Saw this and thought about all the kraken owners out there and those wanting 32bit on their repraps. There is an expansion board available that gives it a possible 5 extruders @Sanjay_Mortimer
http://www.think3dprint3d.com/duet
http://www.think3dprint3d.com/Duex4-Duet-Expansion-Board
This has a lot of the “big wigs” of the community behind it
Good post. On a slightly different subject. How is your worm gear Z doing. You still using that how have you changed to something else?
@Wayne_Friedt actually I got sick around Christmas and been down off and on. Work has taken all of the time I have not been resting. I plan on finishing soon and then I will post the first moves/prints and see how it goes. Almost done though. Think I’ll put some real effort in this weekend.
Nice. Cant wait to see it.
Panucatt just released the X3 Pro board; which has support for 5 extruders, and something like 8 thermistors, 8 hot end outputs, etc. But for something like $140. Not $200USD + another $100USD.
I want to support this, but I don’t have $350 to spend. Yes, I get that it comes with the drivers; but you can get boards with drivers for somewhere close to $60-70
Honestly, I’m kind of interested in the smoothie board and its “modular” firmware. Given that it’s supposed to be great for things like laser cutters, etc all in the same package.
does the firmware for the due support:
- 128x64 graphic displays
- more than 3 extruders
@Jos_Scheepers Yes, up to 5 extruders. 4 Tested at present. No idea about LCD.
@ThantiK With drivers and basics like headers included you’re looking at $200 for the Azteeg and $300 for the DueX4. For that you’re getting ARM Corex 32bit over Atmel 8bit, and ethernet etc.
It’s a toss up, but I do think that the Duet is reasonably priced considering the extra hardware.
The thorn here is firmware, which is rapidly improving on the ARM front, and I too look forward to seeing what Smoothie-board pull off. Equally interesting to me is 4Pi which is being worked on by Kliment, and the slightly less well publicised “Marlin electronics” by ErikZalm (Marlin author/maintainer). Photo https://github.com/ErikZalm/Marlin-II/blob/master/electronics/photos/Marlin_electronics.jpg
There is now reaching a critical mass of ARM boards, with R2C2, BeagleBone Black shields, Duet, Smoothie, 4pi, Marlin. I hope we can get a portable firmware. However this may be difficult considering that ARM cores vary more between versions than Atmel8Bit cores.
Either way it’s all very promising.
give me a shout when the LCD is programmed in, And I will start testing 