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Re: Please rank these printers

Posted: January 31st, 2018, 11:41 am
by nilrog
They are all the same...just with/without heated bed and glass type. Don’t know why they added so many instead of just having additional options.

Then there are a couple of upgrades you can print that are on the FB page, or Thingiverse.

Re: Please rank these printers

Posted: January 31st, 2018, 1:19 pm
by nilrog
If there is one weak spot in the East 3D Gecko, it is the motherboard. It’s a proprietary Chinese board that looks good on paper, is reasonably priced, supports different drivers...but...the FW is closed source, developed in China, and the communication with the developers seems to be through one western guy that knows where to contact them.

But @gudo has it wired up to a modded UM2 so it is not entirely bad :)

For me, I will order a Duet3D, or possibly an Azteeg X5 mini, for my next printer that I am building. I don’t like to bet on closed source stuff.

Re: Please rank these printers

Posted: January 31st, 2018, 11:01 pm
by GrueMaster
The question is if the board supports Marlin or not. I think the original Creality CR-10 firmware was also proprietary, but developers have successfully hacked it to run Marlin. The Hictop version is open enough to push Marlin directly without using another arduino or RPI to reprogram the bootloader.

Re: Please rank these printers

Posted: February 1st, 2018, 3:17 am
by nilrog
The board is as closed as it can get...someone needs to reverse engineer the board tracings to understand how it it all hooked together if they want to get some other FW on there. And this is a 32-bit board so i'm not sure at what state Marlin is when it comes to that. IMO using this board is a gamble. It may work great...but if you stumble upon issues...well if you are lucky you can communicate the issues...and maybe they will fix it...

As an example, yesterday I saw that someone discovered that some g-code command didn't work properly although they were documented...

I was interested in this board a few weeks ago. But after joining the Lerdge FB group...asking some questions...and just watching what goes on...i'd rather pass on this one. My time is better spent on printing stuff that tearing my hair when things doesn't work.

Although it's twice the price i'm going with the Duet3D not only because it is well supported, and open-source, the board itself offers so much more, and better HW, that you do not really need Octoprint to use it without a cable or SD-card. Which you would need with the Lergde board...and you would still not reach the same level of functionality of the Duet3D.

Re: Please rank these printers

Posted: February 1st, 2018, 9:51 am
by GrueMaster
Just saw the info on the lerdge.com site. Yea, skip this one. Even the reprap.org forums are keeping their distance.

Re: Please rank these printers

Posted: February 2nd, 2018, 9:01 am
by LePaul
GrueMaster wrote: January 31st, 2018, 11:01 pm The question is if the board supports Marlin or not. I think the original Creality CR-10 firmware was also proprietary, but developers have successfully hacked it to run Marlin. The Hictop version is open enough to push Marlin directly without using another arduino or RPI to reprogram the bootloader.
Melzie board on the original CR-10, which I have. I'd like to upgrade to a new one...they seem to have a defect on the new boards which causing varying readings at idle. So....going to wait until that's sorted out

Re: Please rank these printers

Posted: February 2nd, 2018, 9:03 am
by LePaul
GrueMaster wrote: February 1st, 2018, 9:51 am Just saw the info on the lerdge.com site. Yea, skip this one. Even the reprap.org forums are keeping their distance.
I'm seeing "Red Hot Mess", red flags and the sort on this one.

Kind of like my FT-5...unless you want to upgrade everything with good components...it's just a mess to configure.

Re: Please rank these printers

Posted: February 4th, 2018, 12:45 pm
by 3dprinteruser
Anybody tried the Up Box + (aka Afinia H800+)? The earlier version had lots of complaints but don't have much user experience on the plus version.

Re: Please rank these printers

Posted: February 4th, 2018, 1:16 pm
by LePaul
Never heard of it...!