We’ve had a love affair with the Monoprice Select Mini since it came out. The cheap printer has its flaws, though. One of them is that the controller is a bit opaque. On the one hand, it is impressive that it is a 32-bit board with an LCD. On the other hand, we have no way to modify it easily other than loading the ready-built binaries. Want to add bed leveling? Multiple fans? A second extruder and mixing head? Good luck, since the board doesn’t support any of those things. [mfink70] decided the controller had to go, so he upgraded his Mini with a Smoothie board.
On the plus side, the Smoothie board is also a 32-bit board with plenty of power and expansion capability. On the downside, it costs about half as much as the printer does. Just replacing the board was only part of the battle. [mfink70] had to worry about the steppers, the end stops, and a few other odds and ends.
Luckily, the stepper connectors are compatible. Some of the motors were reversed, but the Smoothie board can handle that sort of configuration with a simple change to a text file. The end stops and most of the other wiring required connectors to come off (the Smoothieboard mostly uses screw terminals).
Of course, the new board won’t drive the old display, so he also replaced the display with an MKS touchscreen (driving the cost up to well over half the machine’s cost). The payoff, though, is you wind up with a wealth of expansion options.
There are plenty of other mods you can do with less expense, of course. If you are interested in our original review (of the first generation model), it is still out there.
These titles! I was expecting it to spray acetone at the print or something.
I too find myself more and more often reading content here I don’t want to read. Just because the titles are written so catchy. Whom does this benefit?
Such is the age of clickbait
Could be worse though
“This Maker Got Sick Of His 3D Printer Controller And You Never Guess What He Did To Fix It”
And now I’ll go and deapclean my keyboard
‘least then they’d cut the pretense
Do you need to read the whole thing …
Now I finally understand the “Smoothie” pun from one of last weeks comments…
I put a DuetWifi in my Wanhao i3 Duplicator (or Monoprice Maker Select) and wrote a short tutorial: https://github.com/darookee/wanhaoi3-duetwifi/blob/master/README.md. Didn’t think this would be worth an article on Hackaday… 0_o
You should have submitted it on the tip line. We have a diverse readership and not everyone wants to/is able to configure an FPGA with a BBQ lighter after decapsulating it with fuming nitric acid.So we try to cover a little bit of everything. As for the title, we have to take our fun where we can find it. I guess we could have gone with…
* 8 reasons mp mini pro will change the way you think about everything
* why mp mini pro is/are destroying america
* what the government doesn’t want you to know about mp mini pro
* the most boring article about mp mini pro you’ll ever read
* 10 ways marketers are making you addicted to mp mini pro
* 11 ways investing in mp mini pro can make you a millionaire
* mp mini pro die/s every minute you don’t read this article
* guns don’t kill people — mp mini pro kills people
* 10 ways mp mini pro can help you live to 100
* the most incredible article about mp mini pro you’ll ever read
Oh those were courtesy of http://www.contentrow.com/tools/link-bait-title-generator
Thanks! Bookmarked.
Inter office emails will now have improved Subject: lines!
Needs pictures.
“Driving the cost up” sounds like a good excuse to be buying the next model up to begin with.
I loved my mini…but it became to small…so i upgraded it
[img]http://i.imgur.com/gQ3SPSC.jpg[/img]
guess i cant embed http://i.imgur.com/gQ3SPSC.jpg
Don’t worry, you didn’t do anything wrong with this link. WordPress automatically messes uo the link and the alternative way is a data hog anyways.
We manually add the “www” and remove the “i” from the beginning to view it.
Nice printer!
Access Denied (content_filter_denied)
Your request was denied because of its content categorization: “Media Sharing;Mixed Content/Potentially Adult”
Based on mandatory information security and privacy rules access to this category is not allowed.
Detailed technical information:
URL: http://i.imgur.com/gQ3SPSC.jpg
That’s my world, and welcome to it!
B^)
This is Hackaday. The original controller should have been *hacked*, not just replaced.
HackADay likes to keep us guessing as to _which_ article posted in a 24 hour period (which 24 hour period is a closely guarded secret known only to 3 of The Evil Overlords, and of course, the janitor!) is the “hack” for the day.
El 9 may. 2017 9:00 PM, “Hackaday” escribió:
> Al Williams posted: “We’ve had a love affair with the Monoprice Select > Mini since it came out. The cheap printer has its flaws, though. One of > them is that the controller is a bit opaque. On the one hand, it is > impressive that it is a 32-bit board with an LCD. On the other ha” >