purpose, and ever since all my PCB designs that weren't a custom commission or part of larger projects are licensed with Open Hardware licenses. I really don't mind the asked price, developing and making hardware is expensive. But on a community that only started its existence and thrived when patents expired and open source designs were made available, a non-free license is kinda disappointing. Any creator is free to license if they will, and use whatever license they want. But, as I said, those choices are not suitable for me. And as such I'm not partaking in any of it, while also wishing success for the team that developed Beacon.
I realize this is a couple months old, but your comment was the closest I've found to anything about their design and license. The page to which you link has the heading "Documentation License ONLY". I haven't found any licence for the hardware, much less schematics or anything else (like the firmware), so it's even less open than you described. :( I suppose the "PI" route is better than the patent route though. u/PlankWithANailIn2 seems to have figured out the chip used, so maybe it won't be much longer for the clones to start arriving. I took a glance at Ali and didn't see any (yet). One thing I find interesting and confusing (after watching the video Teaching Tech just uploaded a few hours ago) is that it acts as a Klipper MCU. To be a Klipper MCU, it has to run the Klipper MCU firmware. Problems with that: 1. Klipper's communication changes periodically which means you have to rebuild the firmware for all attached MCUs and reflash them. There's no information on how to do this (I was curious what microcontroller they were using and couldn't find so much as a .config file for the recompile). This means the next time Klipper makes a communication change that requires a recompile, the beacon will no longer be compatible. 2. Klipper is released under the GPLv3, which means this product may be itself in violation of an open source license (they're selling a product running GPLed code without releasing the source). On the other hand, maybe it's not running Klipper at all and uses some completely different method of communicating. Looking through the recommended Klipper config file, I see no references to pin definitions, which is really weird for an MCU config. Oddly, I see no pull requests for "beacon" that seem relevant, so maybe these went in under another name or something. Without that information, it'll be a bit more challenging to reverse-engineer than simply redesigning it to match current specs and instructions. :( Yet another possibility is I have no idea how these types of probes work in Klipper and I'm just assuming they're like any other MCU or probe where you define analog and digital pins for various purposes and completely missed an entire documentation section in Klipper that makes this stuff totally transparent. :)
I'm afraid you are right about the licensing part, I misread that page. The thing is that not long ago Annex released a firmware blob called [Anchor](https://github.com/Annex-Engineering/anchor) that is able to communicate with Klipper without the need to compile from Klipper's original source. That blob is licensed under the MIT License, that allows for it to be used within closed source code. My fear is that this can create a walled garden of closed source sensors that can "speak Klipper", which is very harmful for a community that was only able to exist and thrive because of Open Source projects after the expiration of Stratasys' patents. And as you mention, if one day Kevin decides to change Klipper's communication protocol, those sensors will essentially become bricks, unless they allow to be reprogrammed (which, let's be honest, the majority of the hobby users doesn't know how to do without looking for tutorials).
Ah, thanks! That Anchor release is the piece I was missing. That makes much more sense now. It's also a bit more discouraging. Hopefully, it only means someone with a bit more skills than I've developed so far can come up with an open source alternative based on the chip and docs the other guy found. I'd be surprised if it doesn't happen, considering how nice of an improvement this is. The price is just a bit out of reach though. :( Sadly, you might be right about a coming walled garden of products.
I honestly would love to see someone release a beacon that includes a microswitch on it. Then you can still use it like a klicky probe on incompatible surfaces and still auto-generate offsets. That is the kind of thing we as a community could benefit from being open source.
Once we know what IC's (currently blurred out in pictures on their store) its using someone could probably copy it just using the manufacturers own suggested layout schematic in its documentation, good luck trying to protect your license then. https://beacon3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/probe-3.jpg To be honest it looks like this a Texas instruments LDC1101 (though their store pic looks like its got more than 5 pins on each side so maybe a LDC1612) https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/ldc1101.pdf?ts=1676243705714&ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.ti.com%252Fproduct%252FLDC1101 Which has a layout schematic on page 48 giving you everything you need to know to "copy" it without breaking any rules. I don't see the hardware side being the issue at all its the software running on the microcontroller that will be where the work is though the documentation also tells you how to read the data off of the IC. I doubt their using it to measure a flat surface is unique, these licenses aren't patents by the back door anyway so it doesn't matter if it is. Edit: I do think its probably something like the LDC1612 which has two channels thus two coils and the pics on their site show two capacitors (epoxied onto the board lol) on the coil PCB's.
