Just need to vent a little. But as someone who paid a little bit extra for the recommended Archim board on promises of “the improved design and robust safety features.” I have to say that from this very early stand point, I am left a little bit disappointed. I understand that much of my frustrations are around the firmware, but since firmware and boards are so closely linked in this case, I’ll just treat them as interchangable.
Now let me be clear. Using Ryan’s Archim Dual firmware seems to get the very basics done. That is, that the machine moves according to GCODE, and the endstops work. And functionally, it is a capable CNC machine.
As my use and experience progresses, I do, however want to explore areas that might improve or enhance my hobby experience. Half the fun is tinkering and just getting it to work (at least for me). Yet, I find myself getting to areas over my head when it comes to firmware and compiling. I’m finding more and more that perhaps getting the RAMPS board should have been the way to go since it is likely a much more mature branch of Marlin.
Just some of my current frustrations with the Archim Firmware
I can't implement this marlin bugfix to enable G54 for the Archim board
#define HOST_ACTION_COMMANDS is not available in current working firmware. (This one is specific to the desire to integrate CNCjs to my workflow, currently, it does not appear that the two are in full communication with each other. It isn't working for me in a headless configuration.)
There's much more goodies on thingiverse for a Ramps/Rambo board.
Hmm, seems like I can't use ESTL cam controller with this board
I'm sure that in time, a bunch of the quirks on this board will be figured out and released for people like me to update and get up to par with the other boards, but that's not really a great benefit of having paid the extra cash.
I understand your frustrations. I will put a note in the Archim purchase page to make this more clear but it is why I do not offer an Archim package. I do have a beta warning but it must not be on the product page, yet. Apologies, I will offer you a swap and refund for the difference if you are not satisfied.
They should be at a level well above the current available marlin 1.9. Since we are using Beta/bugfix Marlin 2.0 they make changes rapidly and some things that work don’t work a few days later. There was a massive issue because of one single value got changed. A pull request was made and I believe have been pulled. I have my github in the process of updating but some drama threw a wrench in my firmware free time this week.
If you need that before I update to a newer version. You can try forking and updating my branch.
Thanks for the offer. I really appreciate it. I’ve put in a lot of time into my current config so I don’t think I’ll change anything at this point. (I still have to post my build… )
This is my first foray into CNC and I might be getting ahead of myself but I think that workspace coordinates is pretty important for what I’m trying to do. It seems like you have some pending changes on github so I’ll be on the lookout for that. Meanwhile, I’ll make some more dust.
All the best Ryan, and for gods sake, its Sunday, go relax
I am about to take a bike ride, promise. Waiting for my friend and her pack of wild kids to show up then we ride (or complain and cry, sometimes both)!
I have never found the use for workspace coordinates. If you happen across a good video link it if you remember. I just either use g92 or offset it in CAM/CAD
FWIW, Ryan has been on some version of bugfix-2.0 for a long time. It does get broken occasionally. Have they said when it will be stable and making 2.1 the moving target?
Suppose I don’t need LCD support since in another thread, I was able to get the headless workflow with CNCjs working properly. Do you think the firmware would compile without it? I’m really looking towards getting alternate workspaces working and the host connection bugfix. Any chances there is any progress on the firmware development on this? Or is support for this board on the backburner? I’m really starting to look at the Rambo board if so.
I’m gonna try to test this out tonight. Should I be on the lookout on Github for the updated instructions or will you post them to the software page somewhere?
Sorry my new batch still has not shipped yet. So I have only tried it once.
Uninstall the u8glib library and then restart arduino, the new driver/library pack from ultimachine contains the stripped down LCD library and it should finish compiling now.
I have the archim board and have run code through cncjs to the board and it ran fine as far as i could tell. Just wondering if there is anything i should be looking out for?
I initially wanted to operate the CNC exclusively through CNCjs since it was the workflow I was most familiar with (think Octoprint and 3d printing). So I never installed an LCD on my machine thinking that I would be interfacing with my computer instead. Well that’s where I ran into the first problem with the tool change gcode. The gcode would pause and there would be no way to resume it. I eventually read somewhere that it was because I needed an LCD. So i bought one on amazon and viola, it allowed me to resume the print by clicking the button. Then someone on the forums suggested disabling the LCD in the firmware and give it a try. Well that worked too. Now I currently run the CNC exclusively with CNCjs. Honestly, I think I will reinstall the LCD and re-enable it because I see an advantage to having an LCD hardware button as supposed to always using a mouse. Also the scroll wheel can live adjust the feed rate, which sometimes you want to do if the cut is going well and you think you can push it.
My other issues aren’t so much with CNCjs but moreso Marlin’s implementation of certain CNC specific features such as alternate coordinate spaces and Rapid movements. When you start to look at grbl, or estlcam controller, you have some really cool touch probe options like corner finding, bit diameter agnostic zeroing, wrapping toolpaths around non planer surfaces, etc.
Otherwise I am pretty happy where I am right now my build, even if I went down the Archim route. I heard that Marlin 2.0 was just released so I’m looking forward to seeing if any new features were added that might bring it into parity with the other platforms I mentioned.
Ryan’s firmware is based on 2.0, before they released it. It has been for over a year.
You should check out my v1pi image. GitHub - jeffeb3/v1pi: Preconfigured PI useful for users of the V1Engineering machines.. I just made a new image and it has CNC.js and octoprint installed. If you don’t have wifi in your shop, you can download the hotspot version and it will make it’s own wifi to connect to. I just released these version of the images, and I need people to test it for me.
