Printing directly from the SD card

Capt. John · Post by **Capt. John** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 5:11 am

If you save a factory file to the SD card, will the rambo box read it and print it with the same settings in the factory file?

jimc · Post by **jimc** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 5:24 am

no, a factory file is an s3d file type. the rambo and the marlin firmware know gcode only

Capt. John · Post by **Capt. John** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 1:48 pm

So, then you can only make one model at a time ...right?
And the ability to place supports will be lost ...correct?

jimc · Post by **jimc** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 2:07 pm

you can make whatever will fit on the m2 bed. load as many different pieces onto the build platform as you want or to print multiples goto models then duplicate model.

Dale Reed · Post by **Dale Reed** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 9:22 pm

Capt. John,

In S3d, do what you would normally do to slice and print, but instead of printing to the printer, have it "print" to a file. It will generate a .GCODE file. (It's a good idea to rename the file with an old DOS-style 8.3 filename and a ".G" extension, like "MYPRINT.G") Copy the file to the SD Card. Eject the card and put it in the card slot on the M2. Then, in the Machine Control Panel, have it print from SD card. You'll be prompted for the filename (MYPRINT.G, for example).

Once printing from the card starts, you can yank the USB cable and use your PC for something else.

Note that the Rambo has to be getting power from the power supply and not from USB (there's a jumper to select this on the board) for it to work with the PC not present. If the logic on the board gets power from USB and you yank the cable, you've just shot down power.

I haven't done this in a while --- not with S3D 2.1.0. In older versions, it worked great -- I just haven't had to print from SD Card recently is all. However, there was one issue I had that you should be aware of. Once I started the print, I had to actually yank the USB cable for it to keep going. If I did a clean shutdown of the PC or did an "eject" from the "remove safely" icon in the system tray, the USB close would initiate a RESET of the Rambo and the print would stop. I don't know if current drivers and firmware behave this way, but it was utterly annoying.

Good luck!
Dale

jimc · Post by **jimc** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 9:47 pm

not that its important but since they released the rambo v1.2 that jumper for the usb/psu power isnt there anymore dale.i guess they got rid of it.

Printing directly from the SD card

Printing directly from the SD card

Re: Printing directly from the SD card

Re: Printing directly from the SD card

Re: Printing directly from the SD card

Re: Printing directly from the SD card

Re: Printing directly from the SD card