Can I Upgrade Firmware From the Cd Card on a Prusa Mk3

Prusa Research released version 3.ten.0 firmware for their flagship line of 3D printers.

The new firmware targets the MK3, MK3S, MK3S+, MK2.5 and MK2.5S platforms, and equally ever is released as open source software on GitHub. It’s gratuitous to download and use for anyone using those platforms, or others, I suppose, who are building Prusa clones.

While a firmware update may seem like a minor thing, Prusa Research described some of the effort required to produce 3.x.0:

• 4500+ printing hours during our in-business firm testing
• 867 commits to the source code
• fourscore pull requests
• 11 contributors (5 of them external)

That’s significant. Just what did they change in this version?

A change in the display of time remaining has been implemented. In the past the machines would bear witness yous the duration expected until the entire print task completed. That’s fine, simply what about planned filament swaps? These crave operator intervention, and if there’s but one deep into the print job, what does an operator do? Do they hang effectually the car waiting for the swap to trigger at some unknown time?

To salvage everyone some fourth dimension, the “time remaining” feature now flips every five seconds betwixt “consummate” fourth dimension remaining and “fourth dimension to adjacent bandy”. That way operators can far more easily manage their time around the auto.

Another comeback fixes one of the features that always bothered me: slow response time for file discovery. When you remember a list of GCODE files on the SD card, the machine would take enormous amounts of time to get through the list. Information technology was so ho-hum that I gained the addiction of quickly deleting every used file on the SD carte to minimize delays.

At present that problem could be extinguished by firmware three.10.0, which speeds upwardly alphabetical sorting past 10-15% and past time an enormous 2-4X. Sorting by time is my preferred brandish considering the file you just stored on the SD bill of fare is e’er at the meridian of the display for easy access.

Prusa Research has besides completed recoded their XYZ scale routine. They say the procedure is now much faster and should result in a more precisely calibrated Original Prusa device.

Support has been added for gigantic 0.8mm nozzles, for those who endeavor to print very large objects speedily on the relatively small device. The 0.8mm nozzle has 4X the area of the standard 0.4mm nozzle, so in theory impress jobs should have nigh one-quarter of the time. Imagine your seven-hour job completing in only 105 minutes!

One interesting change has been a serial of minor tweaks that should brand the machines easier to work with remote control systems such every bit OctoPrint. For example, instead of OctoPrint having to poll the device with M105 commands to find out the current temperatures, the new M155 control needs to be executed just once and it volition automatically report temperatures periodically.

And there are dozens of other upgrades, enhancements and fixes you tin can view in the GitHub documentation.

However, later on reading through all this it seems to me that these machines are increasingly constrained. Don’t go me wrong, all the Prusa Research devices are outstanding machines, and I recommend them often. Information technology’s just that the weak point of the system pattern is increasingly looking like the tiny LCD panel through which all information flows.

This tiny panel displays only four lines of 20 characters, and the company has done a terrific job of squeezing data into that tiny window through the use of abbreviations, sliding text and flipping information.

But every bit well-nigh of the competing machines are now equipped with color touchscreens, a tiny LCD console is likely too minor to nowadays more than complex data and functionality.

Prusa Enquiry has delivered a touchscreen of their own on the Prusa Mini, but their flagship line still uses the tiny LCD console. A potential upgrade for a “plus” version of the machines might include the same color touchscreen, but there’southward no word on that.

Meanwhile, another possibility is to simply rely on an external organization like OctoPrint to provide a rich interface. I doubtable that’s what many ability users do these days.

Via
GitHub