a standardized introductory toolchain

At least for me, a big problem has been figuring out how to get software to control my hardware. There are several options, which may or may not go together in different combinations, and whether or not it works seems to depend a lot on the state of the system you start with.

It makes perfect sense for the experienced people to play around with their toolchain to maximize performance, but what about the inexperienced people?

I don't want to pull the innovators away from pushing open source 3d printing farther, so I've tried to put together an introductory toolchain for all the people who want to get started, but can't figure out how. I want this process to make getting a Mendel (or whatever) up and running as simple and straight-forward as getting my TOM working was.

[printthat.wordpress.com]

Perhaps some of you that are using a Mac, or are using electronics other than RAMPS, can try running through this process and let me know how it works for you. The primary thing is that by using a bootable flash drive we can ensure that everyone CAN start from exactly the same place (which will minimize off-the-wall problems and questions). Where they go from there is their own business.

Nice, I have been thinking about trying to get my Prusa set up with RepG again but I have seen a bunch of posts on the forum about trouble getting it to work with reprap firmwares. Being a makerbot owner I like RepG and tried to get an older version to work on the Prusa but couldn't get it to connect as none of the experimental machines matched mine. Glad to see there is a teacup driver in the new RepG. Guess I'll have to give it another try. As for a standardized newb toolchain I think that's a great idea. I'm not far from newb status myself and I would have loved to see a step by step like you are doing. It would be nice too to know what firmwares work with what softwares. Maybe as a final blurb you could do a "where to go from here" and discuss compatible firmwares to upgrage to from teacup for those that want to tinker.

I was hoping other people would try variations and provide feedback.

At the moment, I'm more concerned with charting a single path through all the confusion that will work, unaltered, for as many new people as possible. Thus the focus on a toolchain that ensures consistent results at minimal cost (dollars and hours).

I figure there are already plenty of people who want to push the boundaries of upgrades. No need for me to duplicate their effort.

What I'm going to work on next is a tutorial for tuning the bot based on the assumption that a person is running a stepper extruder, with RAMPS, Teacup and RepG from Ubuntu. That way a total newb should be able to follow along and get their printer working without ever having to backtrack or pester the experts with low-level questions. Additionally, anyone else can simply duplicate that toolchain with minimal effort/expense (particularly the software part).

I'm just getting started building my machine but when it's ready I'd like to try this. The standardized install approach has been a big win for the EMC2 project which has some fairly complex dependencies. This seems like a no-brainer to me.

RepRap Host Ubuntu Live install

This might be a decent starting point?

Yup, that's what I started from.

The hard part is trying to figure out why things don't work. It seems like Teacup and RepG have settings that overlap each other. I'm trying to stay positive but boy do I hate software. Give me a screwdriver any day.

RepG is a better program, but it's being developed for Makerbot and Ultimachine, thus reducing the utility of the already spare documentation.

The good thing is that the whole tutorial works. I can easily jump back and forth between the Arduino IDE and RepG, uploading firmware and trying out the effects. So, if I can get everything in the toolchain to play nice with everything else, I can write up a tutorial for anyone to do the tuning...or maybe just create a set of profiles or something.

If anyone has any tips on RAMPS/RepG gotchas they'd be much appreciated.