Mini with SD Card

Hello,

I’m in the process of putting together an order for my school to hopefully purchase a Lulzbot Mini. Unfortunately, I cannot dedicate a computer to the printer solely for printing. One solution I’ve read is Octoprint with a RaspberryPi and their touchscreen. The wifi feature is nice but I’m not confident that our school IT department would approve of it; though I can work on them in the future. Essentially I want it to work the same way the LCD screen with SD card works on our Taz 4.

I’ve done some research here but haven’t found a clear answer for what I need to make this happen and if this is the most effective solution. Can anyone help point me in the correct direction?

If you can, up the budget a bit and get a taz instead. That has the LCD and SD card reader built in. As far as octoprint or similar things go, it works well and is efficient, but it also takes some advanced skills to implement.

Your it department shouldn’t have a problem with connecting the printer in, especially if you offer to let them use it occasionally. Its basically the same equivalent of attaching a standard network printer to the network, you will need a static IP address from them and whatnot, but it shouldn’t be a major concern.

I have octoprint running with my mini and it works, but i still think it would be nice to have the LCD and SD card too. In my case i either need a newer mini-rambo board or a prusa LCD adapter since i have an older mini-rambo board. All the new Mini’s should ship with the latest board so that shouldn’t be an issue for you though. I assume all you would need is to buy a reprap compatible graphical LCD like this one and plug it in. http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/221774677243?lpid=82&chn=ps&ul_noapp=true

Of course i think you would still need to upload your own modified version of the marlin firmware (to enable the LCD screen) which i don’t think is on by default. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3wj9l1hvVw

Here is a way to run it entirely from a Raspberry Pi with it’s LCD screen, no network required.

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1601055

Thanks for the help.

The issue isn’t the school network being able make it work, it’s the people that run it. :wink:

I’d love to go with a Taz but I can’t fit it in our budget.

Thanks for the link; I’ll check it out.