have bought “original” 2nd hand, have no usb how critical is this & no router bed,(can you still get them
I don’t use the USB cable to have Luban control the Original. I copy the GCode to a USB thumb drive, and print from there. That way the PC doesn’t have to stay on for the whole print. There are also some potential quality issues when laser engraving with a PC controlling. The laser prints come out more speckled than if the controller did the engraving directly. It’s not as much of a problem for 3DP and CNC. The USB cable is a standard USB-Aa to USB-Ab, the same cable most paper printers use. The Original doesn’t support WiFi. If you only have USB-C ports, you can buy a USB-C to USB-A adapter that’ll let you plug a thumb drive or cable in.
For the router bed, email support@snapmaker.com. They might still have some laying around. I know I was able to purchase a replacement 3DP bed about a year ago, along with some bed stickers and new hot ends. That was shortly before the parts were removed from the online store though, so it’s anybody’s guess if they’re still available or not. Let us know how that goes. Be aware that support is notoriously slow to respond. Days to weeks is not uncommon, depending on what Chinese holidays are happening. They also work in the +08:00 timezone.
Worse case, the CNC and Laser bed doesn’t have any smarts, unlike the 3DP bed. The CNC bed is just an aluminum plate with a bunch of threaded holes. The original clamps were just some aluminum bars with oversized unthreaded holes for the screws to pass through into the bed. A sacrificial wooden board would work fine too, assuming you could attach it to the Y axis securely.
I’ve only ever used the USB cable between printer and PC a couple of times, as clewis said, it isn’t great for laser use as it it seems to have the occasional delay which results in the laser dwelling too log and giving the speccled look. Works great from USB drive though.
One thing I would recommend is a magnetic flexible print bed if it doesn’t have one, being able to take the bed out and just flex it to break prints free is so much easier (especially if you have an enclosure). I bought one by Ziflex, works great.
The CNC/laser bed is just a 130mm x 130mm x 4mm solid aluminium plate with some M4 tapped holes in it, so you might be able to get one made, or get a square of aluminium and drill your own holes. 4 of the holes are to attach the bed to the printer and the rest are for the clamps. Happy to provide a picture with hole locations if you want to try making a bed.
Thank you sooo much, but do you need to use the stainless steel usb or can any usb do the job (thought it might have built in app,software etc). Will build own cnc bed if I have to, lady I bought from is looking for them as we speak, so here’s hoping. Once again thank you for all the info
I believe you can use any USB drive.
There isn’t anything on my USB drive except for the gcode files I’m printing/lasering, no sofware or apps. I haven’t noticed anything special about the drive itself, it looks like a nice normal Kingston one to me.
You can also use the drive to update firmware if it isn’t up to date, just have to remember to delete the .bin file off after it’s done the update.
Once again thank you so much, I might fire it up tomorrow to check calibration etc
IIRC, the Original doesn’t like large USB drives. I’ve used multiple different 16GB drives just fine.
I vaguely recall people complaining that other USB drives didn’t work, but I think it was because they were too large. My memory is fuzzy, but I think 64GB drives don’t work with the Original. I don’t have one to test though. The controller has some Android code, and I remember Android devices having issues with large SD cards around that size too.
Many Thanks again, the seller found the usb, so no probs. Looks like i will have to make my own router bed though, cheers