Sounds like marlin is to 3d printing what grbl is to laser(ing?)
No, this was after that.
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Oh from the conversation I got that grbl is great at lasering and ok at cnc. Like marlin is great at 3dp and ok at cnc. Did I miss somthing?
I was responding to David.
Grbl can do squaring and probing. I canāt do squaring at the moment because Iām using a 3 driver board, but thatās a limit of my hardware choice, not a limit of the firmware. Probing, even with a separate Z max limit switch, works just fine.
Historically, as I understand things, grbl was the motion control system that Marlin was built on top of. Developers added temperature controls and extruders as 4th axis to get the critical elements for 3D printing. Features have been continually refined, added, and expanded.
I first came across grbl when I decided to replace the brain in my K40. I had already been working with Marlin for 3D printing but the arduino/cnc shield was about 1/2 the cost of a ramps stack at that time and frugal was high up in the decision matrix as Iād just spent all my fun money on the engraver.
It took me a while to realize how much simpler the grbl config was. I was used to flashing firmware multiple times to tweak and tune settings. With grbl I just had to tweak the homing sequence in firmware once and then everything else was the $ number settings that were adjustable on the fly and automatically persistent. Laser mode was truly effortless to enable and it just worked.
Grbl appeals to me for CNC and laser control because of the KISS principle. So far, in my experience, grbl has everything I need and nothing I donāt for that use case.
Thereās plenty of room in the world for both extremes. Marlin feels like a āwonderbusā motor home with slide out living rooms, air conditioning, satellite tv, and a hot tub - every possible option is in there and you can play with all the toys youād like. Grbl feels to me more like a rat rod - nothing in there that isnāt directly related to making it go, making it stop, or keeping it it aimed in the right direction. Why bother with windshield wipers if weāre never going to drive in the rain?
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Sorry for the confusion all.
Please note that 3dprinters are CNC machines underneath all the bed and extruder control stuffā¦ and thus, Marlin can make for a nice CNC machine, with MPCNC as prime example. It also runs on very nice controller boardsā¦ offering some very nice features; i.e. bed-leveling, probing, auto-squaring, etc.
Grbl is generally a CNC-centric firmware that still runs on inexpensive controller boardsā¦ and also happens to excel for laser, with its ālaser modeā.
Either firmware can run Primo beautifully as a basic CNC. Which you use IMHO should probably depend on what you want to do with it and/or how fancy you want to get with features beyond basic CNC.
EDIT: What Tom said above! Please ignore my mumblingsā¦
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