SoliForum - 3D Printing Community — Dedicated PC or not?

Re: Dedicated PC or not?

2012-10-03T18:20:31Z

Skienforge is quite resource intensive and it helps to have a beefy processor.

Re: Dedicated PC or not?

2012-10-03T15:41:46Z

The machine I am using to print is an old laptop (bought between 7-9 years ago brand new).

1.6ghz AMD single core
1 gb RAM
40 gb HDD
Windows XP
No Video Card

While there are sometimes when I'm Skeinforging, surfing thingiverse, playing with SketchUp, and printing at the same time it does have some pauses. However, if it is just doing two of the previous it seems to work just fine for printing (though Skeinforge takes a LONG time).

I am sure having the Panelolu or a newer machine would help, but I am doing all of this on a fairly slim budget so I do what I can with what I have.

Re: Dedicated PC or not?

2012-10-03T13:18:57Z

I plan on hooking my printer right to my airport extreme to make it a network 3d printer so I dont have to tie my laptop down, and can still surf the interwebz on my couch

Re: Dedicated PC or not?

2012-10-03T02:03:54Z

I have had my laptop printing with no problems while converting a video with handbrake, web browsing, and using photoshop. I don't think that pronterface is resource intensive enough to cause stuttering when multitasking.

Re: Dedicated PC or not?

2012-10-01T20:21:08Z

I intend on using an old laptop with a cracked screen. It's worth considering. While the RPi is awesome (I am playing around with mine; learning), I think it might be much easier to run an old laptop with a trashed screen. I can easily SSH into the laptop and do some reasonably heavy lifting (it's a 4-5 year old X60s).

Both an Rpi or Poloulu would cost me another $30-50 dollars in small pieces, with somewhat less functionality. Longterm, however, they are lower power (my laptop will draw a bit more.)

Re: Dedicated PC or not?

2012-10-01T00:03:54Z

walshy002000 wrote:

I don't know how the software works with regards to multi-threading, but if you're really worried, you could always just set the affinity of the processes so that the Solidoodle software uses a dedicated code. Has saved me a few times when I've had some random up chewing up cycles when I want to multi-task with other things.

What type of cpu usage do you see during a print? And on what cpu?

Re: Dedicated PC or not?

2012-09-30T04:35:37Z

The author of Repetier-Host is planning a pi version. See in the issues of its Github.

Re: Dedicated PC or not?

2012-09-30T04:32:13Z

Having a dedicated pc sounds like a good idea and I even considered hooking the raspberrypi to it just to see if it could do the job. Right now though I'm still trying to get a handle on everything so I'll keep using this 8-core beastie until I have it dialed in.

Re: Dedicated PC or not?

2012-09-29T15:57:36Z

I am doing a dedicated PC, an AOpen 965 I think it is...

On the other hand, I will be surely be running multiple SD's fairly soon (my kickstarter launches in a few days) and I think that one PC should be able to run a bunch of SDs - like they do at SD HQ...

Re: Dedicated PC or not?

2012-09-19T04:45:36Z

I don't know how the software works with regards to multi-threading, but if you're really worried, you could always just set the affinity of the processes so that the Solidoodle software uses a dedicated code. Has saved me a few times when I've had some random up chewing up cycles when I want to multi-task with other things.

Re: Dedicated PC or not?

2012-08-10T14:14:55Z

I personally plan on fitting an SD card reader ASAP

Re: Dedicated PC or not?

2012-08-10T11:52:11Z

I have mine connected to my Quad Core (8Gb memory) computer and can multi-task with no issues while my printer is printing. The other night I was listening to music on the computer, surfing the net, modeling a new part in 123D and printing on the printer. I didn't notice any hesitation in the printer function. The only program that hesitated was iTunes when it was playing a video.

Maker Shed sells an iPad/iPhone to USB adapter that is used to communicate with an Arduino. It is conceivable to develop a Pronterface type of application to send the gCode to the printer from one of those devices.

Re: Dedicated PC or not?

2012-08-10T08:57:08Z

Jinja wrote:

It's not that simple, but it almost is. I plan to make another 3D printer after I receive my solidoodle. There are a few designs out there and my current favourite is the rostock...
http://reprap.org/wiki/Rostock
The typical controller for a 3D printer is some kind of Arduino. This Arduino is fed GCODE by a USB host. Wouldn't it be cool if an Android phone could feed the GCODE? It seems logical and easy, but Android phones are typically not powerful enough to be a USB host, which is why this was developed...
http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardADK
It's an arduino board (a mega2560) that also can be a USB host and therefore can communicate with Android devices. As far as I'm aware nobody has done this yet, but I don't see any problem with using the Arduino ADK to drive a printer and interface with an Android phone. It'll be much nicer than an LCD display.
Anyway, it's all there, it just needs to be connected up with a little software.

Same here, I plan on doing something totally different than extruders though.

I want to give DLP Photo-polymer printing a try...
It seems that objects made from this method are much smoother and higher resolution than any extrusion type printer.
The most expensive part is getting a high resolution DLP projector though.

How do i embed vids from youtube?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=en … PmP0u1HuUM

Re: Dedicated PC or not?

2012-08-10T08:05:54Z

It's not that simple, but it almost is. I plan to make another 3D printer after I receive my solidoodle. There are a few designs out there and my current favourite is the rostock...

http://reprap.org/wiki/Rostock

The typical controller for a 3D printer is some kind of Arduino. This Arduino is fed GCODE by a USB host. Wouldn't it be cool if an Android phone could feed the GCODE? It seems logical and easy, but Android phones are typically not powerful enough to be a USB host, which is why this was developed...

http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardADK

It's an arduino board (a mega2560) that also can be a USB host and therefore can communicate with Android devices. As far as I'm aware nobody has done this yet, but I don't see any problem with using the Arduino ADK to drive a printer and interface with an Android phone. It'll be much nicer than an LCD display.

Anyway, it's all there, it just needs to be connected up with a little software.

Re: Dedicated PC or not?

2012-08-10T07:00:24Z

Well, technically it should work with an smartphone. since you can use a wifi thingy on the controller card, then create an app on the smartphone to connect to it, then send over the gcode or something. would be cool to see in action :9