Simplify3D User Forum

I am very new to Simplify3D and wanted to know others thoughts on switching away from Ramps controller board to a 32bit board.
I have looked at Smoothieboard and the clones of the Smoothieboard. I have seen some post of people having issues with Smoothieboard on windows 10 so I am a little worried about that. I am also open to suggestion.
What board works best for you?

Well, in general, the benefit of moving to 32-bit boards is a massive CPU and memory improvement. A lot of the tiny 8-bit boards that the printers currently use are hugely limited by slow single core CPUs and very limited memory. Most of the firmwares available for these small boards have already maxed out all available space, so it's hard to add new features without removing something else.

So that's a high level answer for you.

I've probably tested 10 or so different firmwares myself - Sprinter, Marlin, Repetier, Sailfish, Smoothie, grbl, etc. While I am excited for a year from now when we will (hopefully!) have many stable 32-bit firmwares available, from my testing I've encountered a lot of bugs and issues with the smoothie firmware. It's not unexpected for a new firmware like that, as they are blazing some new territory there. Personally, I decided to stick some something that is more tested and stable like Marlin for now. From my testing it was hard to see any noticeable quality improvement from Smoothie vs Marlin, so I decided to go with the more stable one.

Just my $0.02

Ok, is there a better solution to Ramps. I currently have 2 printers running on Ramps but keep hearing about how much better my prints would be if i switched.

I believe your only options right now are the Duet or the Smoothie. I have used both but wasn't able to see a noticeable quality difference vs the RAMPS.

You are welcome to spend the $$ to try on your own though if you wish

JCPhlux wrote:Ok, is there a better solution to Ramps. I currently have 2 printers running on Ramps but keep hearing about how much better my prints would be if i switched.

And do the people that say that show you how much better they printing quality is compared to yours?

No, but I would love to see the same print on the same printer with only the controller board changed out. This is a test I would love to do myself but I would not want to spend that much $$$ just to run test on.

a couple guys on the makergear forum did the switch recently and did a test print before and after. if i remember right one person said they saw no difference and the other one or two said they only saw a difference at super high speeds. idk i looked at the pictures and the smoothie print looked worse but it was a picture and with black filament. that stuff always photographs funny.

well that is good to know.

If you have a cartesian printer, there's no compelling reason to go 32 bit. If, however, you have a delta, the speed tops out at a pretty slow speed.

For me, going to smoothie means I can go from 60mm/sec max for anything with an arc in it to as fast as my mechanics can handle.

I currently am running a prusa i3 and is very slow but that is limitations of it being the cheapest thing I could buy. But I am about 90% fished building a new printer that is a large CoreXY 12x12x19 build area, e3d chimera hotend in a bowden setup. With that large of a build area I would like to be as fast as possible with out a loss or quality.