WARNING:

THIS IS RELEASE CANDIDATE 2 FOR MARLIN 1.0.0

The configuration is now split in two files Configuration.h for the normal settings Configuration_adv.h for the advanced settings

Gen7T is not supported.

Quick Information

This RepRap firmware is a mashup between Sprinter, grbl and many original parts. On top of that it has multiple extruder support.

Derived from Sprinter and Grbl by Erik van der Zalm. Sprinters lead developers are Kliment and caru. Grbls lead developer is Simen Svale Skogsrud. Sonney Jeon (Chamnit) improved some parts of grbl A fork by bkubicek for the Ultimaker was merged, and further development was aided by him. Some features have been added by: Lampmaker, Bradley Feldman, and others...

Features:

• Interrupt based movement with real linear acceleration
• High steprate
• Look ahead (Keep the speed high when possible. High cornering speed)
• Interrupt based temperature protection
• preliminary support for Matthew Roberts advance algorithm For more info see: http://reprap.org/pipermail/reprap-dev/2011-May/003323.html
• Full endstop support
• SD Card support
• SD Card folders (works in pronterface)
• SD Card autostart support
• LCD support (ideally 20x4)
• LCD menu system for autonomous SD card printing, controlled by an click-encoder.
• EEPROM storage of e.g. max-velocity, max-acceleration, and similar variables
• many small but handy things originating from bkubicek's fork.
• Arc support
• Temperature oversampling
• Dynamic Temperature setpointing aka "AutoTemp"
• Support for QTMarlin, a very beta GUI for PID-tuning and velocity-acceleration testing. https://github.com/bkubicek/QTMarlin
• Endstop trigger reporting to the host software.
• Updated sdcardlib
• Heater power reporting. Useful for PID monitoring.
• PID tuning
• CoreXY kinematics (www.corexy.com/theory.html)

The default baudrate is 115200. You can try 250000 it is less supported by drivers and host-environments, but might work better for you.

Differences and additions to the already good Sprinter firmware:

Look-ahead:

Marlin has look-ahead. While sprinter has to break and re-accelerate at each corner, lookahead will only decelerate and accelerate to a velocity, so that the change in vectorial velocity magnitude is less than the xy_jerk_velocity. This is only possible, if some future moves are already processed, hence the name. It leads to less over-deposition at corners, especially at flat angles.

Arc support:

Slic3r can find curves that, although broken into segments, were ment to describe an arc. Marlin is able to print those arcs. The advantage is the firmware can choose the resolution, and can perform the arc with nearly constant velocity, resulting in a nice finish. Also, less serial communication is needed.

Temperature Oversampling:

To reduce noise and make the PID-differential term more useful, 16 ADC conversion results are averaged.

AutoTemp:

If your gcode contains a wide spread of extruder velocities, or you realtime change the building speed, the temperature should be changed accordingly. Usually, higher speed requires higher temperature. This can now be performed by the AutoTemp function By calling M109 S T F you enter the autotemp mode.

You can leave it by calling M109 without any F. If active, the maximal extruder stepper rate of all buffered moves will be calculated, and named "maxerate" [steps/sec]. The wanted temperature then will be set to t=tempmin+factor*maxerate, while being limited between tempmin and tempmax. If the target temperature is set manually or by gcode to a value less then tempmin, it will be kept without change. Ideally, your gcode can be completely free of temperature controls, apart from a M109 S T F in the start.gcode, and a M109 S0 in the end.gcode.

EEPROM:

If you know your PID values, the acceleration and max-velocities of your unique machine, you can set them, and finally store them in the EEPROM. After each reboot, it will magically load them from EEPROM, independent what your Configuration.h says.

LCD Menu:

If your hardware supports it, you can build yourself a LCD-CardReader+Click+encoder combination. It will enable you to realtime tune temperatures, accelerations, velocities, flow rates, select and print files from the SD card, preheat, disable the steppers, and do other fancy stuff. One working hardware is documented here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12663 Also, with just a 20x4 or 16x2 display, useful data is shown.

SD card folders:

If you have an SD card reader attached to your controller, also folders work now. Listing the files in pronterface will show "/path/subpath/file.g". You can write to file in a subfolder by specifying a similar text using small letters in the path. Also, backup copies of various operating systems are hidden, as well as files not ending with ".g".

SD card folders:

If you place a file auto[0-9].g into the root of the sd card, it will be automatically executed if you boot the printer. The same file will be executed by selecting "Autostart" from the menu. First *0 will be performed, than *1 and so on. That way, you can heat up or even print automatically without user interaction.

Endstop trigger reporting:

If an endstop is hit while moving towards the endstop, the location at which the firmware thinks that the endstop was triggered is outputed on the serial port. This is useful, because the user gets a warning message. However, also tools like QTMarlin can use this for finding acceptable combinations of velocity+acceleration.

