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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 25th, 2024

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  • For reference, that means the 486 has maybe as many transistors as the board that runs my 11-year-old 3D printer firmware, and that was considered something between the “absolute bare minimum” and “honestly kinda underpowered” at the time I bought it. The only thing that board does is run some loops that send basic signals to some stepper motor drivers, and some basic-ass “bang-bang” style heat control. The actual heavy lifting of organizing and sending the position controls line by line is done by a Raspberry Pi.











  • Honestly, the only parts that can’t be off the shelf are the nozzle, heat brake, heat sink, and some gears. So if you are halfway determined, buy whatever cheap-ass printer and swap their electronics to an Arduino mega with a stepper motor shield, like, that’s it, just plug and play your new control board in, flash whatever firmware and away you go. Hell, most of the super cheap ones are already just run on an Arduino clone of some sort.