RepRap vs. Marlin Firmware

[AutoWiz]

So do you think one is capable of generating better print quality? Or do you think they are just 2 different ways of doing the same thing and they can be dialed in comparably and the trick is really just knowing your way around what you are using?

[spegelius]

So do you think one is capable of generating better print quality? Or do you think they are just 2 different ways of doing the same thing and they can be dialed in comparably and the trick is really just knowing your way around what you are using?

Well I haven't compared Reprap FW and Marlin on same hw so cannot say for sure, but yes, I think they both provide about same quality at same settings. The differences in print quality probably come when going beyond the 'normal' printer settings, like tuning the linear advance, s-curve acceleration, junction deviation etc. special options. Not sure Reprap has all those, it does have pressure advance and dynamic acceleration to reduce ringin. Also I'm not sure how big of a effect those special features have on quality, I did enable MArlin S-curve and Junction deviation on my Dollo printers, but I don't think those printers are the best platforms for tweaking the minute quality details anyways... my other printers are either running Prusa version of Marlin so no S-curve or Junction deviation or they are running Duet HW.

[spegelius]

Seem my Sbase is version 1.3 so Reprap FW should work on the board. I'm tempted to try it out even though I'm quite happy with the current Marlin configuration. Still, assuming everything works properly, moving to Reprap fw would remove the need to recompile the fw every time I need to change the printer configuration. I'll lose wifi (I'm using Octoprint) so I'll need to plug in ethernet cable or buy ESP8266 and do some modifications on the board.

[spegelius]

If you hate compiling the firmware, Reprap firmware is just for you: it comes precompiled, just grab the binary file, put it on SD card (rename to firmware.bin) and boot the board. Or with Duet, upload it in the web UI. Not sure if the web ui update works on other boards.

Only time you need to update the firmware is when new version is released. And it's still the same thing, grab the binary and off you go.

That's the beauty of it, everything is configured in files on the sdcard and if using the web UI, you can use that to do the changes.

I did set up the compilation environment when I first started using Reprap fw because I though that to get my custom extruder relay setup to work I would need the change how some I/O-pins were controlled. Turned out that even those can be configured with configuration files as you please so that exercise was kinda wasted (maybe learned something, maybe not).