Operating System

after finaly geting my printer runing after many months of fighting with it finaly came down to windows causing problems with the serial coms.

I am interested to hear what os everyone is using to run there printer. windows linux mac?

I'm now running xubuntu on a old-ish (single core athlon, 1GB ram) dedicated box. It runs pronterface perfectly fine.

I used ubuntu on it before, but the gui (unity) was slightly sluggish and the entire installation crashed hard after an update. Still, if your computer can run it, unity is quite nice.

Earlier I ran my printers from my main desktop with win7, no big problems with that either. Though the stability of a dedicated machine is so nice on long prints.

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-Nudel
Blog with RepRap Comic

Im planing on installing an old laptop I have to me my dedicated print machine was going to do it yesterday but then found that it couldn't boot off a usb drive and we didn't have any Cd's to burn the installation iso's to.

I'm running Window 7 64-bit on a dell Inspiron laptop with amd dual core and 4GB of Ram. I've got the Gen6 Deluxe board with Marlin firmware and have been using Repetier host software.

I was running it off my Fedora 64bit linux desktop.

Wanted it to be more portable so I loaded an old Acer aspire one Netbook with CrunchBang (#!) linux and run it from there just fine.

Pronterface/Sfact

I usually do the sliceing on my desktop as the Netbook is rather slow at it.

I've been printing from Win7 64 Pro for a few weeks now with no issues. I also plan on recommisioning one of my laptops to be solely dedicated to the printer. The USB cord across the room is becoming a bit of a PITA.


Just out of curiosity, how long of a USB cable were you using? I've had problems with a DVD duplicator/printer and the manufacturer told me I shouldnt be using a cable (at least for thier printer) that was over 6' long. Swapped it out and it completely cleared the comm errors I had. But I know pleny of times I've used longer cables for other printers.

Just a thought.

JW

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Josh

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//Prusa / RAMPS_1.4 & ATMega_2560 / Slic3r > Pronterface > Marlin / Luck
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Printed my first test cubes(x3) and an 8 tooth T5 gear this weekend. I am using a Windows Vista 64bit quad core.
I was listening to slacker radio while printing. Never had any issues with the OS. Plenty of issues with the parts sticking, motor skipping, hotend PTFE melting/softening BUT no OS issues.

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//Prusa / RAMPS_1.4 & ATMega_2560 / Slic3r > Repetier > Marlin / Luck
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I use mainly a Pentium4 Win XP for printing but have used my netbook with Win7 starter as well no problems with either

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

We run Debian Squeeze on an older Thinkpad (32 bit!) to control 14 printers via USB hub. We have a similar Thinkpad, but 64bit, running Debian Squeeze controlling another 14. On other machines we run Debian Wheezy (testing). It all works just fine. We've used Fedora in the past ok too.

Jebba,

Do you have SD cards on all the printers? Do you have issues with gcode transfers when all 14 printers are going at once, or does the staggered nature of the gcodes naturally even out so that porcessing and transfer speed are not an issue?
Just curious.