My Duet Experiences
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I have 3 printers, all of them (until recently) running on duet boards and all until recently producing unacceptable quality prints.
One of the printers is a VCore Pro that cost me £1200 without the electronics. Another is a Tronxy X5S that has had many
hardware upgrades and a considerable amount of money spent on it.Both of these printers run on Duet3 boards in SBC mode and are both on the current "stable" firmware.
TBH both printers are far from producing "stable" prints and like others recently on this forum, I am now tired of trying to
find solutions. In my opinion the SBC integration is just a novelty that highlights and adds to all current issues with the
firmware. With SBC attached you get the added bonus of intermittent disconnections of DWC or DCS or your print stops in mid flight without explanation.Putting these issues aside, I am still left with disappointing print quality. It seems to me that ringing, round corners and
general poor quality is inherent. I feel I have tried everything to reduce the ringing and other faults but no setting makes
any difference for me whatsoever.The Tronxy X5S used to produce acceptable prints until I "upgraded" it with a Duet3 with SBC!
It puts me straight off these days when I fire up any of the two SBC connected printers and be greeted with the well known
phrase "could not connect to DCS".I am not seeking answers here because been there done that, tried this, tried that, sick of it!
My 3rd printer which is a mere £250 Ender3 pro dropped in print quality from the day that I "upgraded" the electronics to a Duet 2 ethernet about 18 months ago, but initially I put it down to tweaking of the settings etc but never got the quality prints I would expect.
I have now found a simple and cheap solution for the Ender3 Pro. The machine is both silent in motion and the print quality
is second to none.
The answer is to rip out the Duet board and replace it with a Creality 4.2.7 32bit silent board for the mere cost of £32!I know some people on this forum may not be happy with my personal findings and don't want to hear any of it but what really
annoys me is that last year I was all excited about setting up my new 500x500x500 VCore Pro it being of good build quality
with its quality linear rails, high quality belts, bearings etc but 12 months on I am no further to producing anything like good
quality prints on it and there must be hundreds of forum users that have been told to "check your hardware" before blaming the firmware when questioning bad print quality.Now, my cheap Ender3 Pro is the big winner, the downside being having a mere 230x230 print surface.
You simply upload a print to the sd card, press print and then just wait for your high quality print to finish. Works every time!
No more abandoning of prints because the Z height has somehow changed from last time or the SBC communication failed etc, etc. -
I've got three working printers using Duet boards - two Duet WiFi/Duex 5 combos, one a Duet 3 Mini.
They all work just fine.
Perhaps it is SBC mode that is causing problems.
Frederick
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@chas2706 I'm running my Ender 3 with an RRF based board (a fly-E3-Pro) and I've got it dialed in lovely. I would be happy to share my config although I have made a few modifications such as direct drive.
If you have issues with SBC mode, what's your objection to running in standalone mode?
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I've had a great experience with the Duet ecosystem - so much that I do (which isn't that much... ha ha ha) wouldn't be possible without it (with the exception of Klipper). I do get disappointed when I see others either struggling or having a negative experience however. I try to help, when I can, but unfortunately there is only so much I can do.
The SBC complaints - something I am apprehensive about for my future. Partly because I haven't dabbled with it, but I also haven't (or needed yet) to learn about it. I'd imagine that maturing SBC, DCS integration is a priority for the team & community.
My thoughts below... unfortunately won't be very constructive or of much help to anyone I think.
