Tronxy x5sA

On July 2, I purchased a tronxy5sa There are a number of issues that I found with it 1.when printing while connected to the computer ( I use simply3d ) the print head pauses at intervals waits a couple of seconds and then continues leaving a blob behind, I think this may be due to the electronics not being able to download the gcode in its entirety in one go, rather like a streaming movie on a very bad connection. My Question is, Is there a controller board out there that I can get that has a storage for storing files on the printer (like the Flashforge dreamer) ?

Two alternatives to consider…

Take a look at this list:

BIGTREETECH SKR Mini E3 V2.0 is relatively inexpensive; it’s what I’m using on my corexy that used to be a tronxyx5a before I redesigned it from scratch… :smiling_face: I print from the microsd card attached.

In my rebuild, I switched to a single Z motor and a synchronous belt instead of two Z motors, but the Mini E3 v2.0 does have headers for two Z motors off the single controller so I would expect it to be plug-and-play.

An alternative to consider is, if the Klipper firmware supports whatever board tronxy is currently putting in those machines, using Klipper instead of Marlin with the existing board. I’m strongly considering moving from Marlin to Klipper with the Mini E3 V2.0 I bought in order to use resonance compensation; much faster prints with fewer artifacts is what I expect.

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First of all Thank you,

I will take a look at the boards you mention, I did not reply straight away as I was watching the England-Italy soccer game which was very exciting but also sad as England lost, But Italy deserved the win.

I gained my experience, as I am sure many others did from having a variety printers that were over valued and not very well supported.

I actually have two Tronxy 3D printers an older X5 which I have modified by creating extra support for the build plate and using a smoothie board for the control. the other is the x5Sa corexy neither of which are working at the moment as I need to complete some minor modifications to the older x5. And the problems with the X5sa are to do with communication speeds between the computer and the control board. which is why I am interested in control boards as I need one which can match the speed at which the computer can communicate.

That being said I have to say I am not an expert though I did use pre-heat on a few of my previous printers to warm the bed to facilitate removing a print thus avoiding having to chisel my prints away from it.

Respond at your own pace, no apologies!

To be clear here, the failure is very unlikely to be raw speed (that is, how many bits per second the communications link is capable of reaching). It’s almost certainly at a higher level (e.g. buffering, queue depth; something like that). I have no doubt that your system is actually having trouble keeping up. But Klipper has a different architecture (interpreting gcode on the computer, sending raw movement instructions to the board), so it’s completely reasonable to expect that it could succeed on the same hardware that is currently failing. If it works with your existing board you can try it out for free.

Looking at Klipper’s source code, I see

klipper$ ls -1 config/*tronxy*
config/printer-tronxy-p802e-2020.cfg
config/printer-tronxy-p802m-2020.cfg
config/printer-tronxy-x5s-2018.cfg
config/printer-tronxy-x5sa-pro-2020.cfg
config/printer-tronxy-x5sa-v6-2019.cfg
config/printer-tronxy-x8-2018.cfg
klipper$ head config/printer-tronxy-x5sa-v6-2019.cfg
# This is a Klipper configuration for TronXY X5SA, with CXY-V6
# motherboard.

#            === FLASHING WITH STOCK BOOTLOADER ===
# You should make firmware for STM32F103 with bootloader offset
# at 0x8008800 (Chitu v6 Bootloader) and serial (on USART1 PA10/PA9)
# communication.

If this is the board you have, it’s the same processor as the Mini E3 V2.0, so changing out the board for that wouldn’t change processing speed. But also it’s plenty fast enough for Klipper to run blindingly fast.

Last I knew, Tronxy were shipping a hacked version of Marlin. When I bought mine, it was like pulling teeth to get the GPL source code for the firmware they shipped. (They were not honoring the license for the firmware, which made me decide not ever to buy another Tronxy.) But you can build upstream Marlin for your board, and you can change things that might be relevant for communication…

MarlinConfigurations$ ls -1 config/examples/Tronxy/
X1
X3A
X5S
X5S-2E
X5SA
XY100
MarlinConfigurations$ ls -1 config/examples/Tronxy/X5SA
chitu-board.jpg
Configuration_adv.h
Configuration.h
HOWTO-INSTALL.md

You can change RX_BUFFER_SIZE in Configuration_adv.h — up to 2048 bytes. That would at least tell you whether buffering is a problem.

Given all that, if you really want to try another board instead, is your question about if there are any better boards with the exact same footprint and mounting holes as the one that they shipped you?

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