I looking for some advice about 32bit electronics.

I got a half built custom core xy machine that hopefully will be up and running by the end of the year.

Its only a small machine, 200mm cubed build space, but based on what iv learned from running my prusa i3 for a few years I definitely want to go for 24V and 32bit electronics.
With 12V I struggle to get the bed up to ABS temperate, and i belive some of the small lines im seeing on low layer height prints are caused by been limited to 1/16 microstepping with my ramps 1.4 and A4988 drivers.

I'm currently using repetier firmware, and repeteir sever on a raspbery pi which im very happy with and would like to keep unchanged.
Therefore ethernet connectivity and SD card support are not essential for any new 32bit board.

What I would like is is 24V capability without having to replace any components on the board, and improved micostepping which should give better print quality.

Has anyone tested a range of 32bit board?
Id really like to know what combination of 32bit control board, stepper drives, and firmware you would recomend.

If you want a quality 32 bit board, Duet and Smoothieboard are the way to go. There are some Chinese boards that run smoothieware, but quality is iffy at best. The duet will do higher microstepping ratios, and smoothie is limited to 16:1 only. Microstepping ratios greater than 16:1 do not lead to increased resolution, only smoother/quieter operation. Flaws you saw in your prints will not be improved by higher microstepping ratios. Both boards are 24V ready. .

Smoothieboard runs smoothieware. I don't know what Duet's firmware is called, but I'm pretty sure it won't run repetier firmware.

If all you want is increased microstepping ratios and 24V to run the motors, you can buy a few external stepper drivers and connect them to your existing controller board for about the same or less than the cost of a 32 bit controller, but then you'll be missing out on some of the best stuff that the 32 bit boards do. I think the thing I found most pleasing about the smoothieboard in my printer is the ease of making changes to the configuration. Since you built your own printer, you're a geek and probably do a lot of configuration tweaking. With the 32 bit boards, all the configuration variables are in a single text file. You edit the file, save it, and reboot the board and your changes are made. There's no screwing around with arduino compilers, hunting through multiple config files, etc. Updating firmware is easy too. Just DL the compiled binary, put it on the uSD card on the smoothieboard, and reboot. The bootloader finds it and burns the new firmware into the CPU.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

I could be wrong, but I thought I saw something somewhere about people running Repetier firmware on an Ardunio Due with some other stepper board (RADDS perhaps?). There is that route although I have no idea how well it works or what is involved.

The Duet uses RepRapFirmware (not sure if it does others).

The older Duet 0.6 and 0.8.5 are also 16X with the built in stepper drivers. You have to get the newer Duet Wifi to go past 16X. The Duet handles 24V just fine.

Thanks for the advice.

Regarding the marks on the print surface I mentioned see the pic in link below. Im sure i found a webpage somewhere that sugests these are due to microstepping erros, but i cant find it again!

[www.dropbox.com]

Iv done a bit of reading today and based on the specs i like the sound of the RADDS board because,
Supported by Repetier, so no change in firmware required.
24V support with no mods
Removable stepper drivers so I can change to crazy RAPS128 128 step drivers if i want.

The only down side, and its a major one for me as im not to good with software or electronics, is not many people appear to be using it.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2016 12:22PM by Andy1989.

Those marks appear to be a combo of overextrusion and extruder stepper current misadjustment.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

With the DuetWifi in sight the RADDS doesn't make much sense anymore. I also had some trouble with nonGenuine Arduino Due.
RADDS doesn't have remote access to it's config files on the SD-Card and uploading gcode is a PITA.
The advantage of RAPS128 against 16/1 drivers is huge, but the new drivers on DuetWifi seem to be even better.

Duet is my choice. Smoothieboards are good for mad scientists making evil science fair projects, but pretty bad at conveniently running a printer with all the features you'd expect.

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o_lampe
With the DuetWifi in sight the RADDS doesn't make much sense anymore

Apart from cost, with the DuetWifi selling for $199, and a RADDS board being $70-80. Duet 0.8.5 are in the $130 range too, but not too far from the RADDS when you buy the Arduino Due. And I honestly don't see enough improvement from the Duet 0.8.5 to the Duet Wifi to market the $70 increase in price.

here running now the RADDS with nonGenuine Arduino Due with RAPS128's ( not for the extruders, doesn't make any sense to me )

you don't need that much knowlege about electronics and software. putting Repetier on is simple, watch how you put the drivers in.
The nonGenuine Arduino Due can have one small problem, a far as I know and that is the temperature measurements that are not correct.
That can be easily solved by putting a small blob of tin to short-out a resistor, I need to check again exactly which one but that is a simple thing to do.

Remote access, correct it is not supported, but I have a small Ubuntu pc ( fi : raspberry PI 3 ) running beside the printer that also has a webcam so
that I can see what is happening. Repetier supports this and you can use any PC to run the normal Repetier client to control it.
Beside that I can watch the webcam + the progress on on page of the repetier server.

