Hey everyone! I was wondering what is considered the go to electronics solution now

3D Printing
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Hey everyone! I was wondering what is considered the go to electronics solution now for your builds? Is it now the smoothieboard of RAMPS with a raspberry pi for octoprint, or something else?

I was just wondering what the de facto standard is now!

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I wouldn’t say there is a standard. I’m using the Duet Wifi for my work in progress build which has its own web interface. I like @raykholo 's boards for Smoothieware and I hear the Re-Arm is pretty popular. Nearly all 3D printer manufacturers make their own boards.

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Im just using a smoothie. Must admit impressed so far.

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Personally for the money @raykholo makes some impressive boards. The REARm is literally the smoothieboard of Ramps but you are still dealing with the shield itself which can be a pain.

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Yep, basically your serious options at this point are something in the Smoothieware ecosystem, or a Duet (Wifi/Ethernet). That is, unless you’re just dirt cheap and don’t care too much about performance, interface, or features.

There’s other stuff out there like Redeem or Repetier-Due but mainly if you want to hack on the firmware code easily.

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@Adam_Steinmark The Duet wifi looks like a solid package! Is there any reason you picked this over the RAMPS 1.4 and raspberry pi combo?
Also, if someone didn’t want to buy a board from China, what should they expect to pay?

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I can’t speak for Adam but Duet really checks off a lot of wishlist items for me, and has plenty of expansion options. It’s a very comprehensive hardware platform and expansion ecosystem and the firmware is solid but still rapidly evolving too.

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I chose it specifically for independent Z offsets for each toolhead. I’m building an IDEX (Independent Dual Extrusion) machine like the bcn3d sigma and marlin doesn’t support different Z height for each tool. And as far as I know Smoothie doesn’t have support for the separate U axis needed. My requirements for a board were 32 bit, silent steppers, and firmware support for U axis for IDEX. The web interface and touchscreen display support are just a huge bonus. The firmware isn’t hugely common but it’s beastly.

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I’d love to see more RepRapFirmware boards like Duet. It’s a nice ARM M4F platform with significantly more math power than all the “typical” 32bit ARM M3 boards. (It does run on RADDS/Due but with a reduced feature set.) Maybe a CohesionRRF :slight_smile:

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+Adam Steinmark@Ryan_Carlyle Thanks for answering my questions! That all makes a ton of sense!