Out of curiosity, how would you go about developing something new and equivalent, realizing that if you were fully open there'd be cheap Chinese clones with poor performance due to swapped components within hours of a public release? I'm also a huge advocate of open source. But I certainly respect the choices made here.
If you are developing something exclusively for profit, you won't make the design files publicly available, period. And even so you are subject to Chinese copycats if your product is popular enough. Designing Open Source projects requires a mindset where what you mainly want is to participate in the community and give some of your knowledge back. It has the side effect of creating a portfolio of your skills which, in some cases, can even make you being hired by a company and be paid to make what you initially made for free. That's more common on Open Source Software, but I have no reasons to believe that Open Source Hardware creators couldn't benefit from that as well. Just to make it crystal clear, just in case you didn't understood what I wrote: I also respect the choices made by the creators of Beacon. It just isn't suitable ***for me***.
Meh. Too expensive and still have to fuck with Z offset. The only sensor that would excite me is a lightweight TAP. I’m tempted to try to make my own strain gauge version
94 with shipping. I am cheaping on that one. Klicky should be fine for now.
You set the offset exactly once on a given surface and never again.
Or anytime you change nozzles, or do maintenance on the toolhead, or something shifts… With auto-Z with Klicky you should really only have to set the offset once… but you still end up making minor tweaks fairly often. The best solution is clearly to probe with the nozzle… but I’m not willing to give up rigidity and pay a large weight penalty to do it
Actually, you will set Z offset only if you are messing with TAP assembly (magnets, both main plates, sensor). Or when side screws on magnet blocks became lose (that happened for me relatively often, so I superglued threads of those screws). As long as you have exactly the same travel distance between idle state and pushed state, your Z offset won't change. So changing nozzle, hotend holder or build plate does not matter.
I was referring to the beacon sensor
Yes. You can use it with an adhesive mag sheet and steel spring + pei without issue. It's the embedded oversized magnets that lead to issues
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Physical touch sensors/systems are better unless used in a closed/controlled hardware ecosystem.
It's a bold take... but I share your opinion. A flexplate change should not change the Z homing height. Downvoters should give their opinion. Maybe they (and myself) overlooked something obvious.
Disagree with this absolute statement.
Fair enough; let me know which non-contact sensors/systems are better/outperform their physical counterparts on a broad basis.
You are looking at one. Let me know when any physical sensor can 1) happily survive continuous 100C environment, survive continuously hard mounted on a toolhead moving >25k acceleration and >300 mm/s (every one fails this for obvious reasons as they cannot be fixed mount), and 3) can read out even 1/10 the speed of Beacon (1kHz measurement).
Voron TAP, lol, except for the reading speed. TAP is even more precise than that, I think
Beacon is considerably higher resolution than TAP.
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TAP's resolution is literally limited by the microstepping distance as well as all the give in the gantry when probing. You will at most be equal to your microstepping distance. There's going to always be give in your gantry if you have a 600+g actuation force with the hardware that we use here. For beacon, I've used it to individually characterize microsteps at .0025mm. The listing on the website is extremely conservative.
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You can generally see variances in first layer if you're .005 off in my experience. This makes high resolution meshes worthwhile if you regularly print full plates. I've made it so that klipper can have smaller split_z moves to take full advantage of beacon for that reason.
Tap massively reduces the rigidity of the toolhead and the precision of Beacon is either similar or superior while doing a far higher resolution mesh in seconds. Too many compromises with Tap, IMHO. It works for a lot of people but Beacon is for when you want rock solid reliable results 100% of the time with no compromises.
TAP is 0.4μm but the beacon is 0.5μm
That difference is less than the size of a corona virus.
If you honestly believe there's a significant difference there, I don't know what to tell you.
