Looking to get a 3D printer soon.

[Ken226]

I bought a wifi SD card.

The SD card stays in the printer, I connect to it via WiFi with my laptop and add/delete the print files.

Since the card stays in, there's no wear and tear.

 

[AlanB]

To be able to stop a print remotely if it starts to fail is a big deal, especially when it is a large print and there is a risk of completely covering your hot end with melted plastic.

This recently happened to a friend. A print went bad overnight and ended up coating the hotend and wiring with plastic in a so-called "blob of death". We ended up completely disassembling the printhead and replacing the heat break, heater block, heater cartridge, thermistor, nozzle, heater block sock and bed levelling sensor. We suspect either the nozzle was not properly torqued and molten plastic leaked at that joint, or more likely it was just failed bed adhesion and the model happened to stick to the nozzle and redirect the fresh plastic upwards. Most of the parts were available in a $20 printhead maintenance kit from Amazon but the bed levelling sensor was a separate purchase that took a couple of weeks to get. This was not a Prusa, but it can happen to any printer. It took a couple of hours and over $50 in parts to fix. Being able to monitor the print is advisable.

 

[7milesup]

t an average print of 2 hours that would mean nearly a year and a half of continuous printing.

I have what amounts to slightly more than half of a year of printing, and yes, my SD socket is failing. I already have had the board out and messed with it, but I am still having issues with it. The front display of my Prusa is made in China, as are most things 3D printer related.

 

[7milesup]

What I am curious about is the draw to Rasp Pi's. Any SBC board that can run a Linux-based OS can work with a printer. I ordered my Orange Pi from Amazon for $45 and had it in 3 days. Orange Pi 3 LTS
My plan is to install Klipper as the firmware and utilize Mainsail, Fluidd or Octoprint via Armbian OS.

As a side note, you can run a printer from an old PC or laptop, HOWEVER, it must be 100% dedicated to that process. If anything starts up and runs in the background while you are printing, the chance is very high that your print will fail.

 

[Aaron_W]

Keep us update on your progress as you get it set up. Getting a 3-D printer is on my wish list. I'm pretty backed up with projects so it isn't happening soon, but I'm watching here for hints and ideas.

Nice thing is they are just getting better / cheaper although the tech has evolved enough now that the year to year improvement is slowing down.

 

[AlanB]

What I am curious about is the draw to Rasp Pi's. Any SBC board that can run a Linux-based OS can work with a printer. I ordered my Orange Pi from Amazon for $45

For many people the draw is the pre-built Octoprint/Raspbian packages that make building an Octoprint system possible in just a few minutes following a recipe with no Linux experience required. The quantity of compatible software and readily available support for the Pi is significantly greater than other boards. When I have tested other SBCs I have had more bugs, less support and taken more time to get things done. In many cases no amount of time can overcome the poor support and bugs in the incomplete environment of other boards. I would suggest that folks stick with a real Pi unless they have appropriate expertise and are willing to spend extra time on the project and possibly have it fail. For those willing to take the challenge I hope they publish their process and results and this will guide others and show what works and what problems remain. Before embarking some research should show others having success with a particular board and application and reduce effort and risks of failure.

You can get one Pi from Adafruit, they generally release a batch every Wednesday morning about 1130am eastern time. Make sure to get signed up and logged in the night before and meet their requirements such as setting up two factor authentication, watch rpilocator and add it to your basket and check out immediately, they are generally gone in under half an hour. They have had a lot of the Pi4 with 2GB of ram which is excellent for Octoprint. They often have a much smaller batch on Thursday which is probably from the orders they cancelled from the Wednesday batch, they are very strict on their rules.

 

[AlanB]

I purchased an Orange Pi 3 LTS for $45 a few weeks ago that I will be utilizing in a Voron build that I am going to start.

Which Voron are you building? I'm in the final parts collection phase for a 250mm Voron Trident. I need to finish the Railcore, and get a few more items for the Trident. I have a Pi4 2GB that I got from Adafruit recently that I plan to use with an Octopus controller for it. I started collecting parts some time back and got a set of PIF printed parts for the Trident. I originally started collecting parts for the Voron 1.8 shortly before the Trident was released, so the 1.8 project became the Trident project which I like the design of much better. I have a 1.8 frame kit from LDO but it can be readily modified to the Trident's frame.

 

[Just for fun]

When I got my printer, I also bought a Raspberry Pi 4 2GB kit from CanaKit, and installed Octoprint. I than put the printer up in the shop, I have to go there to change filament and clean and or change the build plate. After that I can slice my drawings and send them to Octoprint and on the printer. I set up a camera so I can check on the process of the print from time to time. The best thing about this set-up is my wife is happy that I don't have melting plastic in the house.

 

[rabler]

What I am curious about is the draw to Rasp Pi's. Any SBC board that can run a Linux-based OS can work with a printer.

My guess is that it is similar to the Arduino framework. They created an easily bundled product that included hardware and software and has a large user community that has drawn attention and built the user community, feeding a cycle. Lots of others can jump on the bandwagon, at cheaper prices, by following the same model as the framework now exists. A single board computer with a half-hearted software support environment, where you have to roll you own everything, gets pretty challenging on an individual/hobbyist basis. I've been there with some TI boards, where you couldn't produce the binaries from the bundled source code. A true mess to get started.

 

[7milesup]

Which Voron are you building?

I am going for the 2.4r 300mm build. One of my co-workers, and a good friend, just ordered a kit from https://voronkits.com/ last Friday. I plan on sourcing my materials rather than going the kit route.

All excellent points guys, regarding the Rasp Pi. It seems that I kept seeing that the RPi was the only option whereas it is not, but I certainly understand having everything bundled in an ecosystem.

Regarding the Orange Pi, the following is a link to one of many that have done it. Not saying that you should, but there is documentation out there. https://blog.vertile.com/article/klipper-3d-printer-firmware/