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  1. #81
    Quote Originally Posted by Ross77 View Post
    Nice one, Kind of wishing I had just bought one now...
    Swings & roundabouts i suppose

    In terms of getting going quickly and ease of use, it's a winner.
    However if building your own you will almost certainly end up with a better machine.

    For the money paid I'm very happy with it, but it's definately built with parts supplied by the lowest bidder
    Last edited by Greeny; 03-08-2017 at 10:06 AM.

  2. #82
    Ross77's Avatar
    Lives in Devon, United Kingdom. Last Activity: 2 Weeks Ago Has been a member for 9-10 years. Has a total post count of 759. Received thanks 27 times, giving thanks to others 52 times.
    Does this look like a good controller? 32 bit with screen and replaceable drives

    http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Motherboar...EAAOSwpHFZaYj9

  3. #83
    Quote Originally Posted by Ross77 View Post
    Does this look like a good controller? 32 bit with screen and replaceable drives

    http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Motherboar...EAAOSwpHFZaYj9
    What firmware is it supposed to use?

    If you want a solution like that i am personally using MKS products, the MKS SBase and MKS TFT32. The S Base is a smoothieboard clone which obviously uses smoothieware. The TFT32 is a host controller and can also be fitted a Wi-Fi addon, smoothieware also has a web interface if you wanted to connect to it via ethernet.

    Thanks

    Alex

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  5. #84
    Quote Originally Posted by Ross77 View Post
    Does this look like a good controller? 32 bit with screen and replaceable drives

    http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Motherboar...EAAOSwpHFZaYj9
    The firmware for this can be found here
    https://github.com/St3dPrinter/Marlin4ST
    http://www.mycncuk.com/threads/10880...60cm-work-area My first CNC build WIP 120cm*80cm

    If you didn't buy it from China the company you bought it from did ;)

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  7. #85
    Quote Originally Posted by Desertboy View Post
    The firmware for this can be found here
    https://github.com/St3dPrinter/Marlin4ST
    Can't view that very well on my phone, I didn't think Marlin had been ported to 32bit yet.

    Alex

  8. #86
    Ross77's Avatar
    Lives in Devon, United Kingdom. Last Activity: 2 Weeks Ago Has been a member for 9-10 years. Has a total post count of 759. Received thanks 27 times, giving thanks to others 52 times.
    The firmware for this can be found here
    https://github.com/St3dPrinter/Marlin4ST
    Looks like a a really good option as its ARM processor and can run Marlin but I cant find anybody using it or support.

    If you want a solution like that i am personally using MKS products, the MKS SBase and MKS TFT32. The S Base is a smoothieboard clone which obviously uses smoothieware. The TFT32 is a host controller and can also be fitted a Wi-Fi addon, smoothieware also has a web interface if you wanted to connect to it via ethernet.
    Is the smoothie a standalone or can I use a pi to controll it? looks like hard work to set up the smoothie tho.

  9. #87
    Smoothieware has a reasonably well commented text config file on the SD card which you simply edit in a text editor on your PC then reboot the smoothie.
    That makes smoothieware even simpler to tweak than Marlin on an Arduino, which again is editing a text config file but then compiling and uploading from the Arduino development environment - that took me a few hours to work out and complete from scratch when I swapped to higher micro-stepping drivers and needed a higher hot end max temp ;-)
    You think that's too expensive? You're not a Model Engineer are you? :D

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  11. #88
    Smoothie can be independent or host controlled, depending on what LCD / TFT controller you want to use with it; i believe it can be operated from octoprint, it does have its own Web Interface to be used with Ethernet, never used it so can't comment on how well it works.

    Config is pretty simple, educating yourself on the variables within the config file can be pretty steep, the documentation on their wiki is very complete, but some of it is confusing to read, not all variables come in the config file as standard, you have to add some of the uncommon ones in yourself, setting up a basic 3D Printer config is easy though. When you download the firmware it has various template files setup already.

    When you want to update the firmware you keep your config and just copy the firmware file to the SD and thats it job done, not like Marlin where they release a new RC Version, change half the variables and their names so you have to reconfigure the whole firmware again.

    The SBase is a great clone i am using several of them already, had no problems what so ever, if you want to use the TFT32 touch panel controller, bear in mind that it is classed as a host controller, it has its own firmware and you cant control the SBase from other devices (PC) whilst using the TFT.

    There are some other 32 bit controllers around(Re-ARM, RAADS etc) trouble is none of them support common 32bit firmware, Smoothie has been 32Bit from day one, it's not being "ported" to work with 32Bit, and i believe the motion algorithms it uses are some of the best.

    Marlin is very good, i use it on one of printers that has a RAMPS controller (an old gMAx 1.5), but now half of their dev team has moved on to trying to port it to 32bit, im not sure how well each branch of the firmware is progressing because i dont really follow it anymore.

    Also worth mentioning, do you really NEED a 32bit controller? I only use 32bit because my printers are driven by ballscrews and the steps per mm is higher than using belts, so performance wasnt great for me until i went 32bit. If you want to use ballscrews or build fast Delta Printer i would stick to Ramps or similar, Mega cheap and very easy to setup.

    The only gripe i have with Smoothieware is that the guys who write are, for lack of better words - arrogant bastards, how dare you ask for help or suggest changes LOL

    Thanks

    Alex

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  13. #89
    Aren't there some new smoothie board options coming out soonish?

    I haven't looked into it for a while but was considering one of the v2 boards for my own-design machine, hoping they will be around by the time I get to actually build it.

  14. #90
    Fred's Avatar
    Lives in Reigate, Albania. Last Activity: 24-04-2018 Has been a member for 6-7 years. Has a total post count of 34. Received thanks 4 times, giving thanks to others 1 times.
    I jumped in and contributed a little bit of code on Smoothie and thought they were very helpful, especially as I was a C++ newbie.

    I think V2 has been on the cards for quite a while so I wouldn't hold your breath.

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