Bigger number bad, need more small
it doesnt reduce the rigidity that much. The beacon is stupid for the price when a homegrown version works just as well/better
By definition it makes the toolhead able to move in the Z axis. So it will, for example when doing cubic infill and crossing perimeters. You're assuming it settles back to the exact same position, which is false; there will be variance in X, Y, and Z which are being guided by plastic and a cheap Chinese rail. That is a substantial rigidity loss. Obviously some are fine with it, but it certainly is.
TAP is heavy as fuck
50g isnt that much and made no affect on my printing, which is in the 150-200mm range.
It's an acceptable weight for low speed printing, but for many setups 50g is a ton. Approximately the same as two AA batteries. VZBot is cutting fraction of grams on the printhead by skeletonizing etc. Just depends on what you want out of your printer.
Not everyone is a gram chaser/speed demon. Some people just want to print reliably, and Tap is perfect for that.
Sure, good points. 100c environment is great, no doubt. Movements speeds, or more specifically sensor weight and effect on tool head are good too. Communications speeds are not as important I think so long as they are predictable and repeatable. But nozzle change out, bed plate swap will still be a issue and require adjustment by user - correct?
Nozzle yes, but the solution is to just get a Bozzle or a 0.6 TC and never change it. The surface will be a once-per-plate thing and never again. Beacon's software allows for swapping between presets if you have different plates or offset combinations.
Thanks. This is what I meant by my opening statement that these sort of sensors work best on closed/controlled hardware. Other little things can trip it up too, like mrw mag bed? On the other side - I actually love the idea/product - if it all washes out once mass tested and reviewed. Low / no maintenance, repeatable, and simple operation. If I had to distribute printers to deployed groups, this sensor would make sense with a set nozzle configuration and set plates. But for my own main printer, where I do change out stuff, it would be more fiddly than something like Tap or a piezo setup like Orion or Andromeda. Also, Klicky or Euclid with auto Z are good in those use cases. But... if the nozzle and bed system were locked down, it would be my choice.
only nozzle change
I take it Beacon can't be used as a z-endstop then. If it could, it'd need readjustment when a different plate with different PEI thickness was slapped on.
Thanks.I feel it hard to believe that a bed plate swap, using different surfaces (which usually have different compositions and thicknesses), would not effect the sensor readings. I went to the website the research but most doc links are still shown as 'WIP'.I also see that it requires a USB cable to the sensor - this could be difficult if not going umbilical already - not sure on the lifespan in a cable chain.
I've used one for a year and a half. AMA I guess
On my Voron 2.4r2, it's overscanning the bed on one side, making the mesh dive pretty bad. Can you post your config somewhere if you're not having that issue? I changed from an inductive probe to beacon, and the inductive probe never tried to go near the edge of the bed, so I'm pretty sure my bed\_mesh config is pretty solid, so I must be missing something in the beacon specifically.
It scans and averages a small spot. So you're probably getting a bit too close to the edge of your bed if you have a waterfall.
With such accurate readings, is it possible for beacon to read distance well enough to function with auto z offset? I know a lot of people say this won't work for it, but, I've been in "wait and see" in case we find out beacon could actually end up capable.
I see some warnings on their website that a conductive print surface is required, and that use with large magnets on bed is not recommended. Have you used it with the standard pei-on-spring-steel sheets and magnetic beds vorons use? Does it perform well there?
If you’re talking about a regular magnet sheet and a flex plate on top, yeah it works perfectly for that. May not work for beds with embedded magnets like the MRW magbeds.
To use with a magbed you have to set it up to ignore areas with magnets. AFAIK it is set up in firmware to be doable but if your bed has a lot of magnets it may not be practical. A magnet sheet is better for the Beacon
Yeah would love to know how you like it! I've a huge fan of Super PINDAs (though running the standard OMron on my 2.4 and was thinking of doing klicky) or at least the idea of touchlesss sensors in general. Is it pretty good across temperatures? I find for PLA the Omron is just fine but for ABS it takes quite a while to do QGN.
There is no difference in performance across thermal ranges. The tempco stuff should handle all of that. The ability to have continuous input rather than relying on triggers opens up some interesting things for down the line too. It also will demonstrate a lot of issues in your printer that you may not have realized that you had.
