Replacing Herculien controller board - what is the best choice in 2020

My smoothie board seems to have died and wondering what board I should replace it with at this point? I see there are still Azteeg X3 V2’s out there for sale for 105.00, or is there something else recommended these days?

After my Smoothieboard died I moved to a Duet 2 Wifi I can wholeheartedly recommend it. The hardware is great and the firmware support second to none.
They’ve got a wider variety available now (Maestro, Duet 3), but I’m still very happy with what I’ve got.

https://duet3d.com/DuetWifi

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I collected a summary of Controller boards with integrated TMC drivers recently. Not HercuLien-specific.

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I have always had great luck with Panucatt Devices products from a hardware reliability standpoint.

Also recently I have used both SKR boards on Marlin 2.0 recently with tmc drivers, and a new RRF (Duet Compatible) board from Panucatt with TMC 2209 drivers.

On a budget, the SKR V1.4 or 1.4 Turbo is good. For higher quality hardware the Panucatt X5 GT with TMC drivers from Panucatt is a nice option. And if you want some really cool features the RRF boards from Duet or the upcoming one from Roy at Panucatt is also great.

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Thanks, I looked at that board, looks like a good option. Looks like they are not shipping right now, but I’ll bet others carry them too.

This is great, thanks for compiling that!

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I definitely think I’ll look closely at the Pancutt X5 GT. I want to go with one that more people can advise on. I am not good at tuning, so being able to look at other configurations is a big factor for me.

I can’t remember are you doing dual extrusion or single extrusion on your HercuLien?

And when it comes to setting up a config I’ll definitely help you out, I’ve been doing a lot of that recently replacing a bunch of my older electronics with the new fancier ones. So I’ve gotten pretty quick at it. I’ll be honest Marlin 2.0 really has me hooked right now for its functions and usability. I really like reprap firmware but all the features you get on Marlin 2.0 with the big tree tech SKR boards is really a tough value to look past. Plus there’s so many people using it right now that there’s really amazing tutorials on YouTube.

I am using one, but I have the second one and all of the parts I bought recently to upgrade to having a second one, hoping to use two filament. Would that adjust your advice?

The SKR mini e3 has only four stepper drivers, so you can’t use it for dual extrusion. Same for the Kinetica when it is released.

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So the drivers, which ones would you recommend for the standard steppers on the HercuLien, and is there a config posted somewhere for the board config? If I am reading this right the Pancutt uses the smoothieware, so it probably similar to what I had on the smoothie board 1.0?

Smoothie where is what standard on the X5 GT, but you can also load Marlin since they developed a hardware abstraction layer (HAL) that allows Marlin to be used on many more processor types nowadays. For example on my Eustathios I’m using an X5 Mini but running Marlin 2.0.

For drivers I like the trinamic drivers recently. So the 2209 are very nice and communicate over UART, also the 5160 are good and communicate over SPI.

I had the 5160 in my Eustathios, But made a stupid wiring mistake and ended up burning out the drivers. I replaced them with some cheap AliExpress LV8729 I had laying around and those are actually surprisingly quiet with good current capability.

Almost all my posted configs on the GitHub are pretty old nowadays. Depending upon which board you end up going with I’ll develop a new config with you to make sure that it’s got all the latest bills and whistles.

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Thanks, I noted the Pancutt board is out of stock, so I may looks at the other boards now.

Thanks, I may just keep it single extruder, so I’ll look at this option closer!

Thanks for all the responses. I found that the in stock options were really limited, so I went with the BigTreeTech turbo model. It should arrive Friday, so hopefully I will be able to spend a bit of the weekend learning how to get marlin on it and integrate with the Herculien.

Here’s a really good primer on setting up the board for Marlin:

Part1:

Part2:

Thanks, I will watch those for certain!

Well, as always it took me a while to get everything together, so I have all the jumpers and connections upgraded to fit the SKR 1.4 turbo I bought. I also spent some time cleaning up the wiring and generally making my machine look better.

I am having trouble compiling the marlin, I followed the videos and thought I had it right, but I seem to be getting a lot of errors. I plan to go back and download a new copy of marlin tonight and start it over, but here was my method:
Downloaded the visual studio tool, downloaded the marlin;
Opened up platform.io
Imported the arduino project

Edited the marlin to reflect the BTT SKR 1.4 turbo,

Put in the features I am using

But when I go to compile, it is saying it cannot find the 1769. Opponents, even though I can see that they are in the folder.

Anyone experience this ?