April 8, 2013
Francesco Santini was looking into the possibilities of stand-alone printing with the Solidoodle 3D printer. He had a couples of choices, such as the Panelolu (50$), the monochromatic LCD screen with a rotary encoder, the ViKi LCD (75$), or the touch TFT LCD (80$) with a nicer interface.
But they all require an SD card for printing and need to be physically attached to a pc to load the GCode. So he checked the PengPod 700 he recently bought, a 7 inch Linux tablet to see if he can use it as a controller for his Solidoodle 2.
The PengPod 700 supports both Android and Linux and has internal storage, wifi, USB connection etc. The tablet connects to the printer via usb and Francesco enabled a SAMBA share on the tablet where he put the gcode that he sliced on another computer. He optimized the Pronterface, a graphical user interface written in Python to control 3D printer, for the Pengpod screen size and resolution such as adding some buttons and a small on-screen keyboard for manual GCode insertion.
This version of Pronterface can be downloaded from here.
Francesco also made a tablet holder that you can download on Thingiverse which can be equipped with magnets for mounting the tablet on the 3D printer.
For just 110$ Francesco has now a fully-functional touch control system that can drive the 3D printer.
"I find this solution extremely competitive in terms of price and features with the other LCD solutions available for reprap-style printers", says Francesco.
The video below is a short introduction of PengPod700.
Posted in 3D Printer Accessories
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