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Robo3D R1+ Motherboard Upgrade: SKR Pro plus RepRapFirmware

Discussion in 'Mods and Upgrades' started by Rod Smith, Nov 30, 2020.

  1. Rod Smith

    Rod Smith Member

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    I've recently done some major surgery on my Robo3D R1+, pulling out the 8-bit Arduino+RAMPS control board and replacing it with a 32-bit BigTreeTech SKR Pro v1.2 on which I'm running RepRapFirmware. This gives me direct Web control of the printer (without OctoPrint), easier configuration, and quieter operation (thanks to Trinamic 2208 stepper drivers), among other benefits. I've chronicled the whole experience here:

    https://www.rodsbooks.com/robo3d-upgrade/

    The brief version:

    The BTT SKR Pro v1.2 plus Trinamic 2208 stepper drivers plus BTT TFT35-E3 LCD control panel plus third-party WiFi module plus a few odds and ends cost about $150. Physically installing the hardware required creating a custom mount and cutting away part of a "wall" on the under-compartment of the printer:

    [​IMG]
    With that physically installed and wired up (the photo is mostly pre-wiring), I installed the LPC/STM32 fork of RepRapFirmware and configured the printer. It took some fiddling, but I eventually got it all working, and better than before. Among other things, I'm delighted at a new feature: I can now level the X-axis gantry with a simple G32 command. Prior to this upgrade, the two Z-axis lead screws would tend to go out of sync with one another, resulting in a misaligned X-axis gantry that produced spurious Z-probe activations and an inability to perform a G29 bed level or even home the Z axis. That's no longer a problem. (Marlin 2.0 seems to support a similar feature, but I've grown to really dislike Marlin, so I never seriously considered a Marlin upgrade to get that feature.)

    RepRapFirmware also provides a visualization of G29 height-map data, which really highlights how bad the Robo3D R1+'s bed can be:
    [​IMG]
    That's just one probe. It tends to vary a lot from one probe to another, I suspect because the bed's alignment can get thrown off when removing/replacing it and/or because of the little blobs of plastic that tend to get left behind because of probing. Either way, it's a good motivator to do something about the Z probe, and the visualization provides an easy-to-use tool to help evaluate possible solutions.

    Anyhow, I'm very happy with this upgrade. I never really liked the printer's original control board or Marlin, especially not after experiencing a Duet 2 WiFi in a Kossel XL that I built a couple years ago. I've also now got one spare stepper driver output, which I intend to use in a future upgrade to a dual-extruder setup.
     
  2. Wesley Knapp

    Wesley Knapp Active Member

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    Care to share your files? I'm liking this.

    Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk
     
  3. Rod Smith

    Rod Smith Member

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    What files in particular? My earlier post links to the Thingiverse project with the mounting hardware. My Web page, referenced at the top of the post, provides lots of other links, including to the RepRapFirmware configuration files I'm using.
     
  4. Wesley Knapp

    Wesley Knapp Active Member

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    Your slicer configuration - you said it took a while to get configured...

    Sent from my Pixel 3 XL using Tapatalk
     
  5. Rod Smith

    Rod Smith Member

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    The slicer configuration didn't actually take a lot of time. The biggest change was in the start g-code, which is now:

    Code:
    G32 ; home axes and align the bed
    G92 E0 ; zero the extruded length
    G29 S1 ; use data from most recent height map
    
    As detailed in the full writeup, setting up a code replacement in ideaMaker to remove M1001 and M1002 g-codes was more involved, but that's an issue that's specific to ideaMaker, and it's also something that's non-critical. (The presence of those commands in a g-code file just produces a warning about an unknown command. Beyond that, it doesn't actually cause any problems.)

    What took more time was setting up the RepRapFirmware configuration files for the Z probe and bed leveling (G32). The full writeup includes a description of that and links to the final configuration, but here's a link to the configuration .zip file:

    https://www.rodsbooks.com/robo3d-upgrade/config.zip
     
    mark tomlinson likes this.

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