looking for a good 3d printer

[AlexDoran]

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