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3D Printers

TeMPOraL 4y ago
That's one application that never made sense to me. It's like an idea to use SD cards with paper printers - you'd want to connect directly with a cable, or hook it up to LAN/WLAN, on the first available opportunity. I get that 10 years ago, back when I was in this space, this was a consequence of DIY builds being Arduino-based - SD cards were the easiest form of durable storage to work with, and the alternative was streaming G-code over USB, which tended to cause unreliable prints (my favorite example was a 3D printer builder and a popularizer in our local Hackerspace, who figured out he can't leave a print job running and give the computer to his kid to play videogames on, because any larger load would slow G-code transmission rate, throw off timings, and completely ruin the print). But I would think these days the printers would be built with some on-board buffer storage and network connectivity. ESP32 is a thing.
- hakfoo 4y ago
  I think people don't want the printer in the same room as their computer. If it's noisy or you have the smell of melting filament, that's not a pleasant experience. Network-attached might work, but that probably complicates the device UI substantially-- some way to bind it to a WLAN, possibly even set up non-DHCP network configuration.
  - Fwirt 4y ago
    There's an existing package - OctoPrint - that you install on a Raspberry Pi and connect up to your 3D printer that can provide a web interface for just about any 3D printer on the market, so you don't have to shuffle files around on SD cards or stream G-code from your local machine. They provide a disk image that you can flash so it's more or less plug-and-play. Still need an SD card for the Raspberry Pi though. :)
- knicholes 4y ago
  I want to use an SD card for my printer in case Windows decides to self-update, despite me setting it to not do this automatically, and I don't want to fail in the middle of my print. Hosting the GCODE can also cause issues if your computer lags a bit. The printer will sit, with a hot nozzle dripping plastic below, until the next command arrives. This shouldn't typically be a problem, but sometimes systems can lag hard, and who wants a needless blob of filament on the surface of their print?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

3D Printers

That's one application that never made sense to me. It's like an idea to use SD cards with paper printers - you'd want to connect directly with a cable, or hook it up to LAN/WLAN, on the first available opportunity. I get that 10 years ago, back when I was in this space, this was a consequence of DIY builds being Arduino-based - SD cards were the easiest form of durable storage to work with, and the alternative was streaming G-code over USB, which tended to cause unreliable prints (my favorite example was a 3D printer builder and a popularizer in our local Hackerspace, who figured out he can't leave a print job running and give the computer to his kid to play videogames on, because any larger load would slow G-code transmission rate, throw off timings, and completely ruin the print). But I would think these days the printers would be built with some on-board buffer storage and network connectivity. ESP32 is a thing.

hakfoo 4y ago
I think people don't want the printer in the same room as their computer. If it's noisy or you have the smell of melting filament, that's not a pleasant experience. Network-attached might work, but that probably complicates the device UI substantially-- some way to bind it to a WLAN, possibly even set up non-DHCP network configuration.
- Fwirt 4y ago
  There's an existing package - OctoPrint - that you install on a Raspberry Pi and connect up to your 3D printer that can provide a web interface for just about any 3D printer on the market, so you don't have to shuffle files around on SD cards or stream G-code from your local machine. They provide a disk image that you can flash so it's more or less plug-and-play. Still need an SD card for the Raspberry Pi though. :)
knicholes 4y ago
I want to use an SD card for my printer in case Windows decides to self-update, despite me setting it to not do this automatically, and I don't want to fail in the middle of my print. Hosting the GCODE can also cause issues if your computer lags a bit. The printer will sit, with a hot nozzle dripping plastic below, until the next command arrives. This shouldn't typically be a problem, but sometimes systems can lag hard, and who wants a needless blob of filament on the surface of their print?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]