I noticed that there’s no guide specifically for setting up octoprint on the original snapmaker here. I’ve done this for my A350, and just got an original, so I figured I’d put one together since there were a few things I had to look up in the process.
The process is relatively simple, most of what you need was already included with the machine.
NOTE: This setup will take you through a few things before connecting your machine, we’ll first want set up octoprint, and only connect to the machine when we’re ready.
Extras needed
The one thing you will need that isn’t provided with your machine is a device to run octoprint on. Octoprint has setups for pretty much every OS, but I’ve so far only done it on a raspberry pi using the standard image. See OctoPrint.org - Download & Setup OctoPrint to get set up on your preferred computer.
Alternatively, if you have an old android phone lying around, you can also set up octo4a to run octoprint from the phone. This is actually what I’ve done with my snapmaker original and a Pixel 4XL, and can confirm that just using the included (with the phone) USB A to USB C converter worked perfectly fine.
Printer profile setup in octoprint
This is what to do on each step, as of octoprint version 1.7.2
- Restore Backup?
- You won’t have a backup to restore from, so you can skip this step.
- Access Control
- You must create a username and password to continue (I encourage using a password manager, even though you’ll probably never be exposing this server to the outside world).
- Online Connectivity Check/Anonymous Usage Tracking/Plugin Blacklist
- Configure these however you want, I would recommend enabling the plugin blacklist though.
- Default Printer Profile
- Here’s where we finally get to set something up specific to the snapmaker. Do note that there are 4 tabs on this setup screen. I’ll go through each:
- General
- Set whatever name you want, it doesn’t matter
- Feel free to set the Model to “Snapmaker Original”, but I don’t think it affects anything
- Print bed & build volume
- Form Factor: Rectangular
- Origin: You can change this if you want, but many slicing software default to Lower Left. I would urge you to leave it that way simply so you don’t have headaches later when using other default configs.
- Heated Bed: Enabled
- Heated Chamber: Disabled
- X/Y: 125
- Z: 125, unless you have the Z extension, then you can set it to 220
- Custom bounding box: Disabled
- Axes
- X/Y: Luban uses 1500 to do the jogging moves. Based on sound of the motors alone, it also seems that’s what the machine does when you use jog controls on the touchscreen. You could probably go higher (6000 is probably fine), but 3000 is definitely safe (it’s what Luban uses to move into place when printing).
- Z: Again, Luban uses 1500 to do the moves in jog mode, but I prefer something a bit slower, like 600, simply to lower the chance that I ram the nozzle into the bed.
- E: Luban uses 200 for loading and 150 for unloading. I would be safe and leave it at 150 since there’s no separate control for extruding vs retracting.
- Hotend & extruder
- Nozzle Diameter: 0.4mm (unless you’ve got a different nozzle than stock on your machine)
- Number of extruders: 1 (sorry, snapmaker will probably never release dual extruder for the original)
- General
- Here’s where we finally get to set something up specific to the snapmaker. Do note that there are 4 tabs on this setup screen. I’ll go through each:
- Server Commands
- These will be specific to the device that you installed octoprint on. See your OS’s guide or potentially just leave them as the defaults.
Additional required steps for Snapmaker Original
The setup handles most of the machine specific setups, but there’s a few more things we’ll have to change in octoprint and the machine.
First, I recommend using the latest firmware of the machine, as of writing this, it’s 2.11. I don’t expect any new versions coming out, since 2.11 came out in 2019, 3 years ago. You can get it from the firmware post.
After that, to properly communicate with the machine, you should be using Baudrate 115200. You can set this in the Serial Connection settings in the settings (wrench icon on the top right of the screen). Make sure to Save after changing the rate.
Connecting Octoprint device to your Snapmaker Original
You’re now ready to connect to your Snapmaker Original. Luckily, Snapmaker has already given us the required cable. You can use the included USB A to USB B cable that came with your device connect to the machine using the USB B port on the machine:
Then plug the opposite end of the cable into your octoprint device.
With all that done, you should be good to go!
Click the Connect button to connect to your machine.
Go over to the Control tab and try issuing some movements. You may need to home your axes before you’re allowed to move the machine, you can just use the little home icon in the center of the controls to do that.
If it’s all working, you should be ready to start your first print. You can export files from luban and upload to the machine, or configure your slicer (I’d like to evangelize for Super Slicer) to send prints directly to your octoprint instance! (guides for how to use octoprint/slicers are plentiful, so I won’t go into those here)
Prints freeze with v1.1 enclosure door detection!
Finally, I disabled my door detection and unplugged the door sensor for now. I’m not sure if it was the cause of the problem, but my prints were hanging on start until I did. To disable the door detection, you can use “M1010 S0”, simply enter that (without quotes) into the input box on the Terminal tab and hit Send. It should echo back “ok”. If you plan to use the laser, I would highly recommend you turn door detection back on/plug the door back in before using it. To do so, send M1010 S1 on terminal.
Happy printing and feel free to ask any questions/challenge my instructions here, or over on the discord channel.