At my first job, I got acquainted with 3D printing by using the lab's 'ancient' Stratasys Dimension BST 1200es. As a fresh engineer, I didn't know how to make things manufacturable, and combine that with a 3D printer that pretty much was plug and play, I got into some situations where I was trying to remove support material from internal areas I couldn't reach
Stratasys gets a bad rap - and I do believe from the 'maker' community much of it is justified - but the user experience for most of their customers is second to none. Can a machine like that print a benchy? Debatable, but if I need a 750g chunk of ABS printed up, the stability and ease of printing with that Stratasys printer is my benchmark.A year in, and management saw the utility in investing another $5k, $6k into 3D printing. I hadn't done any dabbling with the common flavors of consumer 3d printers... Ultimaker, Prusa, etc... but got roped into doing trade studies, and the dazzling BCN3D SigmaX was the winner. Open source hardware and software, 'extreme' filament, temperature, print option capabilities, the possibilities seemed endless. In fact, one SigmaX turned into two... and then four?!?! Once I started getting the hang of Cura (wait, why is my raft printing 100mm off the build plate on the first layer? Wait, why is my support interface being printed 5 layers early?) and avoiding bugs like the plague, I realized what a mistake the BCN3D printers were from a hardware perspective. Most reviews (which often were positive in nature) realistically were from people who actually had no idea what they were doing, or were simply shilling for BCN3D. A lot of complaining in this paragraph - but not all is bad. Once I figured I needed to switch to a stable slicing baseline (the official Ultimaker branch), I learned what each setting (available or otherwise) did, and I learned how to truly preview the toolpaths in a print file (Craftware), things got a lot better, but I was still hindered by questionable part sourcing and engineering decisions (IDEX gantry deflects .4mm? .6mm? in the center, pretty significant torsion on each print head (bowden tube) that varies on position in the printer, cheap linear motion components, X axis belts that don't actually run parallel, electrical design faults in the tool head control boards, improper strain relief (lol) on the FFCs going to each tool head, build surface that cannot print the advertised engineering grade materials.....).
After a year and a half or so in my 3d printing journey, I took the plunge and started designing my own printer. The requirements were ambitious, and it definitely hasn't turned out perfect, but I truly can trust that it'll do what I ask. The amount of knowledge I have gained - starting from slicers, to the capabilities of various firmware flavors, to both the mechanical and electrical design - have increased ten-fold, but I know I still have plenty to learn.
Aside from self inflicted issues, my complaints on open source/commercial 3d printers chiefly rest squarely on the shoulders of slicers, especially when compared to the capabilities offered by RRF and Klipper. My second complaint would likely be about the documentation for RRF, but that is somewhat understandable due to the vast capabilities and configurations available to the user. I have a number of diagrams I've scratched out on pen and paper that I've hashed out over the years that would likely to be helpful to parameterize and digitize for others to use. Another documentation complaint I have is that the how is not always documented, and if it is, its in an obscure forum post that may be tough to search out.
Thinking back to the Stratasys printer... perhaps the Duet products and RRF aren't needed for everyone... a sense of scale perhaps? I know that I certainly won't be switching away from the Duet electronics (very satisfied with RRF... but Klipper may need some testing). Personally, I have a hard time placing blame on the firmware unless I can set up discrete and repeatable test steps - and most of my problems have either been slicer based mechanical design based, however when I've posted repeatable steps to recreate (or validate) firmware issues, they've been promptly addressed.
Wishing you well on your 3d printing journey.
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Are you looking to sell one of your Duets? I could be interested
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@chas2706 I'm struggling with some of your issues as well. I'm getting good prints but everything seems more complicated than it needs to be with the SBC mode. Thinking of just letting it go. I can't see that its really doing anything other than making my life harder.
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Admittedly the SBC option has had its share of teething pains on it's way to maturity. And unfortunately right now the functionality that would make it more compelling is still not there yet. So I understand your frustrations. There's always the option of standalone mode until the SBC side matures more. And it is making progress with every release, and we couldn't make that progress without user testing and feedback, so we do appreciate you sticking with it and trying it out up to this point.
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@blacksheep99
Hi,
I'm selling my duet board, duet ethernet + paneldue + pt100 + duex
Used for 100 (printing) hours, I was hoping to get 200 euros for everything (cost me 420 euro new) -
@chas2706 said in My Duet Experiences:
No more abandoning of prints because the Z height has somehow changed from last time or the SBC communication failed etc, etc.
I feel your frustration, I have endured the ever changing Z height (and other issues) with RRF3 on my Mini5+/6HC and on my Duet-2 boards mesh compensation was not working.
I (in my opinion) cured the issue on my Duet-2 boards in a few seconds flat by reverting back to RRF2 although I was promptly advised that by doing so it was not considered a "fix" but when that allowed me to spend time using my printers for printing instead of troubleshooting, I consider that a win, just a pity i'm stuck on RRF3 with the Mini-5+ and 6HC, and as you correctly point out there is no real point in bringing some issues to the forum as the fan boys will just blame it on the user or their hardware setup, or even try to say "its a very specialized machine"
Things (IMOP) have taken a very much backward step in the name of progress and what appears an attempt to appease OEM desires.