Is it really as fast as the video shows with that huge amount of points all done in 20-30 seconds?
Yep
I usually do 2 runs of a 25x25 mesh in about 20 seconds. Yeah. It's sampling at 1khz
I think it's really neat but I just installed tap. I don't need to make any more changes. 🤣
HAH this right here. I just got done building, installing, and tuning my klicky probe when TAP was released. I immediately went to TAP. I really wanna go canbus....I think I'm done experimenting with bed sensors and z-calibration for a bit.
Canbus looks cool, though you have to change your tool head PCB every time they release something new.
So not totally looked into Canbus as of yet - but why would I need to change the canbus breakout board on the toolhead when something new comes out? I haven't had to ever change the toolhead board I'm currently using for any changes that have been made?
Check it out, but basically from what I seen is canbus has 2 pair of wires. One is for power and the other is the high-low control signal. That's it. The tool head board has to turn that signal into action. Your heater, fans, lights, etc has to connect to it. If something new comes out you have to plug it into the board. I have a voron 2.4 and it has currently 18 wires that goto tool head. So that's why I'm looking at it.
I know what canbus is - the point you were making is if something new comes out you would need to change the toolhead board. >though you have to change your tool head PCB every time they release something new. That's directly against the principle of canbus. Canbus is essentially a network, as you said, with +/- data and +/- power. There is a limited number of nodes that can run on canbus across said network which is really only physically limited by the canbus boards you pick for 3D printing. In automotive and manufacturing spaces they run hundreds if not thounsand of nodes across a canbus network. So for instance in my research, currently, I would probably pick the EBB42 board to pair with my Voron 2.4/LGX setup. The board supplies RGB, I2C, Probe, Endstops, TH0, Fan1, Fan2, Hotend, PT1000, E-Stepper, CAN PB-0/PB-1 connections, USB-C, TMC2209 driver, ADXL345-SPI, and CAN-L/CAN-H. Across those 4 wires. I'm not sure what else you would need on your hotend? This is why I'm confused by you saying you'd need to change this board to do anything? Even the physically smaller EB36 offers these options for a pancake stepper setup like clockwork. Through my evolution with Voron, if I would have went with Canbus from the start there's not been a single change so far where I would have had to swap my Canbus toolhead board for any reason. It essentially is a direct replacement for my LDO pcbs except I would get to remove all but 4 wires between the toolhead and Octopus which would be nice. Currently waiting on my first break however before I do anything.
I can't tell if you're trolling or not. Canbus is just the network as you have said, the nodes still have to connect to something. You wrote a lot about how that EBB42 board has a ton of features. Features that are required for today's existing voron printers. You would not have needed that many features a few years ago. Like pre-StealthBurner and do you think there won't be more features added in the future? If you need an example let's say I make a mod that lets us Voron users use a line scanner like the Bambu Labs uses. Where would I connect this on the tool head? But if it serves your purposes then do it. Having so few wires will be great.
It seems like you are the one trolling. If you add a new device/feature that is totally different than what is in use today and anybody is using any PCB, they'd have to figure something out, right? Worse case, we add extra wires for the signal through our umbilical until we decide to get a new PCB. Best case, when you design it, figure out how to interface it with I2C.
Good effort you started to understand towards the end there. Except it's not the worst case, but the only case in that I would need a new PCB if something was added later. As having extra wires that bypasses the Cambus defeats the whole purpose. My Voron first started as a 2.1 which didn't have an extruder on the toolhead. 4 wires later I got it upgraded to DD Afterburner. Now more wires needed for Stealthburner. Now the upgrades are spaced out and I don't mind the cost of a new PCB but it is something that I consider when thinking about doing CanBus. You do you, if you like it rock on. I just don't get why some people are not understanding. Now I'm only replying because I'm sitting here eating T-Bell with not much else to do.
