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MafellUser | 3 years ago

The software (firmware) is great but the community especially over on Discord leaves a lot to be desired. They have this sanctimonious holier-than-thou attitude towards beginners and anyone dared to question their approach. Check out Thomas Sanladerer's saga with them, it's quite eye-opening.

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jrockway|3 years ago

I use RepRapFirmware for all of my 3D printer builds now. Along with the Duet boards, it's really a very pleasant experience. The documentation is extremely good, the forums are nice, and the codebase is well written.

I also like the "everything is GCode" configuration model. GCode isn't a particularly great language for configuration, but the internal consistency is appreciated. You can play with things in the REPL, and then when you like what you have, commit it to your config file.

I guess the downside is that the Duet boards are more expensive than a Raspberry Pi and an Octopus. On the other hand, not having to maintain a Linux install on your 3D printer is nice. Raspberry Pis are all fun and games until you want to turn the power off. With RRF, you just cut power to the board and you're cleanly shut down. Do that with a Raspberry Pi a few times, and you will be reimaging it.

ibash|3 years ago

I also use RRF on a Duet, and have poked through their codebase a number of times.

The codebase is _not_ well written. The fact that it’s written by one person who can’t use commits properly is problematic and leads to long standing unresolved bugs. The documentation is okay but sometimes confusing.

Klipper has much better engineering practices, although their codebase is also a bit messy.

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Re: turning off raspberry pis… I’m using a Duet 6hc with the sbc option, eg with a pi, so I don’t think duet gets a point above klipper for that.