Hi, (before I start I’d best say I’m not new to 3D printers, and I have two other printers at home an Ormerod and a Prusa i3). Ok I have a few questions about upgrading the Dual’s Firmware. I’m using the Makerware 3.8.1.231 software, and recently upgraded the Firmware to 7.5. I’ve only had the printer a few days now, but it’s x3g files aren’t anything like the GCode I use on the other printers. Anyway, I plan to Re-install the Firmware starting back on 7.1 (which is what it seemed to come with) because I’ve found I can no longer read SDHC cards. It reads the 2Gb SD card that came with the machine fine, just won’t see SDHC cards any more. I suspect it might have been me upgrading to 7.5 and not realizing that actually beeped etc when the upgrade had completed. Is any one else running 7.5, and are you having issues with SDHC cards. The printers been running fine with 7.5 apart from that. Also I’ve always had an issue with the Bed temp reading being 20’ higher than it actually is. I hope to install SallyFish once I have this SD card problem behind me, but it’s just a case of How at the moment…?

Thanks in advance for your help guys.

Kim…

(PS You will find some of my designs up on Thingyverse if your interested…Try 1133469)

You need to install sailfish this is because .5 firmware is designed to make about 3-D printer is not CTC clones once updated to sailfish it willread any size SD card fine the only problem is makerbot 7.5 does not support the CTC printer that includes any firmware form makerbot desktop that’s why it will not read the SD card also sailfish has a variety of other features than stock, btw you can’t downgrade to ctc 7.1 as its a firmware only they have so sailfish is your only option.

Hi Dan, thanks for the info… Ok I wanted to put Sailfish on the machine in any case. Your right about the 7.1 not being available, I re-installed 7.0, then each upgrade back to 7.5. The SD card still didn’t want to know SDHC cards, but otherwise it works fine.

Can I install Sailfish via the Makeware software? I think I saw someone had set the machine type to replicator, installed a Sailfish version, then changed the machine type to the Dual and carried on with the final install. Any advice warmly welcomed… Many thanks for your reply.

Kim…

Sailfish can only be installed using repG40r30 or above, available on thingiverse, you can only use the newest version due to some changes to the internets. The update URL will not work on any version earlier then r30.

You installed MBI firmware onto your clone. You are experiencing the bugs in the firmware not any incompatibility, everything you described is normal for the MBI firmware.

#1 the firmware is NOT tied to MakerBot anymore and has been open source since day one. You were never dependent on MakerBot.
#2 Sailfish is the most optimized 8 bit AVR firmware out there. It’s mature, tested proven and has more features than the competition.
#3 The X3G and S3G protocol and conversion process has been steadily supported by the open source community- JUST USE IT.

Time to sit down and read the manual http://www.sailfishfirmware.com/doc/

Features of Sailfish:
The Sailfish firmware is an enhanced firmware for Makerbot printers containing features intended for advanced users. These features fall into several broad categories:

Advanced printing features such as changing the printing speed and temperature while printing,
More robust error handling,
Additional features such as support for high capacity SD cards and file folders on SD cards,
Support for Core-XY and H-Gantry, and
Auto-leveling support.

The bot’s firmware is the software which resides within the bot and controls the bot’s behavior. It is the software which receives printing instructions from MakerWare, ReplicatorG, SD card files, and other desktop programs and then executes them to create your 3D print. Sailfish has existed since late 2011 and is based upon a combination of the RepRap Marlin and MBI Gen 4 firmwares. Sailfish was originally known as the “Jetty Firmware”. In early Fall of 2012, MBI adopted the core acceleration and printing control code of Sailfish into their own firmware. However, MBI’s firmware does not include many of the more advanced features of Sailfish – in part because of the limited program space in Makerbots and MBI’s need to use much of that space for “first run” features.

What follows is a description of features found in Sailfish which are not part of the MBI firmware for Makerbots. A good number of these features are also found in RepRap firmwares; they are not necessarily unique to Sailfish.

Advanced Printing Features

Change the printing speed from the LCD display while printing.
Change the extrusion temperature from the LCD display while printing.
At the end of a print, the total print time and the amount of filament used is displayed.
At the end of a print, you can elect to repeat the same print: no need to go through screens reselecting the file. Quite useful when asking an associate, spouse, or child to repeat a print several times.
“Ditto” printing for dual extruder printers: simultaneously print the same model twice using both extruders or do other clever tricks.
Override temperatures found in gcode with different temperatures: useful for redoing a series of prints at different temperatures without having to reslice.
Control whether or not heaters are left active when prints are paused.
Jog the axes when a print is paused so as to make mid print filament loading easier. The axes’ position is automatically restored when the print is resumed.
On printers with a most two heaters, a line of the LCD display provides constantly updated build statistics: filament used, percent complete, elapsed time, estimated time remaining, and current height.
Much finer control of the height to pause at with Pause @ ZPos: MBI’s firmware only allows specification to the nearest millimeter whereas Sailfish allows 0.01 mm resolution.
Multiple Pause @ ZPos positions may be specified in gcode.
When used in conjunction with GPX, automatic compensation for different filament diameters when placing Pause @ ZPos commands within your gcode.
Support for Emergency stop and Pause stop hardware. Pause stop hardware allows a print to gracefully be paused when hardware detects a temporary problem such as filament running out or being snagged. Once the condition is resolved, the print may be resumed.

