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I have a reprap 3d printer, and I'm wanting to make it into an 'all in one' solution. I'd love to be able to mount my Rasp(arrives monday), a small screen, etc on the frame of the reprap. seeing as i have a working 3d printer, brackets to do so isn't an issue. What I need is a list of packages that will work on the raspberry pi to:

  1. feed gcode to my sanguinololu board (pronterface is an example)
  2. create 3d models that can be exported as a file compatible with below
  3. slice 3d file into gcode
  4. (optional) update/tweak the firmware of the reprap controller board
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  • That sounds like the coolest project ever! I have no idea about 3D printing. Can you add a section about your current setup and we should be able to help? For instance, do you currently use a Linux machine to run the RepRap? Jul 12, 2012 at 15:24
  • I think you might be asking a bit much of your Pi for it to do 3D modelling.
    – Jivings
    Jul 12, 2012 at 15:24
  • @Jivings It should be powerful enough to be some sort of print server at least. Jul 12, 2012 at 15:30
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    @Jivings - Given that Raspberry Pi's are much higher spec than the microcontrollers that run most repraps, using one as a front end part selection gui could work really well, given the complexity of many designs for 3d printers I suspect the Pi may be able to cope at that level. We aren't talking about doing Finite Element Analysis here. Anyone who is interested in 3d printing, may want to check out the reboot of the Personal Manufacturing proposal on Area 51.
    – Mark Booth
    Jul 12, 2012 at 17:38
  • @AlexChamberlain - sadly, there's no standard for 3d-print-servers yet.
    – mlp
    Jul 13, 2012 at 0:42

2 Answers 2

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To address each of your numbered sub-questions:

  1. Any of the host-software packages should work - Pronterface (in Python), Adrian's RepRap Host (in Java ... a recently-added note in the wiki claims it is deprecated, but I've seen no other evidence for that), ReplicatorG (in Python), etc.
  2. OpenSCAD is my personal favourite, thanks in part to Adrian's work on slicing CSG directly, but you'll need to build from source to run on the Pi
  3. Slic3r (in Perl) is allegedly nicer than skeinforge (in Python)
  4. You can probably build the Arduino IDE from source to run on the Pi

If you use the Debian image available for download you should be able to apt-get any extra packages (e.g. libraries for the "build from source" steps, and probably a Java VM) fairly easily.

(My own Grand Plan for my next printer is to sidestep the Arduino and build a GPIO-addon board to drive the hardware directly with the Pi, but that's still vapourware.)

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For a 3D print server you can try using OctoPi.
Its a distro for the Raspberry Pi which currently supports uploading and printing gcode via a web interface and time-lapse videos using a webcam.

Slicing on the Pi is a problem due to lack of memory, but it might be solved in the long run.

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