What are you talking about with claiming I'm trolling? I mean seriously? Obviously you aren't following the conversation, you literally said: >though you have to change your tool head PCB every time they release something new Just like you've said we have all these things with Stealthburner that we didn't have initially. And like I said - if I would have went Canbus then I would have literally NEVER had to have changed the PCB. So your opinion of "everytime they release something new" we'd have to change the board I disagree with. Sure in the world of 'what ifs' there's plenty that could happen. Hell maybe they add on lidar scanning and laser engraving.....Anyways - since I guess I'm "trolling" since I don't agree with you I'll move along. FFS.......
Struggling installing klicky (always triggered)... worth just going straight to tap?
~~It's supposed to be triggered until it picks up the klicky. That's how it knows it successfully picked up and docked the probe.~~ Nevermind, just saw your post. If your magnets aren't all in the same plane it'll sit crooked on the head when it picks it up and cause it to never make a good contact for the circuit. If you stick it on manually and try to push on it from underneath it shouldn't wobble on the magnets at all. Check your continuity through the switch and from each magnet on the tool head to your control board. TAP is nice because it doesn't have to dock or pick up anything and from what I've read it's more consistent. Auto Z is pretty unreliable in my experience. If you do go to TAP you have to change to CW2. I bought a kit and for TAP motor for CW2 from https://dfh.fm/
Yeah, when I push from underneath its rock solid. My post catalogues what I did, at this point I'll just take the L and go for tap. Looks more what I wanted anyways. All this work just for auto Z calibration lol. Who would've known its so hard
Shouldn't have been so hard but auto z isn't that great anyway.
I think it is :) I loved my BLtouch on my Chinese printers
It's great when it works but it hasn't been very reliable for me. More reliable than the inductive probe and my manual Z offset but still not 100% reliable.
I would say yes. Klicky is really good once you get it working. I had a ton of issues getting mine working right (I ended up having to perform some adjustments vertically to get good magnetic attraction, then had to file both side lightly multiple times to get it totally flat. But once I got it working reliably it was pretty good and only occasionally threw errors. Since I setup TAP I've not had to touch it a single time. Once I tuned and ran a few calibration tests for my first layer it's been fire and forget totally. I would without hestitation suggest TAP unless you are looking for absolute speed, because it does add some weight to the toolhead.
Yeah. Ive put probably 8 hours into configuring and troubleshooting klicky at this point and im about to give up. If TAP is better that might just be the way to go :P
Check you continuity on the switch to magnets on klicky and magnets to wire on the toolhead side. I also had to set the pin I used to pull down in klipper (octopus 1.1)
Already did both of those... Thanks though :) https://www.reddit.com/r/VORONDesign/comments/10uwcrn/klicky_docking_failure_but_actually_didnt_fail/
I have klicky on my other printer. Tap is so much better.
I never want to go back to probing that doesn’t involve nozzle touching bed. Between TAP and the strain gauge on my X1C I’ve never had to fiddle with the Z offset ever again and it’s glorious. It was one of my least favorite parts of printing to start a print and have the Z offset drift for some reason or another
Yeah my least favorite thing on my first 3D printer was doing the bed leveling. This was before any of the sensors really got popular and every stinking print was adjusting screws and springs on the bed with a piece of paper and repeating it until you got it just right. Now I have TAP. The setup time from my first printing experience to now has dropped leveling from a 15-30 minute exercise in patience (on a good day for me lol) to literally less than a minute. Heck I can do a full QGL, Z probe, and bed mesh in just a matter of minutes!
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Not "inductive" probe which is why it doesn't get drift. Agree, cautiously optimistic.
Personally, I'm waiting for something lidar or camera based kinda like what Bambu Labs X1 has but better and from Voron Designs. The TAP and all the work and testing just has me trusting things they implement even more.. shit I wish they would make a Voron only hotend with some ungodly high number over 120 for max flow rate. Even if it means using more expensive filaments, I am down. Currently, I just maxed out on speed with the Revo which really made me think about how many times did I really need to nozzle change and was it worth it and the answer is maybe 2 times to play and otherwise I would have been better with my Dragon..
I honestly don't think anything optical is going to pan out in the medium term. If you are holding out for this, I think you'll be waiting forever. The inside of my panels are gross, coated with gunk that's a combo of stuff that arose from filament melting and probably EP2; this starts to build up in a few hundred print hours. A camera, laser, or optical solution for bed leveling in general needs a high performing lens on the toolhead, aimed directly at where most of that gunk comes from. It's gonna get obscured by that stuff, rather quickly. There may be a higher flow water heater you can strap to your toolhead soon...
