Smoothieboard with Simplify3D

[MetalTree]

Hi All,
I have built a new large Delta Printer that I plan to run with a Smoothieboard, I really would like to use Simplify3D and was wondering if anyone has done this?
Cheers
Jason
http://www.facebook.com/MetalTree3D

[KeyboardWarrior]

The smoothie firmware has built their firmware to use the same commands as other RepRap machines, so I don't think you'd have any issues. If there were any commands that didn't match up (I think they will match up), you could adjust it in your firmware files or in the firmware settings for Simplify3D

[MetalTree]

Thanks for that, I'm still wiring it up and can't wait to get it running

[MetalTree]

Hi All,
My Big Delta has been up and running for a while with the smoothie board, and I have no probs making small things, but when I try to may a large object simplify3D stops communicating with the firmware while it is laying down the raft. Has anyone experienced a similar issue?
Cheers
Jason

[BrendTheCow]

I had the same issue, though I don't use S3D yet (I found this thread looking for reviews using S3D and delta printers). What you want to do is find something that will keep your com ports from sleeping like Caffeine (http://lightheadsw.com/). Or, what I did is start printing from my SD card instead. No stopped prints!

[JoeJ]

One other tip - if you are printing a large raft very slowly, you should double check that your communication settings allow enough time for that move to finish. S3D has a nice feature where it will automatically monitor USB prints and alert the user if the firmware goes MIA for long enough. Usually it's a safe bet that if your firmware hasn't responded to a command for 60 seconds, something is definitely wrong. So you can setup S3D to detect these problems and then it will try to automatically diagnose and solve them. It's saved several of my prints

But anyways, if you are printing a raft really slowly, you just need to make sure that the timeout value is long enough to where it is not falsely triggered by that slow move. So go to Tools > Firmware Configuration, select the Communication tab, and make sure that the "communication timeout" option at the bottom has a value around 30-60 seconds. If for some reason you don't want this feature enabled, you can also turn it off on that same page.