I gave up... checking in...

[Epop]

I bought a Duet+X4 and PanelDue RepRap Board(s) and display- and replaced the 3DS electronics. I currently have it printing and am waiting on parts for heated bed+getting the 3DS chamber heater operational. When I get it working fully I'll post info on what I did, my settings etc... on a side note, I have a complete set of 3DS electronics if anyone wants to take a risky move, or would like me to make a risky move without fear of burning their(or my) printer

Many parts on the 3DS board are 'good' but overriding what they did to the firmware is more work than seemed worth it for a lot of programmers/devs so I just blew another couple bills and replaced it outright. I still think the main direction 3DS was going was pretty good but the filament and lockdown/software/firmware was sub-par... to say the least...

I saw another post that suggested that if a resistor is placed between two points on the read/write pins on the 3DS board would prevent writing that could be one direction to go on my hardware.

If anyone has Ideas on this let me know. The 3DS components are useless to me at this point.

Thanks,

[M_Steel]

I would be very interested in know what all parts you buy to change over your machine

I think the bare bones of my CubePro are good but the Cartridge/Software lockdown is killing me

I am also interested to see if anyone else has tried the resistor solution ...

[MichaelHerron]

I too would be very interested in your conversion. It does seem that structurally, the cube pro is a decent printer. Antiquated firmware with tacked-on lock-down measures make it a system that just requires too many excuses to be useful. We've burned at least 5X what we paid for the machine in time trying to make it useful, and are nearing the point of either scrapping the machine or converting it as you have.


As for the zener/transorb/resistor trick--no.. it cannot work. Thats not how the ibutton chip used in the cartridges works. It reads/writes at the same voltage AND the write is verified before being committed to non-volatile memory.

[Epop]

Thanks for the replies.

I thought I should mention... and give some additional information on making it work since it'll be another week(?) before I get my parts and button it up.

The Duet+X4 is a high end option with a 4.5" LCD screen addon, for basic functionality(1-3 extruders) there are boards available for one quarter to less than half the price the duet cost and will still wire up to everything in the CubePro. (except for the chamber heater... I've yet to actually complete that so exact requirements etc. have not been proven that I know of) The stepper drivers(the electronic parts that run the motors) that are in the 3DS hardware are very common and you'll see them on many RepRap boards, that exact model is not required... if you go super cheap your top speed wont be as fast is about it.(well... excluding the rule 'you get what you pay for' )

If you simply buy a controller you can wire up the motors (follow the colors, black to black, red to red) and there's a trick to getting the 3DS extruders wired to RepRap parts. (I don't know it because I just replaced them) but that will get you running PLA pretty quickly. the lights/fans are just 12v so you can forgo the 'automatic fade/on off' thing and just plug them in, or hook them up to a switch. it'll cost... ~$30 to get that much functionality/features out of it. ~$70 will be quite a bit better overall. LOTS of how-to's and Tutorials on how to do it, I can fill in some blanks with the Cube specific stuff.

I have have printed adapters for 3DS mount to RepRap hotends (E3D-online.com ... V6 specifically) I will take a pic... the way I first got it running is stupid funny... (handfuls of zip ties are involved) but the first one I printed came out @ +/- .1mm on the OD and large ID(.2 overall, including roundness- because of the seam ... but that can be adjusted out now). the small ID was ~.5mm undersized... drilled it out. I also learned that the top of the hotend(near the motor) should never get hot, so plastic parts there are fine and what most if not all DIY guys do successfully. (of course metal is better for a couple of reasons) but for print #1 and #2 after the board replacement... pretty good IMO.

Check out reprap.org for huge amounts of info on the subject/different projects & electronics. but its kind of overload especially if you've never taken stuff apart/rebuilt it etc...

Thanks,

(p.s. my fav. part of the Duet was the wired ethernet port&TCP/IP direct control you get -everything- in a browser, not just build progress. I hate wireless for stationary appliances- but you can also change it to wireless if you want. )

[MichaelHerron]

Epop--I just wanted to check in with you. How is the conversion working out? Do you have any further advice for those who are considering such a massive upgrade?

[Epop]

Thanks for the reminder Michael, I had an update but my cookie timed out before I finished so when I went to post I got booted to the login screen and lost my post and my mind... well... and then other stuff happened... anyway...

What I chose to do turned out massive, but just to remove the 3DS electronics I wouldn't call it massive. I took it ALL apart and removed EVERYTHING that had a 3DS stamp on it(including the stickers on the door)... if you just replace the board/rewire the hotends I don't think it is that much, though it is replacing the guts of it all.

As I mentioned before all the stepper motors can wire straight to most reprap boards from what 3DS did, (their board looks A LOT like http://www.reprap.org/wiki/Melzi -Melzi is only 1 extruder btw)

The chamber heater is working fine using a SSR(solid state relay~$5-10) wired up to the 'bed' heater on my Duet+x4(again, there are alternatives but I don't have any complaints). To control the temperature you can just replace the small electonic board in the upper left of the back panel with a thermistor, using two of those wires to the new board bed temp pins. Then to control it, you just use the 'bed' settings in Kisslicer. pretty simple.

There is a relay board controlling the chamber heater by 3DS- under the bottom cover, up front, under a metal shroud. this may work with reprap boards, I haven't tried it. I just replaced an unknown with a known. If anyone would like to know I'll test it with my setup, just let me know.

If you mainly print with PLA its not required to use the chamber heater... unless you live in alaska... or Canada... maybe. 'room' temperature usually works well with it, it seems to be a main reason it seems most DIY guys will ONLY print PLA. Strictly speaking, prints will turn out better the more accurately you control the variables though.

I'm also looking into different extruder/adapter/motor setups.

I have printed as fast as 75mm/s and as slow as 10. The finish & dims get rough(.2 maybe .3 on the high end) that fast but I've done it several times(~23min print to a ~8min print difference). The better prints I've had have been within a .1 overall tolerance(including the seam and form). I've only done a few prints using the same *.STL files as I had with Cubify, but I haven't made the time to do a FULL apples to apples comparison yet... and I've still been doing a bit of experimentation. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:342198 prints as fast as 8 min total with my current settings(2min warmup, 6min print) but... now that I'm saying it I should do at least one comparison test at this point.

not as good as what I did before, I think I'm forgetting something.

Any questions, let me know.

Thanks,