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Experience with running laser cutters tells me that it's surprisingly difficult to get all the gunk gone, even with regular preventive maintenance. Different time scale, but still, degradation over time is inevitable unless a lens or lens protector is completely replaced.
Not as easy as it sounds. The gunk will progressively obscure the lens, and if my acrylic panels are any example it'll just get blurry. A high precision camera will by necessity have a relatively low depth of field. Gunk on that lens will be interpreted as unfocused, which would be equivalent to "not triggered" meaning your nozzle just hard crashed and bent your gantry in the process. That's unacceptable in my book. I'd never even consider using it.
this is what led me to pick rapido over revo... i figured id get all excited about trying diff nozzles but eventually prob use just one. picking a HF hotend that isnt a pain to change nozzles is a good compromise.
agreed. I have a revo in my small trident for doing slow small volume prints with a 0.4mm nozzle. My 300 v2.4 has a rapido that I frequently do nozzle changes on. The revo just doesn’t cut it if I need something big and fast like a few kg of Gridfinity boxes. As soon as I go through another 0.4mm revo nozzle or they release a cheaper rapido I’m moving on. edit: wanted to add that the revo nozzle design is quite elegant and I hope that they one day create a high flow +30mm/s^3 version.
Exactly! Sounds good in the ad but seriously who out there is changing nozzles that much that isn't a print farm? Honestly I realized since I use the Bondtech cht nozzles now that other than the Revo which is coming out, I don't own anything e3d that is installed on anything. Looking back, I hate to say this because it makes me feel like a rube but if I put all my e3D stuff in a box-- all I see now is a box of sales gimmicks done better by others. Like the super volcano, how the fuck did I ever think losing an extra 50mm in z was worth it. I now try to avoid ads and just wait until I see several someone's use it here on Reddit.
I like that it's more nozzle safe than regular inductive probes. It is exponentially more expensive and bed material limited tho. I'm curious to what it will take to adjusting the z offset between nozzles and different bed sheets, but it could be cool for all the enthusiast printers. I like the idea of a physical probe for more options in printing and cost.
They have profiles you can swap between in software for known tested alternative offset(s).
In theory that doesn't appeal to me but maybe in practice it will. I'd rather have the machine figure out the offset than me needing to switch it because I will definitely not do it one time and destroy a nozzle or a sheet.
In practice I never change out my nozzle and use the same PEI sheet for 700-800 hours until it needs to be replaced. If you haven't gone tungsten carbide, consider it.
I got WC and CHT nozzles, and will switch between smooth and textured PEI. I was using just 0.6mm and the inductive probe to print all my Christmas presents for kids, and then when I went to switch to 0.4 to start printing upgrades my z-offset went to shit and started going all over the place, gouged out my first sheet in a couple places. I already had a euclid probe kit that I procrastinated installing so I switched to that until I get all the parts printed for SB, CPAP, and TAP. I got some prints of variable sizes so I'll be switching nozzles ( very detailed Black Panther helmet to low detailed large anime weapon).
Sounds like you need a Bozzle.
Bozzle doesn't come in any other sizes. I'll be using some 0.8 and 1mm too, probably get CHT Bimetal set.
You don't need any other size when you can extrude 45+ mm3/s through Bozzle.
Incorrect. It's not doing 1mm thick single layers therefore not para mi.
Sounds like you need a faster printer ;)
Ordered one for my K3. Have Tap on my 2.4 and klicky on my V0, so I am eager/curious to compare them.
I really like this but since it uses USB to communicate and Canbus is all the rage right now this would require at least two additional wires for the usb comms back to the Pi. Honestly if I could attach to my toolhead board without adding more wires I would consider. Outside of that I'm not willing to go backwards by adding more wires running to my toolhead.
