I was able to get the chip switch to work with firmware 1.10 - 1.14. It was weird though, you can't have a cartridge installed on the left side, and you have to press the arrow key when the print screen is up, or it won't work. It doesn't make sense, but I tried every variation. For the ramps conversion, I bought a MKS ramps board, so I just took the 24v from the Cubes power supply, and ran that to the main power, I then connected the 24v fan above the print heads(hot ends) to that same connector. I set the fan speed to 128 which gave me 12v and then connected the 2 fans for the extruder motors to that. Running Marlin 1.1.0 rc7 The board was $39, much better option than fumbling with chips and cartridges. Even at minimum wage, if you multiply that by the amount of time I spent trying to circumvent those stupid chips I could've bought a high end printer.
do you mind sharing a zip of your Marlín and a few pics of your printer as it is now? printing, I assume?
I'll take a picture of it in a little while. I'm currently looking up how to change the pins for the hot ends. When I go to pre-heat the 2nd hot end, it turns on the heated bed connection, instead of extruder 2. Also I haven't secured the board/screen down with screws yet, I'm planning to use motherboard mounting screws to attach it.
so there's no space inside to hide the electronics? perhaps we can build 4 feet and hide it underneath. . . . isn't the touch screen usable at all? perhaps. drilling a bigger window and fit the tiniest touch screen a raspi can handle. . . hehe
The board was around .25 of an inch too big to fit in the top of the case. I could extend the cables a little and mount the board in the bottom of the case, but I kind of like having my board exposed, makes it look more like Franken Cube. Also I'm a little impatient, and want to do some test prints tonight. I have the marlin file on another computer and will post it. Like I said earlier, the marlin file isn't finished, I need to set it to properly heat extruder 1 and 2, it is currently sending voltage to the pins marked for extruder 0 and heat bed. I could just connect the extruders to those 2 connections, but I want it how I want it. I also want to set a +3 volt, and a +5volt out so I can have better control over the lights and the 2 small fans next to the extruders. I also used the thermostat and other settings from the original poster. Will post more soon.
I bought 6 endstops and was going to install them, but decided not to. I will just manually set the home position. Maybe later I will install the endstops.
I believe anytime someone uses a switch or swaps the cartridge to fool the system they are doing it on the old firmware. I got it at home. Last night I dropped firmware just to see if I could. Got to have 2 thumb drives. One with the current firmware, second with the old firmware but file name changed to match the new. I believe the new firmware is 1.14ar, and the old is 1.10ar. Change the name from 1.10av to 1.14av just like the new. Put the thumb drive in with the actual new firmware on it, select firmware update. Once it starts pull the thumb drive out and put the thumb drive in with the old FW in. Then select retry and it'll load. Last night once I got the old firmware loaded, went to print and it said I needed the new FW. I believe I've read somewhere(possibly in this thread) that you need to disconnect from the wifi so that it doesn't check to see if up to date. I just didn't want to fool with it last night or else I would have tried. I might eventually switch my motherboard but for the time being I'm running it stock because I have a lot of the filament. The OP is very active, esp if you message him. If you do message him and receive good info not covered already, or find any of your own please post. Always good to have as much info as possible going into a mod like he did.
I blocked 3D systems in my router's firewall settings, and then I used Cubify 3.13 for my prints with the chip switch. It worked on all firmwares below 1.14b. I never updated my machine to 1.14b to test it, because once you load 1.14b you can't remove it. To do a downgrade you have to trick the machine with an actual higher version number (there's a checksum) and then put a renamed lower version in. If you use the newest version of Cubify, it will put instructs in your print file to look for the 1.14b bios, downgrade your program and bios, and then use a firewall if you have one to block the software and the printer from reporting home. (or unplug the Wan port on your router, which is a pain).
The USB swap trick will work as long as you aren't already at 1.14b As long as the printer can't connect to 3dsystems you are good, so yes changing the password or any other disruption is fine
I'm doomed with 1.14b then. . . . anyhow t'he idea was to fully open-source it. . . I guess the smallest form factor dual extruder board would be the mk ramps right?
I'm not sure, I bought the MKS because it was the cheapest. $39 for board and screen. My train of thought was to not spend too much on this printer when I could buy a generic reprap for around $200. For $10 more you can get a nice small touch screen.
I would've did the test calibration print last night, but I had to leave out. I have some running around to do right now, but I will do a test print tonight and upload pictures. I found all the settings that need to be changed to make the board fully compatible with the Cube 3. The issue was that pin D7/E1 on the board was defined/activated, but then it is never assigned to hotend 1. Also hotend 0 is assigned to D9/fan. So I changed both hotends to D10 and D7, and set D8 and D9 to fans. With that set up, I can run the 24v fan on the main power input, D8 can be set to 12v to cool the extruder motors, D9 can be set at 5v for the small fans above the hotends. As for fitting all this in the case, I'm sure if you buy an Arduino and then a separate ramps 1.4 both boards will fit in place of the original boards, BUT I'm not sure how you will get 24v to work.
perhaps a voltage converter before the psu plug and get this system up and running at 12v? or just replace the power source with any other cheap 12v one and run the wires accordingly? or is it just a thermostat/heater must requirement? I've seen the cube guts but not the extruder guts. . . . How is it heated? using a (standard?) cartridge? those aren't expensive components either. . . .
The fan above the hot end won't spin with less than 24v applied to it. The Cube comes with a 24v psu, so the obvious choice for me was to use it. If you can get it up and running with a 12v psu, please document and share your results. I have no idea about the guts to heat the hot ends, once I got it working, my research ended in regards to the hardware, my focus turned to get Marlin right.
Makes sense, MKS RAMPS then.... you got 1.2? 1.4 RAMPS? I couldnt read the actual differences between them anywhere....
I'm running a MKS with Ramps 1.4 A Rumba board would definitely work too, and the original poster has provided his Marlin file to run it. The Rumba is $79, but I wanted the cheapest solution. I'm not sure what the differences between the 1.2 and 1.4 are, I made my decision based on price and availability. There is a lot of support for 1.4 Ramps and the MKS was dirt cheap (Cheaper than buying an Arduino with an empty shield). Hope that helps.
That statement about not being able to downgrade firmware on V1.14B is bullshit. You can definitely downgrade your Cube 3's firmware to any version you want. All you need to do is rename the older firmware you want to downgrade to, put it on one flash drive, and rename it to V1.14B. First you take one of your two flash drives and put the V1.14B firmware on to it. Plug that **** in to the printer, go to firmware updates via USB, and start the transfer until the percentage marker reports 3% or higher, then you take out the drive and put in your other flash drive with the renamed older firmware and press retry. Your welcome.
If I ever get another Cube 3, I'm planning on removing the SIM and cloning it. Upgrade 1 step; clone... rinse and repeat. The SIM is real easy to get to once you pull the front case shell (being careful of the one connected wire). If anyone is good at starting a SIM repository, please advise.
