I got a kossel style delta printer recently with a bad arduino board. I looked around and after talking to friends and others that know the options I swapped to Smoothie. I have the Marlin files from before the board went kaput, so I can pull over a lot of the info, however there is most definitely a reason I’m in school to be a Mech Engineer and not a Comp Sci major, or anything electrical. I can follow along existing programming and maybe do some troubleshooting given sufficient documentation of what the errors are, but I’m not sure how to adjust or build a new config file.
I did some searches, but it seems like the people that had the threads were a bit more advanced in setting these up than I currently am, they answer what would be future questions but not my initial questions. I can’t post a link, so put smoothieware.org in front of this.
/forum/t-989939/marlin-to-smoothieware
There’s not that many things to port over, if you follow the 3D printer guide, http://smoothieware.org/3d-printer-guide carefully, you should be able to get it to work fairly easily.
It doesn’t require any special programming skills, you just edit a text file.
My friend, if I could just follow the guide I wouldn’t have needed to start a thread asking for help. I’ve read through the guide a couple of times. The guts of it, the software side, is fairly opaque to me.
The guide is fairly clear on what to do to setup a new file with no existing documentation, but I don’t trust any of my measuring devices to get me close enough to a good measurement.
Well you have to be a bit more specific than “it’s opaque”. What specifically do you not understand. We have tens of thousands of users and nobody has ever said “I don’t understand a single thing in there”
If you find the guide clear on how to setup a new file, you should find it even easier to setup if you already know the values from your Marlin config …
It’s really straightforward to move from Marlin, and what I mean with this is : if you have configured Marlin, it means you understand Marlin’s configuration options. If you understand Marlin’s configuration options, then you understand Smoothie’s configuration options, because they essentially do the same things.
So if you understand Marlin, you understand Smoothie, and you mostly shouldn’t even need the guide.
Not only that, but Smoothie is actually easier than Marlin to configure, so that should help further.
For example in Marlin to set steps per millimeters, you set :
# Arm solution configuration : Cartesian robot. Translates mm positions into stepper positions
# See http://smoothieware.org/stepper-motors
alpha_steps_per_mm 80 # Steps per mm for alpha ( X ) stepper
beta_steps_per_mm 80 # Steps per mm for beta ( Y ) stepper
gamma_steps_per_mm 4000 # Steps per mm for gamma ( Z ) stepper
As you see, you are setting the same things, it’s just a bit of a different format.
If there is any specific thing you do not understand or need help with, don’t hesitate to ask.
I didn’t configure Marlin, though. I got a good printer with a bad board, and the existing files. I’ve helped a friend that is even less technologically advanced than I am to ensure his Marlin code compiled properly (bad values, a couple of incorrect references, a couple of basic fixes like that) and went in and changed basic settings on his such as overall height of the printer and a couple other minor things, but beyond that I haven’t gone through from A to Z and configured a file.
I’ve never configured a file from scratch. I know that I have the correct settings in one file, and I should just need to move those files over but I don’t know what and where.
Ok that’s not a common case, vast majority of marlin users actually configure it themselves, and therefore understand the options, so when they come to Smoothie, they understand what Smoothie’s option mean because they are the same.
I think you need to read Marlin’s documentation to understand the Marlin file you have better, and once that is done, you need to go over the Smoothie guide, do what it does, and take it one thing at a time. If you run into trouble, just ask for help here.
MrAsa, can you post your marlin configuration.h? I have only had a smoothie compatible board for a week, but I can have a look and try and help you. I must say, i am a little surprised that no one else has offered you any help. There is a very strange vibe here. Maybe i am wrong.
I’m not sure what you mean nobody offered to help him, I personally answered 3 times …
I’m not going to write the whole configuration for him, because it’s generally considered a better idea for users to learn to use the board, rather than having everything done for them ( if they don’t learn, when a problem occurs they will not understand how to fix it … )
Also not sure what you mean a strange vibe … I do think you are wrong on this There is no problem at all with Marlin or Marlin users and there has never been.
It’s just that the forum isn’t the most active Smoothie community : Google+ or IRC are much more active for example. So that means users sometimes have to wait longer to get help. Nothing wrong or strange here.
