Ok so again I am looking for some advice on board purchases for my printrbot metal. I have school starting soon, and going into engineering will be a lot easier with functioning dual extrusion. I tried to get the printrbots extrudrBoard working, but after numerous efforts it wouldn’t work. So I am looking for a new board that will have support for at 2 extruder motors and a heated bed. An all inclusive option would be nice, but as Im going for a budget upgrade, I realize that I may have to make some compromises. Any help or advice is, as always, very much appreciated.
Duet 2 is a great option, although if you’re in a dorm you may have IT concerns with the WiFi/Ethernet connectivity. Not sure what options you have for that. Might be a good idea to get a PanelDue with it. You can always USB control straight off a computer in any case.
@Ryan_Carlyle I’ve heard nothing but good things from the duet boards, but they are on the expensive side of my budget and I would rather look at other options first
@Matthew_Del_Rosso ok, Duet Maestro then.
I’m switching all my printers over to Duets over time. They’re nice boards and RepRapFirmware is great.
There’s also an Arduino Due / RAMPS-FD version of RRF that might end up being cheaper, but I will probably be more work as far as firmware configuring goes. I’m not sure offhand what all you have to do to make make it work. Or find somebody with a Duet 0.8.5 they want to sell…
The WiFi/Eth is a very valid concern in a dorm. I’ve run into this issue this year as well. Have yet to find a reliable workaround for it.
I will say, it’s tough to run a printer in a dorm so it might be best to look into what your school offers. I go to Georgia Tech and we have a whole maker space that we use- my last school did too… something worth looking into especially if you have a roommate.
Thankfully I will not be living in a dorm
Ok, here’s a spanner in the works and possibly food for thought. Grab yourself a RAMPS/Mega 2560 (or any half decent Arduino based board) and a Raspberry Pi and try the Klipper firmware. You basically get the grunt of the Pi doing all the calculations and the arduino producing the signals for movement.I have 3 of 5 printers running Klipper, and frankly I’m done with Marlin, and getting very close to that with Smoothie. It will also run on other boards, Duet support is partially done, it also runs on Smoothie based boards, however, if all the board is doing is being told to produce step pulses and feeding back sensor info, it’s not really worth having a 32 bit board in there. I stripped out a Re-Arm in favour of an Arduino Mega on one of the printers.
There iare a couple of Caveats in that you need to run either Octoprint or Repetier Server but as you have the Pi there, it’s much of a muchness and it is still essentially beta firmware, and there may be something you need missing, although full menu display support and Mesh Levelling have just been added
@Matthew_Del_Rosso well consider it like running a 32 bit board, everything is smoother, stepping is more accurate and therefore faster speeds can be achieved with greater accuracy. The config is a lot more human readable, similar to smoothieware, and auto levelling is a whole lot less convoluted when compared to marlin.My prints have become a lot better using the same slicing settings. IMHO Klipper eats Marlin for breakfast due to it’s simplicity, print quality and ease of use.
The basic approach of Klipper (computer does acceleration and regular controller does temp and step pulses) is really, really good. I haven’t personally tried it, but it’s on the to-do list. If you already have a RasPi and RAMPS, it’s kind of a no-brainer to try Klipper and see if you like it.
I like the RUMBA+. If you have familiarity with RAMPS, it’s a single board offshoot with room for 3 extruders, and has blade fuse for heated bed. No wifi, but it is about half the cost of Duet. Here i have it mounted inside my power supply cover.