New board options

Well since I can not seem to keep the Ulitmachine boards in stock and lead times are getting longer I would like to start carrying a backup (or two).

My top choices so far are SKR 1.4 (turbo?), or SKR pro - with 2209 drivers (?). With these we have driver options but I only want to support one specific combination so Weigh in with your reasoning. If the 1.4 needs this part it is less ideal, but I am not sure.

And these can also use the fancy (expensive) screen, or the regular less expensive one we currently use (which one do you like).

GRBL_esp32, if Bart is wanting to make some larger batches. (have not checked in with him yet). No LCD options you would wifi connect (??).

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The tft screens are pretty slick. I get confused as to which one is which, because they all have similar names. They all just talk serial to Marlin, not I2C. I am not sure what the implications are of that.

I chose 2209s with my last controller update. They have higher current capacity than the 2208 and the uart seems like a smarter choice than the SPI of the 5160s. But just because it is fewer wires. I have 2130s, and they haven’t failed me either.

I have the mpcnc grbl board, but I haven’t installed it yet. I have used two other boards that run grbl_esp32. The esp gets flashed via arduino, and then you connect to the webpage to load up another hex file. It is pretty dead simple. The web interface has all the grbl settings and basically everything repetier host would do. It can make its own hotspot if you don’t have wifi in the barn. No lcd though.

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Main web interface:

Configuration:

There may be updates. I flashed this at least 6 months ago.

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I have a SKR 1.4 turbo board I got for my 3d printer… after researching all the drivers I went with the 2209 as well… they seemed to be the best supported with the most features under marlin. I’m keen to get it set up with the sensorless homing… that might be interesting on the low rider too. I went with one of the fancy screens too… they aren’t actually all that expensive.

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Just my two cents, maybe work toward boards that are designed with cnc in mind. Bart’s board, or even an openbeam blackbox(kinda spendy). Even if they don’t have built in screens, all of us carry around fairly large screened smartphones, or pick up a kindle or nook, they’re dirt cheap.

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On the business side of it, I will have almost no margin. People buying a board get cheap shipping and no import fees. Buying in bulk shipping is very expensive, import taxes, and there is not much of a bulk discount. Then add assembly, flash, and testing time. For the SKR options I will see if I can just arrange a special link just for us, affiliate and discount??? That would be awesome.

That looks easy enough.

Having them come flashed is pretty nice, but since you can just copy a hex file on the skr boards, that may become a non issue.

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Really!? That is cool. I have one of each here with drivers, two different tft’s…guess I will need to make time to fart around with it. Fancy custom graphics is really interesting to me as well.

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You can just put the firmware.bin on the sdcard. The firmware.bin was also being created by anttix’s build script, so you could literally push a change to master and github would build all the bins you want, in a clean environment, and then put them on (an obscure) webpage for you to download.

And… you can put the hex files you have tested in a release.

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Ahhhh it’s coming back to me now. The only issues so far have been bad SD cards I think.

You could sell sd cards with the firmware so all you have to do is stick it in your board and update. It would be a known quality. Not sure how feasible or profitable that is so just my thoughts

I just set up the SKR 1.3 with the same screen you linked. I’m still printing parts so no real use other than making motors spin. My point is that the main hurtle to these boards is updating the firmware. If you could link to the download for a “recommended” skr/driver combo and add a set up like you have for the other boards the process would be pretty simple.

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I think the esp32_GRBL board would be a good fit. I have one and it works very well.

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This. Mine has been sitting in a box for a month because it’s time consuming sorting out the firmware stuff.

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I Have a SKR 1.3 with TMC2130 running a Monoprice Select V2.
So far the board has been good to me, I don’t print much with it because all the fan noise.
With that said, I think that the 1.4 turbo will be a good addition to the arcenal, also it is almost half of the price of a Ultimachine board and you see more and more people using it.

The price and feature list make people flock to this, buzz words. That is why we are all so hesitant to jump ship. What they say vs what you get could be a deal breaker. Like do we trust the drivers or buy genuine? Those were the first things to do with the drv8825. They started using the wrong value pots so you had to be a brain surgeon to set them (or 100-200 a day), then they just went to a 50/50 good vs bad ratio. The other bad part is they are still releasing new revisions and other boards. Each board needs firmware support, they are releasing boards without full firmware support, and then making a new revision. We need some sort of stability and time for it to be fully tested. If I buy 200qty V1.4, and a V1.5 comes out bad luck for me.

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I guess what it comes down to is why I went to Ultimachine in the first place. Buying one of anything is fun and new toys are pretty exciting. New features and constant cheap updates make it seem awesome. Those things are absolute deal breakers when you needs hundreds/thousands of them, or are not into the electronics and software side of using a CNC in your garage and just want a reliable machine to make stuff with.

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Getting a steady stream of boards that are simple to set up and use seems like goal #1. There has always been, and will always be new and “improved” items. But there is also growth in tech over longer periods of time, and newer boards can have big advantages. The archim should be a good next choice.

I get super confused with the different versions and names. It seems like there are three or four different skr boards, and they each use a similar versioning system (1.2, 1.3, 1.4). But they are very radically different.

It will not be easy, but getting one or two of these solutions “rang out” and having a reference setup is going to get people spun up faster.

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I just set up a CNC chield on my LR2. I really like that. Very easy to conigure. I’d love to try the esp32 version. Would just need to know how to change to a dual z instead of dual x.

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