It seems I’m being gifted with the corpse as the micro-SD slot failed and with shipping the way it is the company is unable to replace it in a timely fashion. It’s a nicely made frame of extrusions and I believe worth some effort.
I think my options are:
Try to replace the board
Get computer tech to replace the card slot
For 1, I can follow directions but don’t speak much of the language I see here with different boards, etc. The board’s marked LGT_KIT_V1.0. Are these things generic enough I can likely replace the board and find firmware to work with it without being an electronics wizard? Also, there’s some sort of red compound
drizzled across the connectors plugged into the board. Some sort of locking compound or???
Not sure about 2 as a search seems to indicate this type of card slot where you push it in to read, and push in again to release is prone to failure.
Viable project or a future black aluminum plant stand?
I think you need to provide more information about what the printer is, possibly with pictures. For example I wouldn’t have a problem changing my Ender 3 Pro motherboard with a SKR motherboard as I think it would be an easy swap even though the manufacturers are completely different. Both boards run Marlin firmware, the SKR motherboard has enough connectors labelled correctly that I can see what goes to what. I can also see that the SKR takes 24V in which is the same.
Sets of pictures go along way to explaining what you currently have.
At the end of the day, most (but not all) 3d printers work in a similarish fashion. Wuthout more information, I’m struggling to know.
My camera decided it didn’t like WiFi anymore and I need to get a cable to download pix. When I bought it the instructions to hook-up with WiFi were laughably short. I had to call Canon tech support and the tech must’ve walked me thru at least 15 steps to get it to work, most of which weren’t in the manual. Now Canon apparently wants $$$ to talk to someone and given I didn’t get the right info to begin with, that doesn’t make be very happy.
Even easier would be if I could figure a way to disable the spring tension in the card slot. I reformatted the card and tried it, pushing the card in and releasing it there’s a very narrow range where it’s read by the printer but it is readable.
It’s not clear where the SD card reader is mounted, I’m assuming under the LCD somewhere.
Some people might be able to remount the SD card reader, but if it’s surface mounted it’s beyond my meagre talents. It may be that the LCD by itself can be changed. The fact that these are cheap 3d printers works in your advantage as they will use standard off the shelf components. Not being rude BTW, I have an Ender 3 which is even cheaper
Pictures will make life easier as we can see what the board and LCD are.
Also another option may be to put something like Octoprint in front of your printer. This connects to the USB port on your printer (if there is one). You then print from Cura / PrusaSlicer to Octoprint via network and then Octoprint sends the job to your printer via USB. Its dead simple and means that you no longer use the SD card slot. I run Octoprint on a Raspberry PI 3 and it just works. Can’t remember the last time I used my SD card.
Thanks, the other issue besides the card slot is although they’ve sent me a link for the driver necessary to communicate with the printer via USB, it refuses to load. I requested they send me the file directly, I don’t know where the issue lies but they cited some security issue not allowing them to do so. Given the lack of the USB option I guess Octoprint is a no-go?
The card slot itself is soldered to the board and not that easily accessible. The problem seems to be it’s one of those which locks in place and must be pushed in again to release it. Searching around it seems that type is problematical, I think it’d be much more reliable if it was like the adapter they supplied to load code from the slicer onto the card, simply insert and remove with seemingly no locking mechanism other than friction. There was a solution I found that entailed manipulating tab on the side of the slot that worked for a while that no longer does. I’ve been looking for a diagram of exactly how the locking mechanism for the card work with no joy. I believe disabling that spring function would be the easiest fix.
Being they’ve refunded my purchase $$$ I really can’t fault the company. I’d like to get it functioning again but lacking a simple solution, my MPCNC is newly functional and learning the software that will drive it as well as building an enclosure are my priorities at the moment.
I don’t know what other ports the printer has, but I just put a USB cable between my Pi and the Ender 3 and it worked out of the box.
I’m a little surprised about the need for a driver, is this a Windows driver or a driver for the printer itself? If you have the right cable connect it up and see what Windows (or Mac) recognises. Adding in extra security is expensive and time consuming and on a $300 printer simply not worth it in my opinion when every company is trying to shave pennies off the bill.
