Compatable Firmware?

I am attempting to make my first CNC machine using an Mega 2560 and a RAMPS 1.4shield. I have been stuck trying to figure out what software to put on the Arduino and what G-code maker/uploader to use. Suggestion there would be most appreciated.

My main question is requarding the Firmware options such as Sprinter, Marlin and Teacup. Looking at the wiki features list Sprinter AND Marlin support SD cards but does not list CNC milling. However Teacup lists CNC milling but not SD.

Would Sprinter or Marlin work unmodified? Or would I have to go with Teacup and lose the SD option?

Being that I am just starting, I dont think that modifiying the software before I get it working would be a great way to start.

Teacup has the code for SD card support in place, it's just rarely used.

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Traumflug Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Teacup has the code for SD card support in place,
> it's just rarely used.


Thank you for that. But now you have me curious. Any idea why its not used so that often?

Quote

Thank you for that. But now you have me curious. Any idea why its not used so that often?

Probably historical reasons. Teacup always was a niche solution, even at the time it was far advanced over the competition. Currently, Teacup continues to live mostly because it's the default firmware for Generation 7 Electronics. Gen7 can drive a SD card, but there are no assembly instructions for this (yet), so only few people do this.

On how to get Teacup's SD card feature running: look into config.gen3.h, there's SD_CARD_DETECT and sd.c, there's some code.

---

Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Marlin works for milling just fine. It's just not advertised because very, very few people use RepRap electronics for milling.

This thing contains perl scripts to postprocess PyCAM and HeeksCNC gcode for Marlin.

I've needed to change some lines of code in latest Marlin so it won't complain about not having a thermistor. If not, it would stop running because the firmware considers it a fault condition.

I guess you can alternatively force that analog input to a certain voltage value with a couple of resistors to fool Marlin into getting a certain temperature from the thermistor hotend.

I didn't need to do anything except set the TEMP_SENSOR defines to 0 (not used) in the Configuration.h file.

Maybe this is what I should have done but failed to see :-)

Actually my version of Marlin [1.0.0.RC2] does carry three TEMP_SENSOR[0,1,2] defines. Just setting them to 0 did not stop it from killing the system if a thermistor was not detected.

Well, it did for me, running Marlin with version string "1.0.0" (no RC2).

Maybe they did it right then. I have not searched the issue list.

Thanks for the info.

misan