RepRap 3D printers with multiple extruders are becoming increasingly common however the majority tend to have dual extruders rather than 3 or more. Released in December 2013, the Duet 0.6 is now an established 32bit 3d printing electronics solution that has proven to be popular and versatile. With this in mind we decided to extend the Duet 0.6 to support two extruders on one board and developed the Duet 0.8.5.
The new features are highlighted below and importantly it features the same expansion header as the Duet 0.6 so it supports a Duex4 expansion board. A Duet 0.8.5 + a Duex4 gives support for 6 extruders. That's 9 stepper channels and 7 heater channels including the heated bed!
The new features are highlighted below and importantly it features the same expansion header as the Duet 0.6 so it supports a Duex4 expansion board. A Duet 0.8.5 + a Duex4 gives support for 6 extruders. That's 9 stepper channels and 7 heater channels including the heated bed!
Duet V0.8.5 (picture updated 20160111 to show polarised pin headers)
New Features in Duet 0.85
- A second extruder channel (E1).
- A second PWM fan output.
- E1 motor current controlled by the SAM3X8E DAC0 channel. Thanks to David Crocker for this idea.
- Two "always on" fan pins.
- Dedicated header for the PanelDue.
- Dedicated probe header, supports many different probes including David Crocker's mini IR probe.
- Additional pins accessed on the SAM3X8E processor to enable the new features.
Improvements from 0.6
- Lower noise components and circuit layout used for the 5V BUCK circuit.
- Complete ground plane - reduce noise and potential ground loops.
- Switches and power indication LEDS moved to the same edge as the SD/USB/Ethernet for simpler access and indication.
- VSSA now present on the expansion header. This combined with the changes to the Duex4 0.2a mean that analogue ground is now used for all 7 temperature measurement channels.
Other Changes
Not necessarily improvements but changes to simplify the board or reduce component count:
- USB is now a simple USB 2.0 device, rather than a Host/Device as before. This was never used on the 0.6 and removing it reduces component count.
- Removed the IDC headers for the heatbed and motor/hotend wiring loom. The footprints took up valuable board space and I am not aware of a printer that used a complex loom terminated in a single IDC.
- The FAN MOSFETs are now PMV40UN2R FETs which are lower power but more than adequate for fans and other lower current devices. They also don't use a second mosfet to increase turn on voltage, like in the 0.6 design, as that was overkill. This means they are inverting (use M106 I1 to change)
- Extruder thermistor headers and fan headers moved towards the middle of the board to allow for the same board size as the Duet 0.6 to be used.
- In order to support a 7th heater channel (Extruder 6) along with two PWM fans the PWM pin had to be shared. This means that you can't run 6 extruders AND 2 PWM fans at the same time.
Board Connections
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| Duet 0.8.5 Connections |
The expansion header pins have changed slightly as shown in the picture below:
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| Duet 0.8.5 Expansion header pins back view |
Opensource Hardware
In the same manner as the Duet 0.6 the Duet is based on the Arduino Due, and the KiCAD source files are released under the CERN OHL 1.2 license, which means you are free to modify them and distribute products based on them, as long as you share your modifications under the same license. We believe this is a much more appropriate license for Open Hardware than a Creative Commons/GPL or other licence based around copyright.
The Duet 0.8.5 source files are available on GitHub so feel free to fork the project and modify away!
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| Duet 0.8.5 developed with the Open Source KiCAD EDA suite |
KiCAD has continued to improve since I started to develop hardware over 2 years ago. It is a powerful, Open Source design suite which means that the source files for the Duet are open for anyone to use and so is the software needed to modify them.
Firmware & Webinterface
The Duet 0.8.5 runs RepRapFirmware, the linked github page has the Think3dPrint3d latest version based on David Crocker's fork. I have made the changes required to support the additional pins, extruder multiple PWM fans and hopefully this will be merged into David's fork shortly.
The firmware has also improved substantially since the Duet 0.6. The majority of these improvements Think3dprint3d can take no credit for as they are the work of the RepRap community.
David Crocker has done excellent work in optimising the firmware and implementing segmentation free support for Delta printers. Old-style firmwares rely on segmentation to calculate movement but this can add printing artefacts. On David's fork the delta transform is calculated for each step, i.e. it's segmentation free, and thus the quality is higher. This is only possible due to the higher processing speed of 32 bit electronics.
Christian Hammacher (on the RepRap forums as zombiepantslol) has done a fantastic job continuing to improve the web interface:
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| Updated RepRapFirmware Web Interface with 6 extruders - Large Screen (PC) view |
I am now also using the webinterface from my mobile, here are a couple of screenshots of that:
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| RepRapFirmware Web Interface on Mobile |
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| RepRapFirmware Web Interface on Mobile - Print page |
Production & Availability
The Duet 0.8.5 boards are being produced for us in the UK by a local electronics manufacturer. The first batch is finished and available on our website:
Also available as a bundle with the Duex4, and I will be very excited to see someone using all 6 extruders!