That was one of the first things I tried as I thought it would be just plug it in and send the file. No joy
I thought about the SD card extender. What makes me question whether it would work is that with the printer on and looking for files, there seems to be a very narrow range of insertion into the card slot where it will be read, unfortunately not at the end of its travel but somewhere in the middle where I haven’t figured out how to reliably hold it.
I can’t seem to find an image of the internals of the card slot, I think I’d have a better shot at a solution if I knew what I was dealing with.
Well, apparently my biggest failure was in not being a mindreader. On a hunch I plugged the laptop into the printer, turned the printer on and the driver install was successful. I want to button it back up and still have a few hoops to jump thru but it looks like there may be a solution here. Anything I’ve ever been required to download a driver for I’ve simply done so and installed it. The instructions left much to be desired in not indicating the computer and printer must be connected with the printer on to install it. I’d still much rather be able to print from a card and from the stories I’ve read likely wouldn’t trust the computer for a long print.
I use Octoprint all the time. Some of my print jobs are over 24 hours long. I recall one being over 30 hours. Octoprint has never failed me. I’m far more concerned with filament feed, plate adhesion, nozzle and bed temperatures. The advantages of Octoprint are that you can monitor just about everything from a browser. You also get the advantages of all sorts of Octoprint plugins, sending Gcode directly, checking temperatures, use of webcams for timelapse. The list goes on, you also can run this headless on a cheap Raspberry PI 3. A Pi Zero is too small. It’s a cheap and quite simply the best upgrade for my Ender 3. YMMV.
Having the printer and the laptop connected at the same time for the driver install is fairly normal as I think that Windows interrogates the USB bus, gets a device ID from it, even if it can’t use it, and uses that to work out which driver to install. Most 3d printer instructions appear to be worthless. My Ender 3 Pro instructions were literally worse than useless as they were wrong.
Not that I have vast experience but I’ve never needed any device but my computer to download/install anything I needed. It often seems to me that some of the writers of tech manuals would be totally shocked if told their users aren’t necessarily born knowing all the ins and outs.
BTW: If anyone knows of a good site explaining exactly what Octoprint is and how it’s used I’d be interested.
Now I’ll have to decide whether to pursue getting a new board and using an SD card extender so the SD slot of the printer is not in constant use. The print worked but hardly as convenient as using the card.
Thanks for that! I have to confess there’s so much new to me now that I do confuse some things. Now I wonder what’s the difference between Octoprint and Raspberry Pi? And truth be tol I’d likely be happy if I could just pop a card in the printer and have at it.
You have to understand, I grew up with a phone you had to stick a finger in a dial to make a call, and that after checking your party line wasn’t tied up, and with 3 TV networks that you actually had to get out of your seat to switch.
Octoprint is the software, Raspberry PI is the hardware.
If you want to keep it simple, use an SD card and then gravitate to Octoprint. However as your 3d printer has issues with the SD card, Octoprint is a simple, cheap and quick solution to your problem. As Jeff has said, we would expect it to connect directly to your printer without any driver issues, though it would be good to check online. Assuming your printer is running Marlin, they would have to go out of their way to stop it working with Octoprint. Mind you, it’s possible.
Well, the printer uses a micro SD which has the type of slot that physically locks the card in and you need to push it in to get it to release. I thought perhaps that was unique to the micro card but realize my camera has a larger card that installs/removes in the same manner. What I’m unsure of (well that’s a very long list) is whether the cards are physically different to suit the different style slots? Ideally, if I can get a new board I’d use the slot extender with a larger card that doesn’t lock in IF the format of the larger card would be compatible in the micro slot?
The good news is there were only a few minor things I had in mind printing for the MPCNC I’ll be able to do them and then get down to the more satisfying work of getting it dirty.
Just to make sure I’m not any more confused than usual, are you saying Octoprint can transmit the output of my slicer directly to the printer using WiFi?