Coding paradigm:

Not relevant from a user side, but Marlin was split into thematic junks, and has tried to partially enforced private variables. This is intended to make it clearer, what interacts which what, and leads to a higher level of modularization. We think that this is a useful prestep for porting this firmware to e.g. an ARM platform in the future. A lot of RAM (with enabled LCD ~2200 bytes) was saved by storing char []="some message" in Program memory. In the serial communication, a #define based level of abstraction was enforced, so that it is clear that some transfer is information (usually beginning with "echo:"), an error "error:", or just normal protocol, necessary for backwards compatibility.

Interrupt based temperature measurements:

An interrupt is used to manage ADC conversions, and enforce checking for critical temperatures. This leads to less blocking in the heater management routine.

Temperature control:

You can configure PID to be active only within specified range of the terget temperature. Outside of that range simple on/off mode is used.

Multiple extruder support:

T [F] [S] - changes the extruder. The feedrate might be set to reposition the extruder and specify at what speed. If "F" is not present the coordinates are adjusted, but the move is not performed. "S" allows to choose what E position the just selected extruder should start from ( - the extruder number to pick the last position from). If "S" is not specified the last known position for the new selected extruder is used. For example, if
Skeinforge generates support using absolute coordinates and you want it to be printed using extruder 1 while the object is printed using extruder 0, use "T1 S0" to start support printing and "T0 S1" to go go back to the object printing. Alternatively, If you have gcode for extrider 0 and 1 generated separately and then mixed just use T0 and T1 to switch between the extruders.

In general, the commands and settings for extruder are applied only to the
active extruder. For example, to change max feedrate for extruders 0 and
1, one has to switch to the extruder 0, set its rate, then switch to
the extruder 1 and set its rate. The exception is the M503 command that 
shows info for all extruders. It simply prints multiple parameters that 
are extruder specific starting from the value for the extruder 0 and so on, 
for example you'll see two 'E'(rate) values if there are 2 extruders. 
Some of the commands (like M104, M105 and M109) can take extruder 
number as a parameter. For example, in order to change the temperature 
of the extruder 1 heater without switching to it use "M104 S180 T1".
M109 can be used to wait for all extruder heaters that have temperature 
set to non-0 values by specifying non-0 'A' parameter, e.g. "M109 A1".
M109 can also take the W<NUM> parameter that can change the default 
dwell time for temperature stabilization (if enabled in the config).

Non-standard G-Codes, different to an old version of sprinter:

Movement:

• G2 - CW ARC
• G3 - CCW ARC

General:

• M17 - Enable/Power all stepper motors. Compatibility to ReplicatorG.
• M18 - Disable all stepper motors; same as M84.Compatibility to ReplicatorG.
• M30 - Print time since last M109 or SD card start to serial
• M42 - Change pin status via gcode
• M80 - Turn on Power Supply
• M81 - Turn off Power Supply
• M114 - Output current position to serial port
• M119 - Output Endstop status to serial port

Movement variables:

• M202 - Set max acceleration in units/s^2 for travel moves (M202 X1000 Y1000) Unused in Marlin!!
• M203 - Set maximum feedrate that your machine can sustain (M203 X200 Y200 Z300 E10000) in mm/sec
• M204 - Set default acceleration: S normal moves T filament only moves (M204 S3000 T7000) im mm/sec^2 also sets minimum segment time in ms (B20000) to prevent buffer underruns and M20 minimum feedrate
• M210 - set XY offset for extruders (off of the printing point)
• M220 - set build speed mulitplying S:factor in percent ; aka "realtime tuneing in the gcode". So you can slow down if you have islands in one height-range, and speed up otherwise.
• M221 - set the extrude multiplying S:factor in percent
• M400 - Finish all buffered moves.

Temperature variables:

• M301 - Set PID parameters P I and D
• M302 - Allow cold extrudes
• M303 - PID relay autotune S sets the target temperature. (default target temperature = 150C)

Advance:

• M200 - Set filament diameter for advance
• M205 - advanced settings: minimum travel speed S=while printing T=travel only, B=minimum segment time X= maximum xy jerk, Z=maximum Z jerk

EEPROM:

• M500 - stores paramters in EEPROM. This parameters are stored: axis_steps_per_unit, max_feedrate, max_acceleration ,acceleration,retract_acceleration, minimumfeedrate,mintravelfeedrate,minsegmenttime, jerk velocities, PID
• M501 - reads parameters from EEPROM (if you need reset them after you changed them temporarily).
• M502 - reverts to the default "factory settings". You still need to store them in EEPROM afterwards if you want to.
• M503 - print the current settings (from memory not from eeprom)

MULTIPLE EXTRUDERS:

• T<0|1|2> - changes active extruder (details in the section above)

MISC:

• M240 - Trigger a camera to take a photograph
• M999 - Restart after being stopped by error

Configuring and compilation:

Install the arduino software IDE/toolset v23 http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software

Copy the Marlin firmware https://github.com/dob71/Marlin/tree/m (Use the download button)

Start the arduino IDE. Select Tools -> Board -> Arduino Mega 2560 or your microcontroller Select the correct serial port in Tools ->Serial Port Open Marlin.pde

Click the Verify/Compile button

Click the Upload button If all goes well the firmware is uploading

Enjoy Silky Smooth Printing.