Scott Lahteine

Happy New Year!

Hey everyone. It's been a long time since I've had anything very exciting or release-related to report, but don't let my radio silence fool you. There's a lot going on around here. With a whole new year breaking, this seems like a perfect time to catch up with you.

New Thinkyhead Quarters

My work for MakerArm is on indefinite hiatus while they reorganize and...

Creating Discord

In case you missed it, I just set up a Marlin Firmware server on Discord — a good way to keep in touch and get extra support.

If you're pledging at the $5 level or above you'll get an instant invite link that assigns you to the "Patron" role. This role will give you some extra privileges on the server once I figure out what this popular communication tool can do!

Tom Came to Texas…

Hey everybody! In case you missed it, during his whirlwind trip to Bay Area Maker Faire 2018, Tom Sanladerer took the opportunity to bop on over to Austin, Texas for a visit. While he was here he sampled the local Tex-Mex, gathered some footage for the RepRap documentary under development, and did an interview with me about Marlin Firmware.

In this wide-ranging interview we talked about some of the interesting technical aspects of Marlin, the challenges of open source development, and —with 3D printing technology exploding into the mainstre...

What is The Matrix?

Here's a short introductory video about the very simple and very inexpensive Max7219 LED matrix which Marlin can use to display useful information about the status of your printer in real-time.

I got two of these units recently and have been making some improvements in Marlin to support them better and add more capabilities. They're a great addition at a very low cost.

I think all the cool printers will have them one day….

ER...

2018-06-19 02:14:35 +0000 UTC View Post

You asked. I answer!

It's been a while since I put out the call for your questions. I finally overcame my shyness and made a video addressing your queries. And here it is!

Ask Me Anything

Happy February, all! With Marlin 1.1.9 just around the corner and Marlin 2.0 making swift progress towards a stable release, this seems to be a good moment to catch up with my patrons and supporters and the wider community of Marlin users.

(Besides, my shoulders are killing me from all this coding!)

Please post your questions about Marlin, embedded development, the RepRap movement, Vegan Radio, my circa 1990 Amiga games, or any other topic of interest! These will be answered...

Customize Marlin LCD LIVESTREAM

In this video I'll explain how to customize the appearance of the boot and status screen on pixel-based graphical displays.

Fixing, Cleaning, Sneak Peek

If you didn't know, February is Marlin Housecleaning Month! All my efforts (and yours too!) will go towards cleaning up old issues, fixing known bugs and hunting down bad behaviors. And, of course, this also means tweaking and improving the user experience, which is really just getting its start in the main Marlin fork.

As part of this whole crusade I'm collecting all Marlin's graphical elements into files for easier access and to provide assets for end-users to play around with as w...

Marlin 1.1.7

Hey all… Just a quick note to let you know that I've just released Marlin 1.1.7 — and it's pretty awesome! New features include…

• Optimized "machine space" planner.
• First move now chains properly — no stutter.
• Segmented movement for more accurate leveling.
• G26 Mesh Validation for MBL/ABL/UBL.
• Skew Correction.

This release fixes a number of bugs that exist in 1.1.6 and...

Optimizing Marlin

Even though Marlin 2.0 is going full blast incorporating support for the latest, greatest, and fastest 32-bit boards and micro-controllers, I haven't forgotten about 8-bit AVR! I'm always looking for new ways to optimize Marlin so that it can run faster, smoother, and cooler on the majority of 3D printers.

Last year I took a stab at optimizing graphical display updates to prevent stuttering (caused by a "starved" planner). Within hours of posting that update, there was a sudden influx of help that brought even more significant improvements. A...

Boards Galore

Looks like we should have Marlin working on Smoothieboard very soon! There's still a lot of work left on 32-bit support, but progress is being made every day. Pictured are some of the boards and devices I'm working with…

• AVR + TMC5130 SPI
• Nextion Touch Display
• Teensy 3.x
• CartesioUI controller
• Re-ARM
• Arduino Due
• Cohesion 3D Remix

The 13,000 Lines

Throughout Marlin's 5-year-long history, all its high level movement, G-code handlers, and main loop code has lived together in a single file. growing in size with each new release. With Marlin 1.1.5 (out now!), this file has ballooned to over 13,000 lines of code. Any code guru will tell you that's generally bad practice!

With Marlin 1.1, my focus was...

Marlin 1.1.4

Hey everyone! Just a quick note to let you know that Marlin 1.1.4 is out, with all the patches displayed in the image above. This is an incremental release mainly addressing stability and quality.

Marlin 2.0

This week I'm continuing to field issues and provide bug patches for Marlin 1.1 while gathering together resources for Marlin 2.0 with 32-bit support. The Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) was recently refreshed, so th...

It's the little things…

This video demonstrates the new marquee scrolling feature. I'm sure this style of scrolling is included in some versions of Marlin out there, but oh well, I just implemented it today for inclusion in Marlin 1.1.4 (coming soon) because it's the little things that I feel like working on right now.

Well, that… and the previous scrolling that I did for 1.1.3 just resets the message back to the start when it reaches the end of the available space. It's hard to follow and needed a-fixin'.

(The scrolling speed is set by the Info Scr...

Marlin 1.1.0 Released!

Wow, that was…

Two years after Marlin's last major version release, Marlin 1.1.0 is finally being unleashed upon the world. I'm really proud of this release, which blows the socks off the previous version in every way. I'm really impressed by everyone who contributed and awed by the flood of contributions the project continues to get.

The full write-up and change log is at Github, where you can also download the full so...

The Marlin feature you want most?

Marlin has a lot of moving parts that need constant oiling, and as 3D printers become more sophisticated, the demand for new and better features is ever-changing. We've a lot of improvements already underway, and Marlin 1.1 is shaping up to be a great update.

So as we go forward into 2017 we'd like to know what kinds of features and improvements you most want to see in your 3D printer firmware.

(Plus I want to experiment with this polling feature.)

If your most-wanted feature isn't listed, please add a comment.

Marlin 1.1.0-RC8 Release

After over 130 days of poring over submissions, cleaning up code, and playing hide-and-seek with sneaky bugs, I'm thrilled, pleased, and bloody well relieved to announce the official release of Marlin 1.1.0-RC8!

This release candidate represents the work of dozens of volunteers and contributors who produced over 900 individual commits to improve and refine Marlin. We hope you find these changes imp...

Marlin on Two Boards?

A Special Thank You

Until recently I only had one humble printer to work with: Millie, my trusty self-sourced Prusa i3. But a few months ago, when I was struggling with delta code I received the donation of an inexpensive "Micromake" deltabot from a very nice guy in Japan, who also threw in a portable oscilloscope and a pair of extra RAMPS boards for good measure. They have all turned out to be very useful in moving Marlin forward.

So, to you, Katsumi, I say "Dōmo arigatōgozaimashita!"

Your Mission, Shou...