Electronic – arduino – What board should I use to control the 3D printer

arduinohardwaremicrocontroller

I'm trying to build a simple experimental FDM 3D printer as a hobby.
As I said it's a simple printer with only basic functionalities such as receiving the slicer file to print from a slicer software from PC and sending back the print status to the PC.

Following are other functionality of the printer:.

  1. Sends the X and Y coordinates of the printhead and Z cordinate of print platform to the PC.
  2. Sends the temperature of the cartridge heater to the PC with the help of a temperature probe.
  3. Send the number of layers printed currently.

Now in order to achieve the above mentioned functionality and control the printer via the PC, what microcontroller motherboard is ideal to use? Is using Arduino Uno ideal enough? Or should I use Arduino Mega or any Rasbery Pi board.

Best Answer

There doesn't seem to be anything different in your application to any of the 3D extruder-based printer applications. All this has been sorted out many, many times already.

enter image description here

Most use an Arduino-based board with built-in stepper drivers and temperature control interface. Marlin firmware, for example, allows monitoring of position and temperature on the printer's LCD so that you don't have to leave the laptop connected - although you can if you want to.

schematic

simulate this circuit – Schematic created using CircuitLab

The slicer software doesn't generate a "slicer file", it generates CNC g-code which can be transferred by SD card to the printer which reads and executes line by line. Most slicer software can drive the printer over USB or Ethernet but that ties up the laptop for the duration of the print.

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