I have an old Davinci Pro 1.0 and it's still humming along. I have done lots of mods over the years.
I was starting to get concerned about the main board. I am surprised that it lasted this long. I started looking for controller boards.
I bought a BTT SKR mini E3 and 3.5 tft. I could not compile the code successfully. I tried Arduino IDE and VS Code. Both failed. I tried different configurations. Same thing.I tried for like a week.
I have a stand alone media server PC. The only thing on this PC is Windows 10 and PLex. And a backup program. I installed Arduino IDE on this computer thinking maybe I had too much stuff happening on my main computer. Same thing, I could never get it to compile. I sent it back.
I returned the set and bought a Ramps 1.4. I have seen folks make those work in a Davinci before. The screen was dead. I sent it back.
I bought a BTT Octopus and TFT. I really like their interface. The Octopus was worse than the Mini E3. I couldn't get the Octopus to do anything. I sent it back.
Now I have ordered a MKS Gen-L v2.1. I have had success with smoothiware on a MKS board on another printer so I thought I would give it a try. Its coming from China unless WW3 breaks out. I'll get it in a couple of weeks.
It kills me to do this but I think I am asking for help here. I am going crazy trying to find a board that I can even program, let alone adapt it to my Davinci Pro!
Any help and guidance of your experience will be greatly appreciated.
I'm Old Steve on Thingiverse. I just made a new carriage for my Davinci. I have over 50 hours of print time on it now and its holding up beautifully.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5815674
TIA
Sad to hear so much difficulty getting it to work.
Any update on your revamp?
I have a BTT SKR Mini 3 v2 I was trying to get an i3 clone to work but am scrapping that project.
Got the Davinci 1.0 (not Pro) and had subpar prints.
Added PEI plate and better adhesion.
Switch to E3D and bowden conversion and can run smoother and faster but want to reduce some noise with an updated board.
I ended up buy a second hand Mingda Magician x2 and that thing is amazing!
Quiet and fast.
I also got it for $100 AUD. On par with my work Prusa MK3.5
My SKR 2 is being delivered tomorrow.
Post an update when you get it printing, and I'll do the same. I'm ultimately hoping to get ABL working, and I'd love to get it to clean.
I am going to see if I can get the stock screen working, but I am also looking at a Panucatt Viki LCD that looks like it'll mount in the stock spot. If I can make it look 100% stock I'll be happy.
]]>BTT's github page for the SKR-2, which has schematics and pinouts, was very helpful.
The main work was rewiring, switching connectors from Davinci's JST-PH to the JST-XH ones that the SKR-2 expects. Plus figuring out which wires to plug in where.
The davinci board had a current-limiting resistor in series with one of the wires to each of the optical endstops (to limit current through the LED). The SKR-2 has no such resistor, so I added a 270-ohm resistor in series with those wires.
That's it! The rest worked by plugging into the right spot on the SKR-2, including: extruder optical encoder, filament detector, thermistor, fan and heater, bed thermistor and heater, case light, and of course the stepper motors.
Along the way, I believe I learned what each of the 7 wires going to the board in the extruder does.
I put my modifications to Marlin in a Github branch of my fork on Marlin. I believe I've calibrated the x,y,z and extruder steppers to within 1%. I tried calibrating the bed and extruder thermistors using a separate type-k thermocouple and am probably only within 5% or 10% for those (because I measured from a different spot than exactly where the thermistors are).
It looks like Marlin does not support having both an extruder encoder (to detect jams by noticing the idler wheel isn't moving though the stepper is) and a filament sensor (to detect filament at all) - you have to pick one or the other. I selected to make Marlin use the encoder since that catches more problem scenarios than the filament sensor.
I didn't hook up the bed level-detection sensors. A piece of paper seemed to work fine.
I also haven't actually printed anything yet, so take this post with a grain of salt. I'm having trouble getting the hot-end to extrude consistently. I think I may have some bad heat-creep and/or missing ptfe or something. I'm going to take apart the hotend and hopefully figure out what's wrong.