Along somewhat similar lines…some work in progress on something for Marlin:
Basically allows more direct access to the steppers and using an external planner instead of letting Marlin do all of the work. The guy working on it has been busy the past few months but recently indicated he hasn’t abandoned it and does plan to work on it more soon.
Whoa, that is a rabbit hole there. I read a bunch of that almost all of it…97% went over my head. I wonder what will come of it. Seems like Marlin Dev has exploded recently there used to be so few changes. So cool.
Geodave,
Did you ever do your test print with klipper? I’m curious as it’s a very interesting concept promising potentially much higher print speeds.
I did try this klipper version 0.5 for a week back in December on my Makerfarm 10"Prusa i3v and got it to work about as well as marlin, but did not want to spend more time tweaking it at that point. I see he just came out with version 0.6 the other day. Look in the Docs folder to see what updates he has done. I have my folgertech delta about back up and running using a MKS Gen 1.4 board and might try it again when that is working good. What he has added that is useful to me is Z-probe support and able display on 2004 LCD screen. I also just got one of the new Raspberry Pi 3 B+ to play with.
https://github.com/KevinOConnor/klipper
After having an extruder problem on my other printer, I spent a day configuring & fine tuning klipper to run on my delta printer. Here is a 15 minute video of it printing at 120mm/sec using an 8bit MKS Gen 1.4 & a raspberry pi running klipper. I was starting to print the files for the formula 1 car when my other printer failed. I am thinking printing the TPU might have worn the titan extruder hobbed gear, although I had only printed 1 tire so far. I have been printing with that titan extruder for 2.5 years, so it is probably time to replace some parts. Maybe get the hardened steel hobbed gear or just get a different extruder. Anyway with this delta running klipper, I am still getting some blobbing on the top of some layers & that might be the retraction settings.
Klipper is definitely an extremely interesting setup. I just moved my home-built CoreXY printer over to it, and I love it. Not having to flash firmware for every little tweak is nice, and there’s a lot of very useful features. One really nice thing is how one Klipper (host) process can orchestrate multiple microcontrollers (Arduino+RAMPS, for example) in order to control more motors. The Voron 2.1, for example, has 7 motors (4xZ, 1xA, 1xB, and 1xE), so they use Klipper with two RAMPS boards. The old setup was Duet with expansion boards that all-up was a few hundred dollars to purchase. Klipper coordinates all four Z motors to level the gantry with respect to the print bed.
Is anyone currently using klipper with their MPCNC (or LowRider)? I have it running on one of my printers and have been quite impressed with it in that application but wonder how well it would work for this purpose.
I am running klipper on my Ender 3. From what I can tell you are rare limited by the spindle/material. I don’t think klipper would help with speed. It might make tweaking the firmware easier.
I started to use Klipper with my Ender 3 Pro - with the SKR mini E3 v1.2 - as Marlin was driving me crazy with the random bugs and the opaque configuration. Klipper was a learning curve but it is, in my opinion, much more pleasant to use, configure and understand.
I have ordered the steel tubes (1.6mm cold drawn mild steel) for my LowerRider 2 and I will try out Klipper on that after I have verified that everything works OK with the V1Engineering supplied SKR board and stock firmware, of course. I want to be sure that everything with the LowRider works a expected using V1Engineering’s supplied parts and configuration before I start tinkering.
I just installed it on my Ender 3 Pro. Which I used to print my MPCNC. This is really neat stuff. Not only could it run other cards so that more axis could be added to the MPCNC. But it is independent of kinematics. Rather than computing line segments. It iteratively solves the kinematic equations. And it also looks ahead so it can apply mechanics optimization over several commands issued by a slicer. Either Marlin catches up, or this thing will just replace it. The only thing that may save Marlin is user base and small but significant entry barriers. If the klipper guys are able to simplify configuration by simplifying sharing profiles like cura has, it would be a no brainer. This thing shaved 20% printing time on an existing gcode file without any tweaks. And it can be much faster than that. I don’t have much time, but I really wanted to give readers a heads up. Klipper is awesome!!!
I need to try it. I really like the concept, and I am guessing it has gotten a lot smarter since I looked at it.
I don’t think Marlin is going anywhere though. It added some features where it would basically accept motion primitives from a connected computer. But the fact that it can run without a pi, without wifi, without USB cords, is a big plus. It is also still installed (well, an older version, butchered by manufacturers) in new printers coming from China. I doubt they are going to add in klipper and a SBC in the next creality or BTT printer. They might, and if they did, then I would expect a big shift.
Creality just recently started using 32 bit processors. They could easily go back to the 8 bit save a few dollars, and include the PI in the box. They are already selling an octoprint box alternative. And to add insult to injury, there is a remake of the Duet DWC web interface that works with Klipper. The retail cost of the PI is 35$, 20% faster or more and WiFi plus way easier to MOD. It would be a no brainer for a lot of people.
Who really knows. It took RISC 20-30 years to pass CISC.
The most important reason to add klipper support is so you can add motors via an extra board of needed. And make gears add 2 more axis. Ect… The ONLY thing the user would need to do is swap the configuration file. And viola you got a different kinematic model.
I have Klipper working on LR2 / SKR Pro 1.2 with dual end-stops for Y and a single end-stop for X. Z axis to follow when I solve some end-stop mounting issues.
I have yet to start my LR2 build. (I will purchase the hardware as a reward for finally cleaning out my garage 
) but I am really interested in the concept of running Klipper as the firmware. Could you also set it up to use a bluetooth controller for manual axis adjustment (a la Onefinity)? I am sure that is not really a limitation of Klipper but I am new to the whole diy firmware thing. I am still running stock everything on my Ender3v2 for crying out loud.
Klipper firmware seems to work OK but I am having problems with the motors stalling. I think that this is a problem with the motors themselves. But I would get started with the standard firmware first before converting to Klipper.
I can’t offer any advice about joysticks as I only use my iPad or another computer to control everything: I run the board without any displays.
Hi @jchidley, I know it’s been a while, but would you mind sharing your printer.cfg for klipper? I’d like to see what worked for you to make sure I’m on the right track. Thanks!
Any updates on this? I run klipper on 3 of my printers so this would be somewhat familiar.
Just ordered my hardware kit with skr+TFT today, all parts are printed for my lr3
Take a look at Jelly’s post which give a great walk through on getting Klipper going.
I have a thread too for my build but need to do an update with my latest progress. I have klipper running, homing with dual end stops, and currently working on passing a gcode file to it. I’m just trying to work out either how to use the klipper-cnc macros, or simplify the gcode file I generated with Fusion360 and the flyfisher post processing.
Once I have something working I was going to update my post with what I did.
Hope this helps Cody.
Well, here’s a printer.cfg I posted for Klipper a while back - with some basic macros.