Quantifiable improvement?

[Jimustanguitar]

I am going to buy a Smoothie Board next week. I've got enough CNC projects that it makes sense even if it's only a fun test.

I know that it out-specs the Rambo and other Arduino variants, but I've also heard healthy arguments that the processing power isn't being overtaxed anyway, so why try to "fix" it with a Smoothie.

If we step away from the whitepapers and how these boards' specs stack up on paper, how would you say that your prints have improved? What are the differences in the prints and what abilities does the Smoothie offer over what I've already got? I know I'm excited about auto-leveling. The firmware sounds like it's easier to understand. I like the ethernet connectivity. What else?

[Polygonhell]

Mines on a Kossel, and it's not printing ATM (waiting on a couple of M2.5 bolts), but what I'm hoping it fixes are the points where I think there is an obvious CPU perf issue.

Notably when you have a VERY high concentration of short segments, or very long moves, In these cases I see the head visibly stop. I rarely see these on real models, but it's indicative of insufficient CP so there might be some more inconsistencies in speed that get ironed out.

You should be also able to increase the deltaSegments setting, but I doubt that make very much difference to overall quality.
I much prefer the edit file on SDCard for configuration thing, and think it's much easier to understand the configuration, though a user does have to understand how LPC pins are numbered and electrically what the options on the pins are, which probably makes it even more daunting for the people who find the software side difficult.

[mhackney]

One significant advantage is the look-ahead acceleration manager. I think this provides an obviously improved print. Also, the firmware is very "clean" - written in a modular way and it is easy to add new functionality. The repetier and marlin firmwares have evolved into a bit of a hodge podge and spaghetti code. It was very straight forward for me to add my TemperatureSwitch module contribution to smoothie for instance.

I print with KISSlicer's "circular" infill. There are many times that I saw pauses and slowdowns on RAMBo and repetier. I've not seen this at all with smoothie AND I've been able to ramp up my print speeds considerably.

[bvandiepenbos]

just buy it already Jim. You WONT be disappointed !

[gestalt73]

just buy it already Jim. You WONT be disappointed !

+1 What he said.

[Generic Default]

I now have 3 smoothieboards, the 3x 4x and 5x. One for the lathe, one for the 4 axis mill, and one sitting in a box waiting to be installed for dual extruder use on my Rostock.

Speaking of which, how do I print from the mini SD card on the smoothieboard? The smoothieboard site says it can be done but gives no details. Can someone tell me how? Thanks!

[Captain Starfish]

Thanks for asking the question Jimustanguitar.

I've been watching all the cool kids load up on smoothies and azteeq or whatever boards and had to wonder: the RAMBo seems to do an ok job. So why would one bother replacing it? What amazing change in the print job justifies the extra expense and hassle of upgrading, of losing a fairly stable, bedded and 'standard' platform with a wealth of knowledge for troubleshooting and debugging, of having to switch to new firmware and blah blah blah?

Slightly less jerking on sections with lots of short runs seems to be a small, small gain for a lot of sacrifice here.

[Flateric]

Smoothie just plain runs smoother, for me anyway. the autolevel and autodelta rad are nice bonuses, oh, and you can get a smoothie way cheaper than a rambo.

[mhackney]

Azteeg X3 Pro is the only off the shelf board that supports 4 extruders, hot ends and thermistors along with X, Y, Z, bed temp and heat and fans. That is why I moved to the X3 Pro. But, it runs repetier and marlin firmware exactly like RAMBo and there is no difference in the prints. Well, partially untrue, the X3 Pro does 32 micro steps as opposed to RAMBo's 16 and there is a visual improvement at 32 MS.

The Smoothieboard is a completely different solution with a much more sophisticated gcode interpreter and a faster/wider processor. But it only supports 1 or 2 extruders off the shelf. It can be expanded with some electronics work to provide 4 extruder support. The firmware is very well organized and engineered too. There is an immediate observed difference when it prints, it is smoother, quieter and the prints look better when using the same gcode file. I have my Rostock setup so I can easily swap controllers (see the thread on RAMBo connectors, I made short "adapters" that connect my cabling to the board du jour) and can do A-B comparisons very easily. I've done enough of these now that I am a Smoothie convert. I have not tried the Azteeg X5 smoothie board as it is sold out. It is nice and small but single extruder. It would be a great solution for a small delta like my Mini Kossel or a single extruder Rostock setup.

