Is there a smoothie compatible board for a 2 or 3 extruder printer?

[Paul Sisneros]

At my work they have a 3D printer that is a big old expensive model. It's broken down and out of warranty, they asked me if I could fix it.  I was looking at it, and it works just like any other reprap. The guide rails are 12mm instead of 8, the steppers are nema 23, and the filament drive mechanism is all metal. But other than that it's just like any other Cartesian 3D printer. The movement order is like a makerbot, Z lift on the bed, X gantry on Y rails. It has 3 nozzles, so that's kind of unusual.

So here's where smoothie might come in. When you turn it on the LCD just shows jibberish, it connects through a DB25, but the computer can't recognize it any more. Besides that it takes chipped cartridges that cost a ridiculous amount, something like $200 a lb. The reasonable thing to me seems to be to just completely replace the electronics with something better and newer that I can tune and modify and that wont try to find a $200 cartridge. Also then it could work with a modern operating system.

If possible I would like to enable all 3 extruders, but 2 will do so support can be used. My main question here is, is there a smoothie compatible board that supports 3 extruders? If not, whats the best one for doing 2? I see the smoothie board has up to 5 drivers. How is the firmware for 3D printing with 2 extruders on that?

Thanks!

[Arthur Wolf]

Hi !

2014-08-15 20:53 GMT+02:00 Paul Sisneros <paul.s...@gmail.com>:

At my work they have a 3D printer that is a big old expensive model.

Cool, do you have a model name ?
 

It's broken down and out of warranty, they asked me if I could fix it.

Sounds like a good idea :)
 

 I was looking at it, and it works just like any other reprap. The guide rails are 12mm instead of 8, the steppers are nema 23, and the filament drive mechanism is all metal. But other than that it's just like any other Cartesian 3D printer. The movement order is like a makerbot, Z lift on the bed, X gantry on Y rails. It has 3 nozzles, so that's kind of unusual.

So here's where smoothie might come in. When you turn it on the LCD just shows jibberish, it connects through a DB25, but the computer can't recognize it any more. Besides that it takes chipped cartridges that cost a ridiculous amount, something like $200 a lb. The reasonable thing to me seems to be to just completely replace the electronics with something better and newer that I can tune and modify and that wont try to find a $200 cartridge. Also then it could work with a modern operating system.

\o/

If possible I would like to enable all 3 extruders, but 2 will do so support can be used.

Both are possible.
 

My main question here is, is there a smoothie compatible board that supports 3 extruders? If not, whats the best one for doing 2

?

So, the Smoothieboard 5X is designed to run 2 extruders.

But it has all you need to run 3 extruders, -except- an additional stepper motor driver.

But you can connect an external stepper motor driver for that, it's pretty easy, and it's supported by the firmware.

So you have everything you need if you get a 5XC Smoothieboard, and an external stepper motor driver ( like a CW5045 for example ).

If you need any help setting things up, just don't hesitate to ask.

 

I see the smoothie board has up to 5 drivers. How is the firmware for 3D printing with 2 extruders on that?

Supported, no problem.

Cheers :)
 

Thanks!

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[Alan Timm]

Hmm, sounds like like a CubeX Trio.  Great Hardware, awful software and vendor lockin.  Wouldn't look out-of-place at an Apple store, just don't try to use it.  :-)

The only thing that I can see, if it's actually a CubeX, is that one of the axis is dual stepper (I can't remember which one, might be Y), so with an x5, you'd need four outputs for X, 2xY, Z, and one left over for extruder 0.  

So you'd need drivers for the other two extruders, but I think several other people have already tackled that.

Then it's just a matter of calculating the steps_per_mm for each of the steppers and off ya go.

Let me know how it goes, I may have an old printer just like it, waiting for a smoothieboard to breathe new life into it.  :-)

Alan

[Arthur Wolf]

Depending on current on the dual axis, you might be able to use only one driver.
http://smoothieware.org/3d-printer-guide#toc20

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[Steve Graber]

Arthur, I am wondering how many stepper drivers (maximum based on available GPIO pins), both onboard and external can be driven from a smoothieboard? I think I saw this info somewhere but can't place it.

This conversation is directly related to the original posters question. 

I have a setup right now where I'm using the enc, step, dir breakout pins on the alpha, beta and gamma pads to drive some larger motors/external stepper drivers at 256 microstepping for X,Y,Z movement, (this is my 8' tall deltabot) and then the two remaining onboard stepper drivers are available at 16th microstepping for dual extruders. But let's say I wanted to run an E3D Kracken 4-head hotend....  :-) That would mean I need to run an additional 2 external stepper drivers. 

In that case I would run my external stepper drivers from all spare GPIO pins and put 4 of the onboard stepper drivers into service for extruders. Doable? Any suggestion on pin assignments best suited for this?

Steve

[Arthur Wolf]

Yep, two additional drivers is 4 to 6 gpio pins. That's fairly easy. The more of those you want the more complicated it gets, but there are 6 free pins available with no problem.

And what you want to do is no problem.

Cheers.
 

Steve

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