Opinions on "FYSETC" ... politely, please.

zBeeble

@elmoret Are you a wholesaler in Canada? I tried looking to see if I could PM you, but you have DnD set. If you gimme your URL, I'll be happy to look there for my next purchase.

elmoret

@zbeeble In the US, Google Filastruder. Can’t turn on DMs everywhere, can’t track them all.

T3P3Tony

@zbeeble both our Canadian Genuine resellers appear to have the PanelDue 7i in stock
https://duet3d.com/page/genuine-resellers

achrn

@breed said in Opinions on "FYSETC" ... politely, please.:

I find this interesting. What's the general opinions on the other Chinese manufactures making clones/alternatives? Makerbase, btt, mellow fly. I've never used a direct clone but have used a few mellow boards where I wanted to use stepsticks.

I think clones and alternatives are very different things.

It's a personal ethics choice, but personally I don't buy clones (chinese or otherwise), but I don't see any problem with alternatives. I have a Mellow board running a sand table, but it's completely different to any Duet3D board, though it runs RRF and I've discussed it here.

I note that it is sometimes difficult to work out who 'started it' - I've seen people mounting a spirited attack on cheap 'ebay special' logic analysers claiming them to be clone / rip-off of saleae devices, but my undertsanding is that the cheapies and the (more basic) saleae devices are both copies of published specimen designs from the chip manufacturer. (I do use a cheapie logic analyser, I don't use saleae software with it.)

I don't think Duet3D claims exclusive ownership of RRF firmware, people other than Duet3D employees have contributed to RRF (I assume - I haven't checked the origin of every line of current code), and indeed there are forums here for RRF on other hardware.

See also https://forum.duet3d.com/topic/22800/what-s-the-stance-on-rrf-on-none-duet-boards

jay_s_uk

In terms of RRF on other boards, @gloomyandy is the dev who has ported RRF to STM32F4 and STM32H7 boards and I support with documentation etc. The Duet3D team are very supporting of the work we have done and we regularly contribute by finding and fixing bugs and supporting users on this forum.
We also work with Mellow in the development of their boards to ensure they work well with RRF, for example they are the only boards that come with ESP32 wifi adapters on board and the only ones that support monitoring of the PSU voltage

breed

@jay_s_uk Ive had very good luck so far with the few mellow boards I have, with the exception of some issues connecting to USB here and there. I wish sometimes that duet made a board with stepsticks even if it had limited driver support, as I'd rather support duet than a Chinese company.

chrishamm

@breed Something for external stepper drivers like the new MB6XD?

CthulhuLabs

@breed said in Opinions on "FYSETC" ... politely, please.:

I wish sometimes that duet made a board with stepsticks even if it had limited driver support, as I'd rather support duet than a Chinese company.

I am curious why you need this functionality. When I first got into 3D printing I was using a RAMPS 1.4 board and then went to a RADDS board. I burned out 8x DRV8825 over the course of a year and a half of use. I thought that having built in drivers was a bad idea because everyone seemed to blow them. After a ton of research though I learned that most of the time the blow because of excessive heat or mistakes that can be avoided with improved circuit design. I eventually moved to a Duet 2 Wifi board. Since then I have not burned a single stepper driver even doing the same dumb mistakes as I did in the past. I did have one stepper driver die on my Duet 2 Wifi, but that was on a brand new board and Filastruder immediately RMAed the board once it was confirmed to be a bad board. The Duet boards properly sink the heat away from the stepper driver chips and have all of the necessary protection circuits on them to prevent dumb mistakes. Sure there are still ways to burn one out, but it takes serious effort.

breed

@cthulhulabs the couple printers I use stepsticks on are running makerbase servo42c closed loop steppers. They are large deltas and I have found they help with the occasional layer shift issue. I could have wired them to a duet2wifi or whatever but it's just simpler to use the stepstick adapters. Plus I do as much playing with my printers as I do printing, boards and other various hardware move around a lot.

CthulhuLabs

@breed

In other words you need support for external stepper drivers and not necessarily stepsticks. That is exactly what the MB6XD @chrishamm mentioned is designed for. Stepsticks are frankly a horrible design that became standard in 3D printers because they were cheap not because they were good.

o_lampe

@cthulhulabs
IMHO the main reason , why people grilled their stepstick drivers was the motor current setting via potmeter. Especially A4988 came in different versions regarding current shunt resistors, making it hard to follow the guides.
The extended stepstick adaption on Mellow boards allow UART and SPI control to setup the driver, which is more convenient than the external 'black box' drivers I know.
Sadly the new MB6XD doesn't seem to support this setup feature?!

Nightowl

Being very new to the market and after a great deal of research into the alternatives, I chose the Duet (MB6HC) board for my CNC machine.

