[OLD PARTS NEEDED] Working on Cube filament cartridge ROMs

[ajosmer]

Well, looks like I got ahead of myself. The ROM chip in the cartridges is a DS28E01, which is an EEPROM with SHA-1 encryption. You can read whatever you want, but you have to know the secret encryption key to change any values. So this may be a dead-end. I might see if I can find anything about the way they're implementing SHA-1 and figure out if there's a why to hand the machine a new chip with encryption disabled and have it still work. My guess is no, but I'll look into it.

[sindrele]

Well, looks like I got ahead of myself. The ROM chip in the cartridges is a DS28E01, which is an EEPROM with SHA-1 encryption. You can read whatever you want, but you have to know the secret encryption key to change any values. So this may be a dead-end. I might see if I can find anything about the way they're implementing SHA-1 and figure out if there's a why to hand the machine a new chip with encryption disabled and have it still work. My guess is no, but I'll look into it.

You'd be much better off swapping the controllers out for open filament versions. Getting the steppers / extruder hooked up wouldn't be that much trouble and you could use whatever filament you with.

[ajosmer]

Oh I know, and I'll probably eventually swap the brains out on the Ekocycle so I can put a rocker on the dual extruder that likes to drag across the print, but it's kind of like LS-swapping a Miata vs. putting a junkyard turbo on it. Both cool ways of doing it, but I think I'll learn some interesting things playing with the stock control system.

As for the Cube 2, I've pulled one of the chips out of an almost-full cartridge and put it in a little 3D printed fob. Turns out there's a trick for this printer where you insert the cartridge chip, start the print, hit the stop button, and pull the chip out. If you leave it on the stop print screen, it forgets to check to see if there's a cartridge. It then finishes the print and never overwrites the capacity on the chip, and you can run whatever filament you want.

For now on the Ekocycle I'm trying to get a cartridge on the Fleabay to see if it'll run on the modified Cube 3 firmware I found in the internether regions without decrementing the capacity on that too. I'll report back when I do.

Next stage will probably be trying to trick it into running ABS settings while thinking it's PLA so I can try to run ABS with the PLA chip. I found some config files for ABS and PLA, but I don't know if they're for the slicer or the machine. I'll have to find my temp gun and see. I know the Cube 2 doesn't have a heated bed, so I'm hoping gratuitous use of the glue will work. I think the Ekocycle/Franken3 has a heated bed, so I'll probably order an ABS cartridge for that and see how it works.