Latest CNC Focused Firmware for TFT35 E3 V3

Software / Firmware
1

What is the latest options available for updating the firmware for more of a CNC focus? Different icons, CNC focused language, things like that. Anyone willing to share what they have for their lowrider?

2

The V1 firmware was too hard to keep maintained. So we went toward trying to get the main firmware from BTT to just not fail when using our CNC firmware. We convinced them to add in extruders=0 in the config.ini. but things like the temperature buttons are still there. They just don’t work.

I did a lot of work to bring in edits from several users before that. And it got so out of date and was impossible to merge with upstream changes. Then they changed the hardware and our old build didn’t work anymore. That’s why we went back to main and got that edit merged upstream.

I have seen some edits since then. Some people have done some quick edits to make it more to our liking, but it wouldn’t be mergable upstream without some more work. Hopefully someone can pop in with what they did.

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3

Is there a decent guide for customization? Would have to figure out how much effort it would be to get it tweaked.

4

I haven’t seen any guide. There are a few major parts to it:

  • language files. They have pairs that connect the code variable “PRINT” to a language specific string “Print”. You can change a string to another word easily, or add new ones (which is a lot more involved).
  • icons. The code loads a print.ico image and if you want a laser symbol, just replace the image with one the same format and size.
  • The code for the menus. If you want it to send M3 S255 instead of M104 S200, then you have to edit the menu code. I found most of those by searching through the code. If you know any programming, it isn’t too hard to follow. If you know any C, it isn’t too hard to edit :slight_smile:. Compile and test often.

I found it much easier to connect the screen to my computer via a uart adapter. But that may be my weirdness. I was able to see exactly the gcode it was sending me. I did have to make a script to send it some canned messages so it thought it was connected.

5

Sounds good. I might end up doing a little bit with it, but will probably end up doing most with cncjs or octoprint with a pi hooked up. Thanks for the insight.

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