PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
Surprised nobody on here has jumped on this yet. (From the recent blog post)
And it’s not only the printing technology that’s different in the SL1. We’ve also implemented a number of features that aren’t available on current Original Prusa i3 3D printers – we have a brand new motherboard called PrusA64 with a built-in Wi-fi network card, support for regular USB connectors (USB flash drives!), beautiful graphical touch display, network printing, over-the-air firmware updates, a real loudspeaker (custom sound set, anyone? 🙂 ) and many other things. You will certainly hear about this board in the future! Thanks to the new hardware, the SL1 is perfect even for new users: there’s an on-screen wizard with illustrations and photos that will help you set up the printer in no time. There’s also a resin level sensor, support for printer status overview in web browsers (on local network), uploading files from PrusaSlicer (also on local network)… as you have probably guessed, this is a small taste of what’s to come in the future and what is going to be our new standard.
So, I'll ask: Is this an upgrade that is planned for a "MK4" with an option to upgrade from a MK3/S?
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
Since using a Duet WiFi I've been convinced the Rambo / Einsy line have just about gone as far as they can. Hopefully there is going to be a Mk4 version of the i3 line and this may indeed be the board for it. Be icing on the cake if Mk3S can be upgraded. We shall see!
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
I am sure that given the effort put into designing their board, they have incorporated capabilities into the design for future FDM printers to use the same board... e.g. a swappable module for the SLA LCD that can be replaced with a stepper driver module for an FDM design; obviously also much easier to keep one mainboard in stock and diverge at the level of a smaller cheaper module than need to stock two pricey boards and tie up funds that way.
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
I'm still hoping it is this board:
https://www.thing-printer.com/revolve/
The PrusA64 reference could be A for ARM
Or more likely it could be keep the existing Einsy but run KLIPPER on it for controlling the hardware and use a Raspberry Pi3 with its 4 x 64 bit Cortex A53's on the BCM2837 processor for everything else, display, comms, menus etc etc.
Anyway, it's all speculation. Anyone got any other ideas?
Normal people believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
Nah, I'm still going with the revolve solution with the A referring to Arm and the 64 referring to the two 32 bit PRU's of the beaglebone on a chip solution which directly drive the six Trinamic TMC2130 stepper drivers.
Here's hoping anyway 😀
It would be nice if Prusa could clinch this as a deal, new board soon to be released and they manage to partner with thing to release the replicape board as part of a Mk4.
Normal people believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
Well, I will quote Josef Prusa himself (from MK4 wishlist topic):
Graphic LCD and better MCU sounds reasonable. But we will never get rid of control encoder and buttons. Small touchscreens are clumsy 🙂
It seems that he ate his own words - touch screen is present, buttons are not. He must yet to learn that "never say never" and that customer's wishes are most important. That is what makes product succesfull.
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
Well, I will quote Josef Prusa himself (from MK4 wishlist topic):
Graphic LCD and better MCU sounds reasonable. But we will never get rid of control encoder and buttons. Small touchscreens are clumsy 🙂
It seems that he ate his own words - touch screen is present, buttons are not. He must yet to learn that "never say never" and that customer's wishes are most important. That is what makes product succesfull.
Well he hasn't broken it yet. The SL1 is not the MK4. The SL1's enclosed design lends itself better to a usable sized touchscreen than the open design of the i3 printers.
Of course it's possible we see a touch screen on the MK4, but I don't think it's a given yet.
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
What gnat said - the nature of an SLA printer isn't as well served by an encoder as an FFF where you have multiple axes and temperature values to control; none of these things exist on SLA except moving Z, so a touchscreen does indeed offer the most flexibility.
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
Well, I will quote Josef Prusa himself (from MK4 wishlist topic):
Graphic LCD and better MCU sounds reasonable. But we will never get rid of control encoder and buttons. Small touchscreens are clumsy 🙂
It seems that he ate his own words - touch screen is present, buttons are not. He must yet to learn that "never say never" and that customer's wishes are most important. That is what makes product succesfull.
I would interpret Joseph words differently: "But we will never get rid of control encoder and buttons. Small touchscreens of the size of the one present on the i3MK3 are clumsy, but bigger ones as on the SL1 are extremely expansive for price range of a printer like the Mk3" 😎
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
Just to add some more fuel to the ARM information, Arduino v1.8.9 compiles natively to ARM64 processors.
Shouldn't be difficult to port the existing einsy code to a new A64 based platform.
Normal people believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
Better hardware leads to higher price. I'm not convinced PR wants to break through the $999 wall for their MKx line up. There are already other competitors.
