My First Look at Marlin
Most Delta RepRaps run on a modified version of the Marlin firmware. There are several versions available with slightly different modifications, but this one from https://github.com/jcrocholl/Marlin was highly recommended on Youtube, so I proceeded to download it.
I've been a programmer for a long time, so I was right at home in the C code. I can't wait to tinker with some of it after I get the printer up and running. For now its just going to be modifying constants in the configuration files. How many extruders, what type of power supply, etc.
Eventually I want to get into the slicing code and write custom infill patters and things like that. I was reading about how even though we are printing in 3 dimensions, infill patters are still essentially 2 dimensional. There are advantages to smarter infill patters from reduced plastic usage to increased strength.
The 3D Printing Nerd did a video recently where he showed how to use Meshmixer to generate a three dimensional infill pattern for a large printed part. Even this, though, was just a repeating grid. Imagine a 3 dimensional Veronoi grid, like a mass of soap bubbles. Now imagine if those bubbles were larger in the middle, and smaller towards the edges of the object. That's where I think the future of infill is going.
All of this is a side of 3D printing I was missing out on with the Up and its closed source software.
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