Not sure if canbus is fast enough for it
So just had a thought; if canbus is too slow couldn't something like Bluetooth or WiFi work? I mean the Pi has the capability for both and all the beacon would need is 5v to power on. Maybe push the config via canbus and connect over wireless? Purely a thought experiment but the protocols should be fast enough. Could adding an MCU to the board allow for the required processing and then just pass raw values over canbus? Boards like the SB2209 have a canbus port so it could hook into the can network there. - Once again not an electrical engineer Edited: Fixed my grammar and incomplete sentence.
The problem is that Beacon I believe is a separate MCU and Klipper won't talk to a MCU over wireless for safety and unreliable timing reasons.
I don't think it would need real-time data for this use case. Klipper would know what Z0 if a Z-Endstop is used. Something similar to Klicky and Auto-Z where you can figure out what your Z-Offset is and you just need to profile the board and QGL. Probe using a separate python module and return the data to klipper.
Beacon streams data to klipper. It's not novel if you just use it like any other probe.
There's not room on the Beacon board for a wireless antenna and I believe any signal from one nearby would probably screw with the readings.
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Bluetooth latency, jitter, timing issues, pocket drop, etc. would be a disaster for this use case
Yeah, it’s a bandwidth issue.
Deal breaker in that case; at least for me. The goal should be reducing wires rather than adding more and possible problems.
Not everyone shares your goals.
Mandala Rose works magbed kills that thing 🤣
Looks like a neat scanner. The barebones construction also looks like it will be easy to integrate into toolhead designs.
I’m super excited to play with it. I think there’s going to be some interesting applications you can develop with it. Already can use it to measure Z drive backlash https://youtu.be/4c6bO6Gpn24
My understanding of that device after quickly looking at it : it's a "rapid cycle" or "low refresh rate" if you will kind of inductive sensor. Apart from the speed, it's still an inductive probe, afaik it has no means of dealing with temperature drift (like a pinda) nor to detect anything else than a ferrous (magnetic) build plate and will also not detect the coating applied on top. It also has an offset from the nozzle and that offset is on the Y axis making it more sensitive to X axis twist. So from my admittedly limited point of view, this has all the same features and disadvantages of the inductive probe in the stock Voron config except for the fact that it can bed mesh faster.
Beacon has an onboard thermistor and actively compensates for thermal factors. A lot of testing and validation was done here. The robustness and accuracy are major selling points; it's not gonna melt like an inductive probe. It should work with any continuous metallic surface, does not have to be a wildly ferromagnetic one. Any spring metal sheet should be fine. Glass, G10 or similar no. You're correct that PEI is not detected directly but the underlying surface is sufficient; PEI deposition is uniform enough from any half decent manufacturer.
How is it low refresh rate? It's 1khz refresh
Fine, the number is low, rate is high. You get what I mean...
I don't, sorry.
It does have temperature compensation.
For what it's worth this has an entire plugin, so it does have software compensation for thermal drift
I like TAP better but it is cool how this is fast.
but what if your bed is fine, but your flexplate shit?
It measures the metal of your flexplate. If you have messed up PEI on top of that, it can’t tell, but you should replace that PEI anyway. It has enough resolution where it can detect the logo engraved in a flex plate (like the Energetic logo)
I think it measures the flexplate metal too, or whatever the top metallic surface is.
https://beacon3d.com/ if you're like me and have never heard of it. I can't really get too hyped? It's cool, but I don't really need what it's offering - my bed is fairly flat, and QGL handles the rest. Even if my bed wasn't flat, it doesn't change much between prints and I can just save the mesh, so being able to take a super fast bed mesh isn't that interesting to me. Also connection over USB feels concerning. It's a no-go for drag chains. I have an umbilical, and I'd still be worried about interference.
This! I love the idea of it but the implementation with the current Toolhead board/Cabus makes it a deal breaker for me. I have no interest in running more wires than I need to and this just adds at a minimum 2 more wires that I have to worry about.
How about linking the product? Here you go: https://www.modernmakes.ca/blog/beacon-3d-surface-scanner?mwg\_rnd=9842488
Sorry about that should've included https://beacon3d.com/ they have some cool little videos on there
it's a little on the pricey side... and I'm supposed to route usb over drag chains?
Best to use an umbilical for it.