It works very good for me.

just my2cents

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P3steel DXL, with Due/RADDS/Raps128 dual Wade's extruder

There is no WiFi and no web interface in RADDS+Due.
For a better comparison it should be RADDS+Due+Drivers+RaspberryPi3+Octoprint on the other side.
That'll be a similar price and some extra hours of configuration for free

Many people are using a RADDS+Due with Repetier firmware in the german forums.
Also the inventors are active here in the forums, you could write @angelo a PM.
I'm pretty sure you'll get the support you need.

You can select the RADDS in Repetier Online Configurator. That should be the only RADDS-specific setting.

I'd buy a Duet WiFi, just because I'm curious...

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Best regards / Viele Grüße
Till

... I'm using RADDS+Due+RAPS128 with Marlin4Due firmware and have the small expansion module with two additive Pololu/RAPS128-sockets and WiFi-stick.

For curiosity reasons I've bought some UDOO's with integrated Due last year and have a RasPi3 too ... but until now not in a hurry for changing

But for the devices, I'm developing in my dayjob, we made a 'proffessional' board, that's logically the same as RADDS, but is driven with 48V, has optocouplers with 24V for digital I/O, 0-10V analog I/O, and some other safety measures, which are common for CNC-controllers here in Germany.

This board has a 40-pin socket with cable to a Due-shield, we designed too.

With this 40-pin interface (and specific "shields") we can interface to any other processor or module, so not bound to Due only

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2016 03:32PM by VDX.

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Viktor
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Aufruf zum Projekt "Müll-freie Meere" - [reprap.org] -- Deutsche Facebook-Gruppe - [www.facebook.com]

Call for the project "garbage-free seas" - [reprap.org]

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n8bot
Duet is my choice. Smoothieboards are good for mad scientists making evil science fair projects, but pretty bad at conveniently running a printer with all the features you'd expect.

I run my printer very conveniently (at least it seems that way to me) using a smoothieboard. What sort of features should I be expecting that aren't there?

Which controller offers all this extra convenience and features that I need but don't know about?

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

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PDBeal

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o_lampe
With the DuetWifi in sight the RADDS doesn't make much sense anymore

Apart from cost, with the DuetWifi selling for $199, and a RADDS board being $70-80. Duet 0.8.5 are in the $130 range too, but not too far from the RADDS when you buy the Arduino Due. And I honestly don't see enough improvement from the Duet 0.8.5 to the Duet Wifi to market the $70 increase in price.

The Duet WiFi is $170 on the Filastruder web site right now (it's even less if you head over to duet3d.com and pre-order one of the remaining batch 4 boards), so $40 more than the Duet 0.8.5, not $70. Compared with the Duet 0.8.5 you get five TMC2660 silent drivers, upgraded processor (ARM Cortex M4 with hardware floating point), and a lot of other minor improvements. The RAPS128 drivers cost more than $15 each last time I looked, so surely $40 extra for all this is a bargain?

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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].

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the_digital_dentist

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n8bot
Duet is my choice. Smoothieboards are good for mad scientists making evil science fair projects, but pretty bad at conveniently running a printer with all the features you'd expect.

I run my printer very conveniently (at least it seems that way to me) using a smoothieboard. What sort of features should I be expecting that aren't there?

Which controller offers all this extra convenience and features that I need but don't know about?

I worded it very poorly. The whole duet experience is better laid-out for 3d printing. You don't need to disable functionality to get other functions to work, (ahem LCD and bed levelling), the SD card support on the smoothie was abysmal last time I checked, upload speed via the web interface was a joke...

The duet isn't perfect, but it ends up being quite convenient to use.

It's small. In terms of running the 3D printer on a basic level, the smoothie works fine... but when it comes to using the printer heavily day to day, the duet has a convenience factor that edges out the smoothie. I know the smoothie devs are working to bring some of the functionality (touch screen LCD) but I'm not sure if they'll need to sacrifice some other functionality.

The duet also does (for the time being) have an advantage in the way it generates steps without segmenting the moves.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2016 04:35PM by n8bot.

Sounds like there a few more people using RADDS than I previous thought.

If i were to go down the RADDS route id have pretty much exactly the same setup as amigob, RADDS + Pi + Repetier firmware and server.

If I were to go down the Duet route i could ditch the Pi as it has webcam support according to the website.

The costs for each pretty much the same for each, around £120.

At the moment im leaning ever so slightly towards the Duet for a couple of reasons.
Everything in one board, no need for Pi.
Software controlled stepper current
Dedicated PT100 expansion board. Iv got the E3D PT100 expansion board currently, but it i were ever to go to two extruders i could get the dedicated PT100 board.
From what iv read the stepper drivers are super quiet
Option to use touch screen control in the future

Only downside of the duet I can see is it only has 5 drivers without using an expansion, whereas RADDS has 6.

The webcam support for the Duet is for IP based web cams. You would still have to have the Pi if you are using a USB webcam or some other server to provide the webcam through an IP address.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2016 04:52PM by PDBeal.

I finally got the duet running and I am starting to like it. Getting the smoothie working was very easy and it works great. The FW for duet is starting to get equal to the smoothie as far as mapping drives, it is still limited as far as external drives, you have to use the expansion header which is annoying. The smoothieboard has mutiple voltage options, you can run 12v/24v for heaters and 12v/24v for motors/fans which is nice.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2016 06:17PM by jmjcoke@gmail.com.