• Educate me

    From Aoli@3:770/3 to All on Tue Mar 1 10:34:46 2022
    I saw a youtube video about a 3D printer.

    The video stated it was using an addon Pi to run the 3D printer.

    Why the addon ? What is the Pi doing ?

    Details please.

    Thank you !

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  • From A. Dumas@3:770/3 to Aoli on Tue Mar 1 18:38:20 2022
    Aoli <Aoli@Aoli.com> wrote:
    I saw a youtube video about a 3D printer.
    [...]
    What is the Pi doing ?

    Octoprint

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  • From Shaun Buzza@1:229/110 to Aoli on Tue Mar 1 16:01:24 2022
    I saw a youtube video about a 3D printer.

    The video stated it was using an addon Pi to run the 3D printer.

    Why the addon ? What is the Pi doing ?

    Details please.

    I would assume that the Pi is literally controlling the printer's motors,
    based on the data being sent to it, in order to print whatever it is that
    is being printed. But that may not be accurate, without seeing it for myself. Could you provide a link to this video?

    Cheers!

    McDoob
    SysOp, PiBBS
    pibbs.sytes.net

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  • From alister@3:770/3 to Aoli on Tue Mar 1 21:25:26 2022
    On Tue, 1 Mar 2022 10:34:46 -0800, Aoli wrote:

    I saw a youtube video about a 3D printer.

    The video stated it was using an addon Pi to run the 3D printer.

    Why the addon ? What is the Pi doing ?

    Details please.

    Thank you !

    Almost certainly octoprint, it provides a web interface to the printer
    controls & streams the gcode to the printer.
    it eliminates the need to transfer files via an sd card
    (lots of other features as well but that is the main one)



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  • From Computer Nerd Kev@3:770/3 to Shaun Buzza on Wed Mar 2 03:18:52 2022
    Shaun Buzza <nospam.Shaun.Buzza@f110.n229.z1.fidonet.org> wrote:
    I saw a youtube video about a 3D printer.

    The video stated it was using an addon Pi to run the 3D printer.

    Why the addon ? What is the Pi doing ?

    Details please.

    I would assume that the Pi is literally controlling the printer's motors, based on the data being sent to it, in order to print whatever it is that
    is being printed.

    Could be:
    https://github.com/Wallacoloo/printipi

    Impossible to say whether it's that or just some interface talking
    to a standard 3D printer controller (in place of a PC), based on
    that description. The latter is more common.

    The Pi still needs to connect to stepper motor driver boards even
    when controlling the motors directly, because its GPIO outputs
    aren't nearly powerful enough to power the motors themselves.

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  • From scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us@3:770/3 to Shaun Buzza on Wed Mar 2 17:04:22 2022
    Shaun Buzza <nospam.Shaun.Buzza@f110.n229.z1.fidonet.org> wrote:
    I saw a youtube video about a 3D printer.

    The video stated it was using an addon Pi to run the 3D printer.

    Why the addon ? What is the Pi doing ?

    Details please.

    I would assume that the Pi is literally controlling the printer's motors, based on the data being sent to it, in order to print whatever it is that
    is being printed. But that may not be accurate, without seeing it for myself. Could you provide a link to this video?

    It's more likely that it's streaming gcode to the printer, and maybe running
    a camera, with something like OctoPrint. Motion control in a 3D printer is
    a real-time task for which the Raspberry Pi is ill-suited. You'll almost always find another board somewhere on the printer that controls the motors
    and heaters; it could have anything from some of the slower speed grades of ARM-compatible microcontrollers (topping out under 200 MHz) on down to 8-bit AVRs at 16 MHz.

    (There is a board, the SKR Pico, that uses Raspberry Pi's RP2040 microcontroller to run a 3D printer, but I suspect that's not what the OP
    saw.)

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  • From Computer Nerd Kev@3:770/3 to scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us on Wed Mar 2 22:58:14 2022
    scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us wrote:
    Shaun Buzza <nospam.Shaun.Buzza@f110.n229.z1.fidonet.org> wrote:
    I saw a youtube video about a 3D printer.

    The video stated it was using an addon Pi to run the 3D printer.

    Why the addon ? What is the Pi doing ?

    Details please.

    I would assume that the Pi is literally controlling the printer's motors,
    based on the data being sent to it, in order to print whatever it is that
    is being printed. But that may not be accurate, without seeing it for myself.
    Could you provide a link to this video?

    It's more likely that it's streaming gcode to the printer, and maybe running a camera, with something like OctoPrint. Motion control in a 3D printer is
    a real-time task for which the Raspberry Pi is ill-suited. You'll almost always find another board somewhere on the printer that controls the motors and heaters; it could have anything from some of the slower speed grades of ARM-compatible microcontrollers (topping out under 200 MHz) on down to 8-bit AVRs at 16 MHz.

    Well a microcontroller running Linux would be ill-suited also. It's
    just that people allways expect a Pi to be running Linux and a
    microntroller to be running no OS at all. While the Linux options
    for microcontrollers aren't always that great, there are a
    multitude a bare-metal environments available for the Pi.

    Besides that, the PrintPi project uses the DMA hardware of the Pi
    to achieve the required timing precision even when running Linux.

    The GPU is also able to be programmed, thereby operating as a
    separate processor within the Pi itself, able to run real-time
    software like a microntroller (and be reprogrammed at run-time).

    The only trouble with these latter options is that there is little
    official documentation, and even less example code. Unless you have
    access to the proprietary Broadcom SDKs perhaps. So that makes it
    hard for open-source developers designing these things, who
    generally choose to use a separate microcontroller instead.

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