Making a printer

Hi all,

I am making a 3D printer with bed motion in Z axis and extruder motion in X and Y axes, using Printrboard rev.d with Marlin firmware. Can somebody suggest what are the changes required in the firmware and how to load them?

If you want to stick with Marlin, I can't be of much help. But if you're willing to switch to Repetier then you can make whatever changes you could ever need with their configuration tool.

Why would you need any changes in the Firmware? Your bot is still Cartesian(not delta) so the change is only in your mechanic, right? All you do is attach the stepper that moved the bed to the print head, right?

So why would you need to change anything in the firmware?

You always have to adjust your firmware to calibrate your machine everybody should be at least somewhat familiar with it. You have to calibrate your machine in the firmware steps per millimeter any of the drives very slightly because of pully tolerance or drive gear for extruder

@cnc dick:
In Marlin you can change the steps/mm and other settings without recompiling the firmware. (Using display and Rotary encoder as values are in EEPROM) And that is how it should be IMHO.

It is a good think to know more about the stuff you work with. I don't want to hold anybody back from learning the insides of the firmware. But for a good firmware this should not be needed for such small changes.

For really big changes or new features you will still need to alter the firmware. But why should that be needed for a small change like this? Do you know any reasons?

Changing the steps/mm is changing the firmware, no it isn't recompiling it/using a different one, but you are making changes in the firmware [of which Repetier is also capable].
And cnc said 'adjust', not change. In a sense he's more right than what I just said.
I was just giving out the option of another firmware.