It took (and will take more!) time for me to become better aquainted with it, but there's one thing that stands out for me - the Duet warranty. I don't know if other (Chinese or otherwise) manufacturers would offer such a quick turnaround replacing a defective board, but Duet did (via the reseller), and any doubts I may have had at that point were dispelled.

zBeeble

@nightowl Wow. Machine of spinny death controlled by duet. Props. To your sig, I know enough about woodworking to have great respect (and a little fear) of routers... pretty much the second scariest powertool in the woodshop. The first being the thickness planer. Tailing on a thickness planer put me through the first year of university (and engendered a deep dislike of oak).

I have to say... there's a lot of difference between a machine whose malfunction creates an abstract silly-string sculpture and one that can maim.

Nightowl

@zbeeble said in Opinions on "FYSETC" ... politely, please.:

Wow. Machine of spinny death controlled by duet.

Oh yeah, and it works brilliantly!

There are a lot more 3D printer people on here than CNC people (and some that do both!) but they've been very helpful when I've been trying to get my head around stuff!

breed

@cthulhulabs agreed. I wasn't aware the mb6xd was out. But actually using external and stepsticks.

zBeeble

@nightowl actually... I was considering that my take on e3d's tool changer might have one of the tools being a dremel like device --- for cutting and buffing... but right now it's just a thought.

zapta

@sputnikoc3d said in Opinions on "FYSETC" ... politely, please.:

ABS Mafia in the voron community

'ABS Mafia'. I like it.

o_lampe

@zbeeble said in Opinions on "FYSETC" ... politely, please.:

Wow. Machine of spinny death controlled by duet.

[OT]
Although I agree about the dangers inherited in spinning tools, I'm sure people will use common sense and do some dry-testing before they put a tool in the spindle.
I'm more afraid of laser-modules run by hobbyists, because they can fire up during commissioning/testing. We only have two eyes, but ten fingers

zBeeble

@o_lampe said in Opinions on "FYSETC" ... politely, please.:

@zbeeble said in Opinions on "FYSETC" ... politely, please.:

Wow. Machine of spinny death controlled by duet.

[OT]
Although I agree about the dangers inherited in spinning tools, I'm sure people will use common sense and do some dry-testing before they put a tool in the spindle.
I'm more afraid of laser-modules run by hobbyists, because they can fire up during commissioning/testing. We only have two eyes, but ten fingers

[continuing down the OT rabbit hole]

The inherent extra redundancy of digits ... is a lie. The configuration, for instance, that makes our human hands useful for a wide range of tasks is the opposing nature of the thumbs. You only have two thumbs. Equally, spinny death can attack (say) the wrist or palm --- where you also don't have additional digit redundancy built-in.

That said, artificial eye prosthetics are in their infancy.

Notepad

prelude: I wont get into the whole moral dilemma of if you should buy a clone vs OEM, as that frankly, is up to you, and I don't think people should be telling others how to spend their money.

Abstract: FYSETC make ok products, some stuff they do better (in my opinion) such as the integrated screens, and others they do okay with like the logic boards. They are not to the same high standard as Duet is, however functionally, they are able to provide the same experience, and have been reliable in doing so.

Quality: The main difference when it comes to FYSETC parts vs Duet other than the substituted components (probably due to local supply differences) is that the FYSETC duets tend to be a bit weaker overall. They are more susceptible to EMI and as such the webOS tends to get negatively affected more often than a true Duet would.

Accelerometer support also backs up this as the official duets can cope will full speed data capture, however the FYSETC needs to be turned down to half speed in order for an uncorrupted data stream. This is still more than acceptable resolution, however it does show some of the differences caused by the design differences

Wire interferences is also slightly more noticeable with the FYSETC boards. For reference, I use a 7" PanelDue and a 7" FYSETC integrated panel across multiple machines. Both have the same behaviour independently. However, with the FYSETC Duet boards, the screens are more suseptable to the EMI the machine produces, and it has shown up a couple of times, where the data lines suddenly produce garbled commands, which show up on the screens as bad json commands.
With that being said, both official Duet boards, and FYSETC share this issue, however FYSETC appear to have a interference rate 5x higher than that of the official Duet boards.

This issue can be fully solved by using the new firmware that uses checksums

Panel Due:
Its kind of sad to say, but FYSETC make a much nicer touch screen. They have integrated the breakout board into their screens, and overall has made the PCB footprint smaller. You do loose the speaker for this, however for that size reduction, I have to admit that I prefer the FYSETC 7i screens, and they also support all the new PanelDue firmware.

Updating:
This is the only major difference I have seen between official Duet products and the FYSETC clones. When updating the firmware to new versions, the FYSETC boards don't tend to consistently update. The boards will download the files fine, and install them, however the firmware will not update after that - almost like it backdated the version to the one already present on the board. This isn't a massive issue as you can just upload it manually instead of through the WebOS, but it is a noticeable difference, as official Duet boards only rarely have this issue.

Conclusion:
FYSETC is fully functional as a board manufacturer, even if the quality is slightly lacking, the products do tend to work fit for purpose.
They make some really nice screens, and their logicboards - while not 100% clones - do act like official duets, except for some behaviour changes, where I think the corners have been cut for cost, means they are more susceptible to EMI/EMF.