STM32F1/F4 3d Printer board for Marlin

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+Mikie
What problem with connector and mechanical stability are you talking about?

I think mounting the stepper modules vertically instead of horizontal would be a good thing. It would help with cooling, it would easily allow for bigger (higher) modules and it would not waste board space on the main board.

If the connector for the stepper motor was located on the module, then the user will probably plug/unplug the driver with the module connected to the baseboard. Therefore the module needs mechanical stability.

On the connector side there are only two solutions I have seen:
1.) standard pin headers. So basically the same as pololu or the bigfoots. One variation is to use 2 row ones, put them on the side of the pcb and solder them to top and bottom.

2.) the small PCI Express connector. It is small has many connections and due to its wide usage is is very cheap. (The pins are not very wide, but for high power demands more than one pin can be used as there are so many) Also the module would not need a connector just exposed pads and the correct board shape. The Juicy board used them: [www.crowdsupply.com]

With both solutions I'm not convinced that the mechanical stability would allow for handling the stepper motor cables without causing issues.

One solution would be to print a case fo the electronics that helps with cooling and provides the mechanical stability. Not sure if that would be the best solution,...

vertical steppers like [reprap.org] ?

as you can see it been done... I've never even heard of anyone actually having one

also due version [reprap.org]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/28/2018 07:55AM by Dust.

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Dust
vertical steppers like [reprap.org] ?

as you can see it been done... I've never even heard of anyone actually having one

also due version [reprap.org]

Yes that looks like the PCI-Express solution that I was thinking about. They even have a Trinamic Stepper module and SPI + Step/Dir signals.

Would be really interesting to hear of people that have actually used this.

I was also planning to use a stm as my new rep rap controller, but i want to use a Nucleo-F767ZI its a M7.

For starters i was going to pop a cnc shield on top of it, since it has arduino compatible headers.

My idea was actually to build a mbed based software, but haven't really got around to it.

Dou you guys have a working firmware atm?

I think M7 is overkill. No FDM printer can move that fast to actually take advantage of M7's speed. Unless you intend to get some encoders and get into closed-loop servo control.

I'm not sure about Nucleo headers being "Arduino compatible", you would still have to edit pin definitions files in firmware, so... I actually got a "Discovery" board because processor is in a bigger package=more pins (100) than on Nucleo boards (64 I think).

I'm under impression that 3 or so different firmwares work ok on STM32, including Marlin 2.0. And STM themselves have made a 3D printer evaluation board with F407 (M4) processor and everything needed on it for a complete printer. About $120. They include a version of Marlin 2.0 for it.

I dunno, i rather have a litte more cpu power, would be nice to run webserver etc natively on the device, and the price isn't an issue,and the boad is only 25$, so why not.

No i didn't mean arduino compatible, just the pin headers are compatible, i would like to avoid arduino stuff in firmware to be honest, i would prefer an all mbed firmware, but don't think there is one atm.

I did also look at Marlin 2.0 yesterday, but it doesn't have STM32F7 support atm, and knowing nothing about marlin i have no idea how to properly add it.(i did try adding the board using that platform io thingy, but it gave all kinde of errors)

And the STM Firmware was just a one time port of an old version i think, don't think its even in development.
[github.com]

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jeroen79
I dunno, i rather have a litte more cpu power, would be nice to run webserver etc natively on the device

You then better not compare the performance of that web server with Octoprint running on a raspberry pi. A lot of code is needed to make a web server work especially if you want dynamic pages. And downloading a big Gcode file will take longer than if you send it to a raspberry pi.

Na fancy stuff can be done in browser using javascript, been printing via webinterfave for ages with smoothie, works fine.

don't like extra devices if not needed, just more stuff that can go wrong.

Heya! Very interesting!

Just wanted to add another board to your arsenal.
Found this F407 the other day.

STM32F407VGT6 ARM Cortex-M4 32bit MCU Core Development Board STM32F4 Discovery
£7.27 - [www.ebay.co.uk]?

Listing says it's 1MB, unlike the VET6 version which is 512KB.

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eBayListing
Memories
– Up to 1 Mbyte of Flash memory
– Up to 192+4 Kbytes of SRAM including 64-Kbyte of CCM (core coupled memory) data RAM

Checks out with STM website.
[www.st.com]

I got this board for a DIY flight controller board project for my quadcopter. I'll play with it at some point and let you know for sure.
For now just wanted to subscribe to the thread so I get email updates!

