LulzBot Mini shared by a Mac Mini

Hi All,

I just got a refurbished Mini from IT-Works (Thanks Ben). I have a mac mini I use as a media server that is located near the resting place of the LulzBot Mini and I am wondering if there is a way to network the printer so I can print to it from my macbook pro. I have read people are using raspberry pi’s to enable printing without a computer connected but I am not finding much on networking a mini.

thanks for the help,
Luke

You’ll want to read up on Octoprint and Astroprint to see how to do that. There are some printable raspberry pi cases out there that will fit a Mini side panel. Basically you plug the Mini usb cable into the raspberry pi running octoprint, then plug a network cable into it, and access your printer controls as a web page service.

I’d strongly suggest investing in a Raspberry Pi 3 and using OctoPi on that (very easy to setup), but if you really want to use the Mac Mini, you can actually run OctoPrint directly on OSX/macOS. There are quite a few steps, but it’s documented here https://github.com/foosel/OctoPrint/wiki/Setup-on-Mac if you really want to try it. It should work fine with the Mac Mini, but much less of a hassle on a Raspberry Pi.

  • Adam

thanks guys. I may just start by installing CURA on the mini and remote desktop into the machine. If its not smooth enough ill go the raspberry pi rout.

You should be able to use built-in screen sharing features of macOS instead of having to buy extra hardware.