Isn't the MKS-TFT32 board and touchscreen like Klipper?

Hi,

Am I correct in thinking that the MKS-TFT32 board does pretty much same thing as Klipper but without a Pi?

It has a 32-bit Arm and sends stuff to the printer's main board. The heavy lifting for calculations are all being done in the MKS that then just streams GCode to the main board.

It seems to be working fine for about the same cost as a Pi, plus it has a built in touch screen and customizeable menu system. I confess to dropping Klipper as it was just too complex for this old-fart's brain to set up at this stage. Maybe a few revisions on it will be much easier, but for me. I am going with the TFT32.

Just sayin'

It is just like a small standalone computer to send the GCODE over serial. It doesn't do any lifting. I'd avoid it personally. I used mine for about 5 minutes before throwing it back in the closet. Octoprint is a better choice IMO.

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lowfat
It doesn't do any lifting

Thanks for the reply, but one of the Marlin programmers I contacted said that it does take a lot of load off the main-board. Gonna go with that fact.

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lowfat
I used mine for about 5 minutes before throwing it back in the closet.

What are Octoprint fanbois so afraid of? Five minutes is hardly a fair trial. And, I have been using one on my Delta for six months and totally happy with the TFT. In fact, I'd hate to have to go back to click and point instead of the touch-screen.

"Thanks for the reply, but one of the Marlin programmers I contacted said that it does take a lot of load off the main-board. Gonna go with that fact."

Don't know who you talked to, but they give you a bunch of lies.

a MKS-TFT does zero to reduce the loading on the controller. It is just a PC talking to the standard firmware on the controller.

The only way way lighten the load on a controller is to replace the firmware

So no a MKS-TFT32 it is nothing like klipper it is just a mini pc.

@StlLooking, a MKS TFT reduces the load on the main processor compared to a 12864 graphics display, because it saves the main processor the work of calculating and sending evey changed pixel on the display when something on the display needs to be changed. That's probably what the Marlin programmer you contacted meant. The load on the processor caused by driving a 12864 display used to be a serious problem when Marlin was used to control delta printers.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

@Dust

Well I guess it take a little bit of load off, since the TFT loads of the SD card, so it wont have to handle the SD card file system, but instead just listens to the serial stream - but almost no performance gain

@martin1454

I'm comparing it to a base machine, ie no lcd and no sd card..

The firmware already steams from serial... so zero change here.