E3D v6 Autotune

Part of a series on installing the hotend.

Simple Autotuning

You need to Autotune your hotend. Basically that means you need to find settings that will allow a consistent heat. I have no clue if this is optimal but it seems to work well enough for me.

However you access the terminal of your Printrboard enter 'M303 S200' and press enter. That'll run Autotune at 200˚ because you Printrboard supports that. You'll get output like this:

Send: M303 S200
Recv: PID Autotune start
Recv:  bias: 173 d: 81 min: 196.41 max: 202.14
Recv:  bias: 183 d: 71 min: 196.84 max: 202.19
Recv:  bias: 177 d: 77 min: 198.42 max: 202.14
Recv:  Ku: 52.68 Tu: 21.76
Recv:  Clasic PID
Recv:  Kp: 31.61
Recv:  Ki: 2.91
Recv:  Kd: 85.97
Recv:  bias: 170 d: 84 min: 198.88 max: 202.14
Recv:  Ku: 65.59 Tu: 18.87
Recv:  Clasic PID
Recv:  Kp: 39.35
Recv:  Ki: 4.17
Recv:  Kd: 92.84
Recv:  bias: 170 d: 84 min: 198.45 max: 202.14
Recv:  Ku: 57.99 Tu: 18.35
Recv:  Clasic PID
Recv:  Kp: 34.79
Recv:  Ki: 3.79
Recv:  Kd: 79.80
Recv: PID Autotune finished! Put the Kp, Ki and Kd constants into Configuration.

Those last 3 values for Kp Ki and Kd are the ones you want to write down or copy in to a text document or something. I added emphasis.

Saving New Values

The output of M303 suggests you put the new constants into your Configuration.h file and recompile your firmware and flash the Printrboard again. I wasn't 100% confident with the compile and flash process the first time so I prefer to not do that again. I might do it later if I feel better about the compilation process. You can write the PID values to you board much less intrusively by just using:

M301 P34.79 I3.79 D79.80

Granted, if your board freaks out and you need to reset things you'll probably need to Autotune again, but that doesn't bother me. It was easy.

Moving On

Your Printrboard is autotuned. Time to move on to the final steps of hotend assembly.