Using an alternative controller board

[fullcontrol-xyz]

Questions by email:

Hello, I am currently following your mod for the 4th axis for the prusa and I have few questions.

1. any board that works on reprap with more than 6 steppers should work? XY2ZEB considering that the board I am thinking to use is having 7 steppers, i am currently can't get my hands on the duet mini 5+ because it is really expensive to get in my country, and importing it myself will be expensive as well.
2. there is any alternative for the nema11 with gearbox? as far I understand you want to use nema11 for it light weight uses and the gearbox to get higher torque?
   I can't somehow get my hands on it and thought maybe I could get my hands on different one?
   I can order this from amazon but it will take well over a month to arrive.
3. at the demo design I really didn't understand what is the "Nozzle_Tip_axis_offset" mean if you could have a simple explanation for this is will be great.
4. Can I get the whole step files for the project with the printer included? In case I would want to fit stuff to it on the github there is a step only for the printed parts.
   And thank you again for your amazing work, can't wait to start building this.

[fullcontrol-xyz]

Response:

That’s really cool to hear you’re following the instructions.
In response to your questions:

1. It should yes, but you’ll need to modify the firmware yourself (please share your firmware and board details if you do! – we’ll add it to the github repo)
2. You can try an alternative gearbox/motor for sure. We got a 100:1 gearbox version of the one we link to (27:1) and it worked, but introduced backlash, for which we needed to compensate in FullControl. So I’d go for a gear ratio of perhaps 10-50 and see how it goes. Weight is the main consideration yeh.
3. Nozzle tip axis offset is the distance the nozzle is below the axis of rotation (B axis). This is important because when rotate the toolhead, the distance of the nozzle tip from the axis of rotation dictates how much the nozzle moves.
4. I’ll ask my student to send the printer step files.

[AssafKatan]

Hello, thank you for answer!
This is assaf Whom sent the email.

1. I got my self a Mellow E3 RRF board, it does have enough stepper drivers to work with 4 axis for now this will be enough, I will consider getting a duet board if there will be an integration of 5th axis by you guys or rather by me if I will find it possible.(Considering the price of the duet boards this was a easy buy for me just to test the concept).

2. I found myself a motor that will fit the original design, I could find a seller on aliexpress that sold me a nema11 27:1 motor that should just fit in the design, if not I will make some changes to make it fit.

I have got myself a Prusa clone just beacuse I thought that assembling it on a original prusa is hurtful lol, considering they are pretty expensive in my country and I could find the clone for less than a half price so it will be good for testing this.
I will update in this thread about my work using the different board.

3-4 Thank you!! this is really helpful, and releasing this project as open source is amazing and I am really happy about it, I am 7 years into printing and always wanted to try more than the normal "2.5D" printing.

[fullcontrol-xyz]

All sounds good! Let us know any progress, if you need to make changes to any of the brackets keep good records along with any other necessary deviations from the guidance doc. Then we'll be able to quickly write a custom guide for your printer and controller, which only states what needs to be done differently to the original guidance. The idea is that eventually, there may be 100s of different printer and controllers, but only a single guide, with infinite possible minor variations of it.