Prusa Mendel RepRap controlled via EMC2 (LinuxCNC)
My Prusa Mendel RepRap Repstrap printing some couplings. Its got the Prusa heated bed and is running on 1/16th step Pololus, controlled via an old pc running EMC2 (LinuxCNC). Why LinuxCNC? After trying many firmwares on my Arduino and always having some kind of problems with performance quality or reliability I decided to give EMC2 a try. Conclusion: Its really fast, has awesomely good acceleration, is smooth, never has any hiccups or halts,works absolutely reliable, has a nice Interface with preview, estimates build time, gcode preview and live feedrate override that works really well. The only limits for now are the mechanical construction and the extruder hot end. With my current hardware I can get step rates just above 30KHz which is way more then my Prusa can ever handle. EDIT: because some people asked how I control the Extruder Temp: My temperature control runs on the Arduino that used to control the machine. It receives the temperature commands from a small HAL-module I wrote that in turn gets the temp value from the dial in the gui which you can see in the video.