---

Proud owner and maker of build from scratch FDM 3D printer [forums.reprap.org]

Is there any development of this board? I am interested in helping either fund the project to help get the lower costs or if they have already been made just purchasing a couple for my own personal use. If any updates are available can someone please contact me|? Thank you - Chris

I think the real work needs to be done on porting all features on one either of these processors. If software is ok, hardware boards will follow quick. It's not hard to make a RAMPS like board that you stick a cpu board on.
Best thing that can be done now is porting the firmware on cheapest/fastest cpu boards.

@bob8080

you might want to look into marlin 2.0

already supports both STM32F1/F4

yeah marlin 2 supports some stm boards, but not the good M7's, a marlin port to full mbed would be nice, then pretty much all arm M board would be supported in one go, and there would be universal network support etc

I stumbled over this one recently and am wondering why I haven't seen it paired with a RAMPS board... an Arduino Mega pin-compatible (5V tolerant) board with an STM32F4, mbed (even includes Ethernet and a microSD slot).
Not M7, but M4. Still double the clock speed of a Due though.

[wiki.seeedstudio.com]
[www.seeedstudio.com]

Interesting little board....

first thing I notice is the vin pin is not connected, so this board would not get any power from the standard ramps

It would be pretty bad if the next gen 3d printer controllers used the same form factor as Arduino Mega + Ramps. It would be so much better if they employed a solution like Tiertime's boards, where there's a base board and a CPU with just the microcontroller. If I'm not mistaken they also use a STM32 mcu.
I designed a board for the STM32 bluepill boards, but it's for running GRBL. I see that there's a version of Marlin 2.0 which runs on Malyan Mini's controller (same chip), so that kind of makes me want to design a 3d printer motherboard for something like the bluepill or the maple mini.

Agreed, I wouldn't consider it to be a next-gen board by any means, but as an upgrade for an existing setup where a RAMPS is already in place, it seems like it'd be great.
The main reason I posted the reference to the board is that it met some requirements suggested by jeroen79, who said "i would prefer an all mbed firmware, but don't think there is one atm". That, and the CPU fit the thread title.

Interesting that the Malyan board is supported (I actually have a Monoprice Mini, same machine). Unfortunately, that's not at all expandable. I remember seeing that someone had reverse-engineered its LCD communications, but haven't seen anything about it since (that was close to a year ago, I think). Frankly, I've wondered if it is a (non-compliant) modified Marlin under the hood, it's at least Marlin "flavor" for G-code (slicer setting).

Just out of curiosity, what does it take to compile Marlin 2.0 for STM32F407VET6/STM32F103VET ? There are some chinese development boards out there that would work so well in a cpu/motherboard configuration. This one, for example, is nice because the seller on Taobao provided the Altium design file for it. There are some higher quality boards as well

A nice little STM32F4 board.

I've compiled Marlin 2 for my STM32F4DISCOVERY board OK (wasn't entirely easy), but Marlin is somewhat limited for the STM32F4's at the moment. A major problem I have is the serial comms port that is used in Marlin - you can ONLY currently set the config to use serial port 1 (USART 1) and nothing else, which means the STM32F4DIS board cannot be used without physical mods (USART 1 pin is used on the USB port).

I'm trying to get my head around the Marlin source code layout etc at the moment in order to start adding a lot more support for STM32F4's, but it takes time to learn another persons programming style etc. It looks kind of quite messy at the moment to me, but maybe that's because it's currently going through quite a change in order to move on up into the 32-bit ARM world.

STM32F4's are lovely little CPU's, really nice for this kind of app, fast, built-in FPU etc.

I want to add USB virtual comm port (CDC) option into Marlin to use the built-in USB port the STM32F4 .. amongst other features.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/18/2019 03:18AM by Pippy.

@pippy

are you sure about that

set the port to -1 and try again. This activates USB virtual comm on other stm32 devices.

I thought I was sure, but no, you're right Dust

I've yet to flash the STM32F4 with the compiled code but it does at least compile now without error.

I'm wondering if the Arduino IDE etc has any memory leaks, because after building Marlin say 5 or 6 times it starts giving out compiling errors (lack of memory) left right and center without me ever changing any Marlin config/code at all. My laptop has 4GB of memory plus fixed 4GB paging file size .. this really ought to be plenty.

I am using the Arduino 1.9.0 IDE though and not 1.8.x release version, Windows 7 pro 64bit, Intel i5.