Often linked posts:
Going small with MMU2
Real Multi Material
My prints on Instagram
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
Einsy board is $110 dollars ish for the general public, I'm sure PRUSA get it cheaper than that, and the Revolve board is expected to be between $100 and $150, again for me and you, this is assuming it is going to be this board, so it would not really increase the price.
We will find out soon I hope.
Normal people believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
I'm wandering how they want to achieve a similar price. If you replace atmega chips with the Octavo SiP, it should cost more. But agree, that shouldn't double the price of the current Einsy board.
The biggest challenge I see is that you can't use Marlin firmware on this board. Means brand new firmware. A long way to go to implement all features what we have right now plus make it stable working.
Anyway, I think a SiP chip might be the next step for MKx series. But we need one which is available in high volume 🙂
Often linked posts:
Going small with MMU2
Real Multi Material
My prints on Instagram
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
The words "touch screen full color display" imply a significant jump in costs over a 4 line alpha display.
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
The words "touch screen full color display" imply a significant jump in costs over a 4 line alpha display.
Having a newer board that could support it doesn't mean they'll ship with such a display. I believe JP made mention that cost was indeed one reason he wasn't up on the idea of a touch screen for the i3 printers.
Einsy board is $110 dollars ish for the general public, I'm sure PRUSA get it cheaper than that, and the Revolve board is expected to be between $100 and $150, again for me and you, this is assuming it is going to be this board, so it would not really increase the price.
We will find out soon I hope.
A RPi is significantly cheaper than that, would offer far more functionality, would have built-in network and video support. How much would a daughter board cost for the stepper and sensor wiring plus relays for the heaters?
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
Ermmm you already have the necessary hardware, just run klipper on a RPi.
https://github.com/KevinOConnor/klipper/blob/master/docs/Features.md
https://github.com/PrusaOwners/prusaowners/wiki/Klipper
Normal people believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
Ermmm you already have the necessary hardware, just run klipper on a RPi.
https://github.com/KevinOConnor/klipper/blob/master/docs/Features.md
Had not seen that before. Thanks.
While an interesting approach, it still utilizes the current board and firmware. I was referring to replacing the Rambo with a RPi and a daughter board as argument to the "more powerful means more expensive" comment. While I could see reasons not to go that route (full bloat of the OS with all it's security/patching concerns), but it's actually not an unreasonable one either as it would allow for all kinds of integrations and customization in languages that are more approachable than something like C++.
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
I'm not sure what you mean by "daughter board" but you can't just replace Rambo with RPi. You still need some kind of MCU which is doing real time communication with the stepper drivers. That's why you can't just use any SoC for that purpose. Current solution is to add to SoC an additional PRU (Programmable Real-Time Unit Subsystem). That does make the software part more complex.
Often linked posts:
Going small with MMU2
Real Multi Material
My prints on Instagram
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
The problem with using an RPi as a controller is that it is doing all the other stuff in the operating system which affects the timing of the io pins, whereas an AVR just carries out a set of instructions taking the same time to do the same things ad-finitum (At least if you program it that way).
This is where a beaglebone could be much better.
A beaglebone based board has two PRU's (Programmable Real-time Units) which in effect offload the io switching and timing from the main OS processor.
A programmable real-time unit (PRU) is a fast (200-MHz, 32-bit) processor with single-cycle I/O access to a number of the pins and full access to the internal memory and peripherals on the AM3358 processor on BeagleBones . They are design to provide software-defined peripherals as part of the Programmable Real-time Unit Industrial Control SubSystem (PRU-ICSS) and are capable of implementing things like 25 pulse-width modulators, 4 soft UARTs, stepper motor drivers and much more. Having these controllers integrated is really handy to avoid throwing in another device to control or interface to a new peripheral. The real power comes when you need high-bandwidth between the main CPU and these controllers.
Normal people believe that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Engineers believe that if it ain’t broke, it doesn’t have enough features yet.
RE: PrusA64 for MK3/S (MK4?)
I'm not sure what you mean by "daughter board" but you can't just replace Rambo with RPi. You still need some kind of MCU which is doing real time communication with the stepper drivers. That's why you can't just use any SoC for that purpose. Current solution is to add to SoC an additional PRU (Programmable Real-Time Unit Subsystem). That does make the software part more complex.
In the Pi world I guess they call them "hats". For example: https://www.adafruit.com/product/2348?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIv_fi37T24gIVVP_jBx2mqwbHEAQYASABEgJpD_D_BwE
That is a pre-built example to control steppers from an RPi, but if you want the DIY approach: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruits-raspberry-pi-lesson-10-stepper-motors/overview
Those clearly aren't drop in solutions, but they show the basic principles involved and how cheaply it could be done.