Printing from the SD card on smoothie is easy. You transfer your files to the card first. You can do this by moving the SD card to your computer and adding the files, or simply copy the files to the card when it mounts on your desktop. If it isn't doing this, you probably are running Linux and have auto mount disabled. You can change that or manually mount it. The other option is to use the built in Web Server if you have an ethernet port and connection to the board. You need the smoothie's IP address. You can upload files to the SD card with it. The interface looks a lot like Pronterface:

To run the gcode from the SD card there are a few options too!

Use a serial port terminal application like CoolTerm (supports Mac, Win, Linux). You can run/pause/stop, etc.

Use the Web interface mentioned above.

If you have an LCD (like the RepRapDiscount GLCD) you can run from it exactly like you do with a display on RAMBo.

If you use Pronterface, you can use its built-in serial terminal feature - just prefix serial commands with an "@". So, once connected to smoothie send "@help" and it will list all of the available commands.

Cheers,
Michael

[mhackney]

I've added this information to the smoothieboard 3D printing guide: Printing from an SD card.

[Captain Starfish]

Thanks, guys, for the info.

Curious - will the smoothie work with the SmartController shipped with the RMax?

[mhackney]

Not really. Apparently there is too much noise on the IC2 bus so they are not recommended: http://smoothieware.org/panel

However, one of the smoothie developers - wolfmanjm - has a an adapter that uses a cheap Arduino mini to use these panels. I plan to try this but haven't yet.

[Jimustanguitar]

Not really. Apparently there is too much noise on the IC2 bus so they are not recommended: http://smoothieware.org/panel

However, one of the smoothie developers - wolfmanjm - has a an adapter that uses a cheap Arduino mini to use these panels. I plan to try this but haven't yet.

Hey Michael! Any progress on using an Arduino Mini to connect the RepRap Discount LCD? Curious if you got it to work because I may be trying it soon.

[Broose]

Not really. Apparently there is too much noise on the IC2 bus so they are not recommended: http://smoothieware.org/panel

However, one of the smoothie developers - wolfmanjm - has a an adapter that uses a cheap Arduino mini to use these panels. I plan to try this but haven't yet.

I am using the Viki LCD controller which is I2C and using wolfmanjm's universal panel adaptor with a Sainsmart Arduino nano clone and it works great. It even includes a splittable ribbon cable with individual jumper style connectors on each end that is long enough to connect it up between the 3 boards without soldering.

Is the standard Rostock Max LCD also an I2C interface?

[Eaglezsoar]

Not really. Apparently there is too much noise on the IC2 bus so they are not recommended: http://smoothieware.org/panel

However, one of the smoothie developers - wolfmanjm - has a an adapter that uses a cheap Arduino mini to use these panels. I plan to try this but haven't yet.

I am using the Viki LCD controller which is I2C and using wolfmanjm's universal panel adaptor with a Sainsmart Arduino nano clone and it works great. It even includes a splittable ribbon cable with individual jumper style connectors on each end that is long enough to connect it up between the 3 boards without soldering.

viki on smoothie.JPG

Is the standard Rostock Max LCD also an I2C interface?

Is there documentation to set up the Viki LCD in the configuration that you used?

[Broose]

Is there documentation to set up the Viki LCD in the configuration that you used?

All I needed was in the readme in wolfmanjm's universal panel adaptor on github. There is a little messing around to get the Arduino libraries set up right to compile and download. Some the pins were named somewhat differently but I was able to figure it out without too much trouble. I think I ended up using a different pin than the example did on Smoothie for the busy line so I could use a pin with a jumper leg on it and didn't have to solder to the board, then I defined that input for "panel.busy_pin" in config (as described in the readme)