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@jayjay said in My Duet Experiences:
point out there is no real point in bringing some issues to the forum
So how do you explain those of us that are not having that Z height problem and are producing fine quality prints?
Do you believe we are lying?
Frederick
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@fcwilt A bit of a leap (and a skip, and a jump) there. FWIW, mesh leveling, Z heights all work fine for me with the latest RC of RRF. Admittedly though, discussions on the efficacy & efficiency of the firmware can be contentious... on one hand the creator of the machine has a significant amount of self worth wrapped up in the craftsmanship of the machine... easier to blame some nebulous entity perhaps.
The reality is the 'truth' is likely somewhere in the middle. Looking through JayJay's files posted during his mesh issue posts, I can see homing (G28) taking place at X164, Y197, but the bed.g using X140 Y195
I don't see enough in that thread for me to identify any concrete 'gotchas' but to me that probe point one is a big one. Unsure if those config and bed.g lines are mirrored in their RRF2 config.g.An additional thought - for clarity, not directed at anyone - the importance of uploading system files (config.g, relevant macros, etc) cannot be understated. I'd even go as far to say any 'print' problem posts must be accompanied with a full gcode file... as slicers output so much garbage, slicer problems could be misconstrued as printed problems. I can't 'remote in' and check if a screw is tight, a belt is loose, a rod bent, a nozzle tightened, but at least I can read through system files and ask additional questions. One can't just say 'shits broke yo' and walk away from the situation and expect anything to be done about it.
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@sebkritikel Good post - made me smile.
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My 2p's worth!
2 or years ago I bought an Ender3 Pro, just to dabble. Because of the limitation of the board and the infernal compiling and uploading just to make a simple change, I looked at lots of options but decided on Duet.3 Months later I built a RailCore with Duet2 Eth + Duex5
Last year I bought a Voron2.1 it ran Klipper with RAMPs boards and OctoPi which I hate anyway.
Rebuilt it with the Voron 2.4 upgrade parts a Pair of SKR1.3's with 2209's.
Hated the inductive probe part. Klipper seemed OK, so much so I decided to run it on the RailCore with the Duets.Had nothing but issues on the RailCore, especially with bed tramming, hit and miss, if I put the Duet RRF back on the boards it leveled correctly.
The crunch came when I needed to do a 4 probe mesh to check X Rail alignment. Klipper will only do a MINIMUM of 3 x 3, 9 points.
Asked the Klipper devs and they told me I do not need it and I would have to request it as a new feature.
Asked them again as they only need to adjust I guess, a param to allow a 2x2 mesh.
Was basically told to 'Jog On' by the Devs!Back to RRF for me. So much so, I bought a Mini 5+ and a Toolboard for the RailCore as I am sure that there is something wrong with the Duet2 board.
Absolute Bliss with the RailCore now and back to decent support again.
Currently the Voron 2.4 is sitting there waiting for a Annex upgrade and will more than likely put Duet boards in it and sell the SKR's
Also Building a Voron V0.1 that WILL be getting a Mini 5+, the beauty of it is, it can run standalone. Unlike a Klipper where you have to have a Pi and the control board.
Yes, I know Duet has had its issues with the SBC side of things, but DC's dedication is second to none as well as Chrishamn iirc and others who have some incredible ideas.
The way I see it, IMO, if you are running a Expensive printer or CNC something, buy the best, don't take the chance.
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@fcwilt said in My Duet Experiences:
@jayjay said in My Duet Experiences:
point out there is no real point in bringing some issues to the forum
So how do you explain those of us that are not having that Z height problem and are producing fine quality prints?
Do you believe we are lying?
Frederick
Conversely are you intimating that i (and others) are making our issues up ?
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@jayjay said in My Duet Experiences:
Conversely are you intimating that i (and others) are making our issues up ?
I cannot speak to your specific issues as I have not followed your posts.
But in the past I have worked with a few others who believed their problems were not related to their configuration and/or hardware - and yet that is where the problems were eventually determined to be.
However if it was announced by the scientific community that the laws of physics were not constant but varied with location I would not be surprised as it would explain many things in life.
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@fcwilt said in My Duet Experiences:
However if it was announced by the scientific community that the laws of physics were not constant but varied with location I would not be surprised as it would explain many things in life.
Doesn't quantum mechanics suggest that very thing?