I’ve used it a lot in the past, but haven’t set it up for my ender 3 yet (although I think I might do that rn, I’ve got everything I need lying around). It’s really convenient, but I would ensure that you’ve got a good enough power supply lying around. When I used it a few years ago, my power supply couldn’t supply enough current, and the Pi would reset, ruining my print. Should be fine with a good supply.
I would also recommend getting a camera to use with it. The official pi camera or a cheap USB webcam would work. It makes it much more useful, being able to see what you’re doing it you’re starting a print remotely. It also allows you to monitor your print remotely, which is nice if you have to run to the store or something.
I run octopi for my prusa mk2.5s, and I will say it is really really good at what is does.
Some things to think about though:
if your printer supports power recovery, is that something that you need? AFAIK, octoprint does not currently support those sort of features well if at all
do you have a touchscreen or other way to conveniently start a print near the printer? You can’t go to the normal print from SD menu to select a gcode file, so stopping, pausing and resuming prints can be annoying without a local interface. Phone might work well enough for you though
Apart from that, plugins are amazing, and so are the monitoring features. You might also want to look into Klipper if you’re willing to put in the effort to reflash your printer firmware / go through all the tuning processes, the results can be quite insane (mainly in terms of print speed / quality)
I decided to go ahead and re-do my OctoPrint setup, now that I have a spare Raspberry Pi 4 lying around (this Pi 4 has a lot of GPU issues, but otherwise it works, so it’s good for this).
One of the things I’d make sure you set up is Cura integration, if you use cura. It’s super convenient.
It adds a print button right in cura after slicing, that automatically starts the printer. It also adds the camera view, and full printer controls under the monitor tab of cura:
Had a close call with what I thought was a failed mosfet recently… turns out it wasn’t
But it a bad taste in my mouth about not being able to stop that type of thermal runaway
Learned that octoprint has a power control plugin that lets you manually or based on temp kill the printer
As far as the 30, 15 would be just what I need but can’t find a 15a 5v controlled relay
Ah, makes sense. Haven’t used that plugin before, but it’s definitely a good idea (I’ve had some close calls with thermal runaway on my other printers).
A fan isn’t a bad idea, but I don’t think it’s necessary in my opinion (although a lot of people disagree with me). I’ve used Pis for years, and never had issues. Octopi will alert you if the Pi is overheating or undervolted, I wouldn’t worry about it.
Obviously this is different if you fully enclose it in a box without any ventilation at all, but it should be fine in pretty much any other enclosure.
My solution is pretty much as simple as you can get tbh, I don’t have an enclosure or anything. My Pi 4 is just flopping around, powered with a USB-PD phone charger, plugged into the Ender 3 pro with a micro USB cable (the one I got with my proxmark, actually). I’ve got some tiny heatsinks on the Pi, since they came with my Pi 4, but I’ve never used heat sinks with my other Pis.
I also hooked it up to ethernet, since I had already run a cable over by my printer a few months ago, but it’s just a nice to have kind of thing.
I’ve used octoprint via wifi for years without connectivity issues. If you use the official raspberry pi imaging tool, it’s super simple, you set up SSID and password when you write the image to a micro SD card.
Are you using a buck converter so you can easily pull power from the printer PSU? I guess that makes sense, since you want to mount it to the PSU in an enclosure.
Is the buck converter specifically for the Pi? In my experience, Pis can be extremely finicky about what power supply they use. It also needs 2.5 amps, rather than the standard 1 or 2.1 amps in most power supplies. That’s why I try to use official power supplies when I can, I’ve had too much frustration with undervoltages.
I stripped the heatbreak grub screw… essentially ruining a microswiss hotend :-/
It wasn’t a quick and hasty strip but a little here and there… I kept having heatbreak leaks, so I kept trying to tighten things up more and more, and small threads on soft aluminum… well…
Already replaced and printing again,
Just need to calibrate to the fresh nozzle a bit…
I think the new microswiss .4s are actually more like a .35…. In the begging a .35 line width was perfect… but after 3 years of wear… a .4 was dialed in just right (they wear very nicely)
Well I decided “fuck it” nothing else was more important than anything else… so I started a print…
8hours and I’ll have an idea how good that case is
I’ll probably reprint in either orange or black later but I didn’t feel like swapping filament
I had lots of problems with heat creep (specially when it went above 85-90f ambient), and ended up upgrading the cooling fan and going to a titanium heat break, some of the best investment I’ve made on the printer …
I’ve been back and forth and all around on fumes and Vocs and whatnot
Internet is back and forth between “you gun die” and “it doesn’t matter” … Im mostly concerned because I’ve read some intermittent reports of harming fury friends easier given smaller size
I know smell doesn’t equate to safety, which is important given newer resins smelling better but may or may not be any safer
I have a office with a closet just big enough for a small table to put a resin printer on,
Im considering putting a small bathroom ceiling fan in that closet… thoughts?
Alternatively I could just get a carbon air filter or something?
ewwww, its really sticky, and probably not great for your skin.
Resin is fantastic, the smell, although not great is also not offensive (its quite mild)
Who knows what the long term effects will be, definitely put in some ventilation, and filtered if you can.
Do forget you will need a wash station and curing oven for the best setup, so plan your space accordingly.
drippy drippy, sticky sticky, washy washy.
Its not the cleanest of options, but you can’t beat a good resin option, actually SLS is awesome too.
You probably already know, one of the best pros for resin is the print times are similar FDM, until you start printing multiples, then Resin SLA surpasses FDM.
as long as you’re talking about venting to the outside of the home / building then great… but not like “venting into the main room” or “venting into the attic space”… if you properly ventilate the space and can close the closet door during printing, then concerns about VOCs are basically moot. If you do vent the closet and use the door as an air block, put a small passive vent / hole in the bottom of the door so the air flows in and up and out.
