Optional firmware other than RRF

fishgrog

@dc42 Has anyone approached you about an alternative firmware? There are many issues as the core RRF is so 3d printing oriented which is very suited for linear moves, no arc g2/g3 needed for extruding 3d prints. It would seem the core RRF is a liability for supporting CNC machines. With the CNC machine I am using without real-time axes updating or line-by-line gcode display basically machining is completely blind. Of course arcs is just one of many limitations in the core RRF for CNC machines.

fishgrog

@Sindarius Nice, that looks great for 3d printing additive any thought as to CNC. There is another NC viewer browser based that could be adapted. I have run some of my CAM gcode and it works well. https://ncviewer.com/
Worth a look at, I have not tried a 3d print as that isn't something I do.

o_lampe

@fishgrog
There is arc-support in RRF. I use it all the time to compress my gcode files, but I guess you want to see DWC jog options for it?
For now you can use the command line, but have to do the math by yourself.

dc42

@fishgrog no I haven't been approached about alternative firmware for CNC users. If anyone wants to port a different firmware to Duets, we will be happy to provide technical info and assistance.

However, you don't appear to be aware of the CNC features available in RRF. We've supported G2 and G3 for many years and also workplace coordinates. RRF 3.4.x supports ~~G60~~ G68 coordinate rotation, and in 3.5 we've added inverse time mode and live update of machine coordinates. Single stepping GCode and feed hold are also on the list for implementing in 3.5 or possibly 3.6.

Separately we have plans to make it easier to customise DWC to provide additional or alternative UI features.

chimaeragh

@dc42 Will these new features (RRF3.5/3.6) be coming to the Duet2 boards or will they be exclusive to the Duet3. I ask because Ooznest is still selling machines with Duet2 boards and we may not see these new features which we have been requesting for some time now available on our machines.

dc42

@chimaeragh the features already in RRF 3.5 will be supported on Duet 2. We haven't finalised the others yet, because the flash memory space on Duet 2 is full. We intend to make some room by removing support for rarely-used kinematics from the standard build, but we don't yet know whether that will be sufficient. If it isn't, then Ooznest may be able to support it on their machines by building the firmware with additional kinematics (e.g. delta) removed.

JuKu

After the coming (close to) real-time coordinate display in 3.5, the only CNC related feature I miss is a soft stop: Stop the current move now (don’t wait for it to end), honor jerk and acceleration settings and keep motors powered (that is, don’t lose position).

Not knowing how the 3.5 position report works: A separate message after move command is done would be nice. The NanoDLP emulation workaround works, but can be clunky. A cleaner solution would be a status report style: when machine moves, send position during set intervals, with “accelerating, moving, decelerating” info, and a final “stopped” message immediately after stopping.

dc42

@JuKu said in Optional firmware other than RRF:

After the coming (close to) real-time coordinate display in 3.5, the only CNC related feature I miss is a soft stop

That's planned for 3.5.

fishgrog

@dc42 WRT alternative firmware comments, it would seem the maturity of mach3/mach4 would be a good base to run on the Duet3d hardware motion control as it has a mature library of gcode capabilities. I am an early owner of a multi axis CNC milling machine running RRF and it has been fraught with numerous issues. Real-time display in essential for CNC machining ideally combined with a display of line-by-line readout of active gcode, as the speed thing happen with CNC things can get wrecked quickly. "RRF 3.4.x support G60, did you mean G68: Coordinate rotation?

@dc42 said in Optional firmware other than RRF:

Separately we have plans to make it easier to customise DWC to provide additional or alternative UI features.

The ideal would be able to access the methods exposed by the REST api so that new pages can be custom developed (e.g. CSS, jscript, HTML).

rzi

@JuKu In my post I've added so the motors don't idle. At the end of the program I change it back to default.

chrishamm

@fishgrog Our software stack is fully open-source so you can already modify DWC as you like (see here provided you can get into Vue 2).

HTTP calls in standalone and SBC are documented as well, see here for standalone and here for SBC mode. DSF v3.5 will support compatibility for standalone HTTP calls, too.