Duet Controller Support

Are there any plans to support duet controller? If so do you have a best guess as to when that might be?

Also, I would think maybe someone would have developed a post processing script to take the output from something close and massage it? Know of any?

It is planned, though I don’t have a timeline for it. I have no experience whatsoever with Duet or RepRap, so it’ll take some time to figure out how they’re different than everyone else, and I’ll have to see how hard it is to handle their network protocol.

Already tried to get in touch with DC42, the Developer?

He seems to be quite open…

A while ago now, when they were still working out what sort of laser support they wanted. It’s not a matter of want, but a matter of priorities and dollars.

The number of Duet users I stand to gain from adding support for that controller is substantially smaller than the number of users I stand to gain by completing support for TopWisdom, Puhan, or other DSP controllers, and those licenses sell for a higher price. It’ll happen, it’s just going to be as I have time.

I’m not arguing.

I know if you add more and more controllers you need to maintain each and every single thing, debugging etc, means at the end less time for developing new features within Lightburn.
And as you said, considering the maybe small amount of Duet Users… it’s not worth.

Me personally, I’m happy with the Ruida Support, I don’t need the Duet Support. One of my 3D Printers has a Duet inside, it is a nice thing to play around, but my Main Printer is still a Taz 6, more or less stock.
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I wasn’t taking it as argumentative at all - just laying out the reasons. I have talked to the Duet folks about it a bit, but that was about a year ago now (the last MRRF) and I had more time then. I have a Duet controller here waiting for me. :slight_smile:

They seem capable and fast - I was mostly waiting for them to have support for velocity-adjusted speed, otherwise there’s not much point. I’m hoping they’ve gotten to that by now.

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So not being familiar with a full implementation, in the interim, it would be nice to just have a post processing utility to run on one of your existing outputs. I might take a stab at this but the biggest thing for me is understanding what codes control what and mapping between one of the current outputs and what the desired requirement for the duet might be. Does anyone know if anything has been done to evaluate this? If not does anyone have any suggestions to map it out/ identify what needs to be done?

I think it’s damn close already - LightBurn doesn’t emit much:

G0 / G1 for move / cut
M3 or M4 to turn on the laser
M5 to turn it off
F (feedrate)
S (spindle rate aka laser power)

The body of the generated GCode will be almost exclusively those, with occasional G90 / G91 thrown in to flip between absolute and relative moves. Everything else is header / footer.

Which output would be the closest?

At the moment, probably GRBL-M3, but I’m not positive - I’m not familiar enough with RRF’s gcode format.

https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap_Firmware_G-Codes

The preferred way to control a laser using Duet/RepRapFirmware is to use S parameters in G1 commands, where the S parameter specifies the required laser PWM. I believe LightBurn supports this.

To switch RRF into Laser mode, use the M452 command. See https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/Gcode?revisionid=HEAD#Section_M452_Select_Laser_Printer_Mode.

RepRapFirmware 3 includes laser power velocity ramping. RepRapFirmware 2 does not.

HTH David

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Hi David,

nice to have you here too… :slight_smile:

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