Hi, took me a year to really get the hang of 3D modeling and building my own 3D printer but now I'm looking to modify its electronics which leaves me rather surprised there isn't a guide to help move the 3D printing community along from 8bit pixelated lcd's to 32bit touch screen wifi heaven. I've got most of these ingredients laying around so if anyone could help guide me through hooking everything together that would be a big help and might also help a lot of other people as well!
Ingredients:
1x RAMPS 1.5 looks nice without the poly fuses and the smd mosfets help give me a little peace of mind, essentially still a RAMPS 1.4 but heading in a pleasant direction I don't mind supporting
1x Re-ARM 32bit board, one of the cheapest smoothie running boards I could find, I like the idea of supporting RAMPS associated products and I don't think the smoothie guys will lynch me as they would some Mks users I've seen... not sure what they have against them :/
2x TMC2130 256 stepper drivers for X and Y axis core noise cancellation and can detect skipped steps, act as an endstop, switch into spread cycle mode, everything, lots of nice RAMPS wiring guides but from what I hear, smoothieware won't support them and TMC2208's are required, can anyone confirm and explain? I heard this from some people who had conflicting interests for me to buy their tmc 2208's so I'm pretty skeptical. Also, great news, there are guides for wiring up the TMC2130 for LCD users on the RAMPS! WOOO!
2x A4988 16 stepper drivers for extruder and Z axis, cheap, simple, reliable, won't make an annoying scream *cough cough* DRV8825 *cough cough* and will help keep this project's budget down
1x ESP8266-01 for wifi, chris's basement has a nice tutorial for wiring up one to RAMPS and I think it could also attach to some break out pins on the Re-ARM freeing up Aux 1 for a Mks TFT 24 touch screen
1x Mks TFT 24 touch screen, tiny touch screen with an SD card reader and ARM chip, most importantly, costs only a few dollars more than a RepRap full graphics lcd which makes it a contender to replace it if the price drops further, the sd card reader is handy, I think there are ways to add a wifi module to the touch screen itself but I haven't found a guide for that so one step at a time. Also, the ARM chip means minimum strain on the RAMPS board if you choose to still run an 8bit Arduino. All in all, it looks nice and fits on my machine, so I want to use it and support cheap touch screens.
1x DC42 This is my choice of autobed leveling mini ir sensor, guess it's time to mention I have a serial SCARA based machine that is intended to print off the floor or tables as a mobile furniture printer, it should still work for almost any printer and auto bed leveling really should be standard on all large/medium printers these days
1x mechanical endstop as a filament sensor, not my brightest idea but if you're printing a chair, kind of important for your machine to not reenact avatar the last air bender near the end of a print
Mixing and blending all this stuff together looks to be a lot, I'll be micky mousing everything together over the next week or two and update with a few pictures but until then, any help with firmware, wiring, or sharing a link would be an epic time saver as I'm frankly biting off way more than I can chew. Thanks!
