I saw on several places, including the zortrax site, that there is a marlin firmware release for the zortrax M200 and M300.
I don’t want to waste a tun of time on fiddling with stuff, i simply lack the time for it, which is the reason i bought the zortrax in the first place.
So i was wondering:
if i simply put the marlin firmware as a bin into the machine, i suppose it does not understand any of the zcode files anymore?
can it still do bed leveling?
what are other pittfalls?
is there perhaps a recent writeup or step by step writeup to end up with a succesful print somewhere that can befollowed?
I’d prefer that the new software simply supported these printers, but it is starting to look like it is better to look for alternatives…
Yes, i see people commenting they did a print with marlin, and absolutely commend everybody working on making it work on the zortrax!!
But the thing is this:
i bought the zortrax simply because it is a product you buy, install the slicer, and it ‘just works’ (well, at least most of the time it does). So more or less like buying a normal printer: you buy it, install the driver, shove paper and toner in it, done, works.
But when i install marlin, then i probably need a new slicer? And what slicer would that be, and what would the setting for the zortrax for certain materials? like ABS, PETG, etc?
Or in other words: i no longer am in a closed environment where zortrax took the time and effort to sort this out and i simply can select the correct material and you have a pretty good chance of getting a decent print…
What i’d like is a simple to follow step by step procedure that starts with an unaltered M200 or M300, and end up with a printer that produces a print at least equal to the unaltered one, without me wasting time and filament messing with settings i dont even understand fully without reading up on it on wikipedia or something.
To give an idea: with the current slicer, i simply import the stl, select the material, perhaps alter the infill and nozzle temp, and go and print it. This usually (95% of the time) results in a useable part. The other 5% us usually operator error or runout of filament.
Every slicer other than Z-SUITE is just test-print-modify-print…if you don’t like this stay on Z-SUITE. As I told you I have installed Marlin in one of my printers, tha other still run with z-suite. You have to consider Marlin when you need options that you don’t have with z-suite, for instance changing temperature on the fly could be useful since I print ABS and things get worst in winter for it and with z-suite you have to slice the whole work again to change only temp. (or better you can do it with ztool but it is always coded in the file). Maybe you need to print at different layer height to obtain a better quality, maybe you need tree support type instead of stock ones…there are tons of options with other slicers it is impossible to write here. But all these options can turn you crazy to tweak them, so if you are printing good with z-suite stay with it.