SD card features

Support for file folders on SD cards.
Support for high capacity SD cards (e.g., 4, 8, 16, 32 GB, etc.).
Support for the FAT-32 file system.
Support for the Toshiba AirFlash Wi-Fi card: send files to your bot over Wi-Fi.
SD card error detection and correction.
Long filenames are allowed; long file names scroll in the display so that the entire name can be viewed. MBI’s firmware limits file names to 15 characters, not including the mandatory, case-sensitive “.x3g” extension.
Ability to save and restore the bot’s internal settings – onboard preferences – to an SD card. Backup your bot’s settings or quickly transfer them to another bot.

Robustness features

Track your filament usage: storage and recall of used filament counters; filament “odometers”.
Improved error handling and reporting of heater errors. For example, on bots with more than one heater, the heater errors indicate which heater the error message refers to. No more trying to figure out if it’s your HBP or extruder (and which one) which is failing.
MBI’s firmware does not return errors when printing over USB. This typically results in gcode instructions being dropped. Often that is benign and merely results in a slight printing blemish (i.e., a dropped G1 command), but in some instances can and will result in prints being ruined. For example, there’s been cases of commands to re-enable stepper motor currents being lost, and commands to turn off extruders lost. Sailfish actually returns errors when printing over USB so that MakerWare and RepG can intelligently handle the problem.
Improved SD error messages: finer detail on what failed with the SD card (http://sailfishfirmware.com/v73-v43.html#sderror). MBI’s firmware often produces a message indicating that the SD card is not formatted as FAT-16 when the actual error is something else entirely. This because the firmware lumps about five or six different error cases into one.
Additional safety features: http://sailfishfirmware.com/v74-v44.html#safety.

General features

Better print quality. Sailfish is careful to run critically timed operations at the highest priority in the microprocessor. Unfortunately, not so in the MBI firmware. When printing very fine detail at high print speeds, this can make a difference. Also, when printing over USB, the fact that the firmware returns error messages actually leads to improved print quality. When no error message is returned as is the case with MBI’s firmware, MakerWare and RepG actually pause waiting for a response and then just resend the same command which may then fails again, leading to another pause. These pauses can leave the bot sitting idle, producing a small, extra blob of plastic on the print and visible as pimples when they occur on the outer surface. By returning error messages, these pauses are avoided.
Improved leveling script: allows you to move the extruder to any location over the build platform as many times as you want and however you want. No more checking just a few predefined points.
Extruder hold feature for use with 3mm extruders which have higher internal pressure and thus more significant problems when the gcode gratuitiously disables the extruder motors. This feature allows gcode commands to disable the extruder to be ignored. (Some slicers like to generate many such commands.)
More precise and stable heater control: MBI’s firmware introduces an additional +/- 1C of measurement error in their PID control.
Support for auto-leveling: requires printers with ATmega 2560 processors and a Z height probe.
Support for Core-XY and H-Gantry drive systems: the Core-XY drive system offers superior mechanical performance.

technicly you are correct, about firmware 7.1, but your bot came with firware 7.2. It can be downloaded here. . The clone 7.2 firmware has some bits of sailfish baked in, notably the larger then 2G SD card code. But you really want to install sailfish 7.7

Hi Adam / Dan, thank you both for committing so much time to answering my questions. It’s very kind of you and much appreciated…Honestly…

Yes Ok, I have always had the wish to install SailFish, but I understood from others that the route of doing it was to first install the MakerBot software to 7.5 level, and then migrate to SailFish by altering the ReplicatorG-0040 Download site to the Jettyfish site. Well I did that. (I’m currently working on a ship on a Large river here in Wales (UK) so am on mobile internet, not at home on my Broadband :(… Now after updating the download site in Replicator I first get a Warning window saying Firmware xml Not Found… Then in Rep at the Bottom I get IOException retrieving version file at http://download.replicat.org/update.xml

So I’m wondering if it’s because I’m on Mobile internet… I will be home in two weeks but hoped to get this sorted before then. I tried turning off the FireWall, but that didn’t help. I had hoped there was another way to do the change to SailFish, like downloading the file, and then using Rep to upload it to the printer…???

I’m lucky the printer is working pretty well at the moment with 7.5, but it’s not quite right… And really looking forward to getting SailFish installed finally.

The Site I’m using for the update is:-

http://jettyfirmware.yolasite.com/resources/release/firmware.xml

but that doesn’t seem to be working. I tried resetting RepG, and it downloaded all the MakerBot firmware updates within moments. But when I change back to Jetty… Nothing… IOExemption is all I get…

Thanks guys…

Kim…

You need to make sure your on rep g 40 r 30 I think that’s what it’s called it took me a week to realise I was on r28 and it couldn’t get the xml

This is correct. Due to changes in the way cloudflare caches pages, some changes had to be made to the update API. Follow the link in the first line of my reply, there is a link to the thingiverse page hosting RepG. You will want r33 it is the newest.

Yow!!! Problems Solved…

Thank you very, very much guys for all your time and effort in trying to get me on SailFish.

The fundamental thing I was doing wrong was using the version of ReplicatorG 0040 that came with the Printer (which seems to have been setup for MakerBot). Once I installed the version from the Sail Fish site it then came up with the SailFish updates.

An installation video I watched on UTube suggested installing 7.6 even thou there is a 7.7 now, so I plumbed for the 7.6…

It all seems to work… Even the SD card is working. MANY MANY Thanks guys…

I will sit down later and start trawling throu the SailFish manual later.

I don’t know if this will help you, but I designed a Fan Mount that moves the Extruder Fans UP out of the way of the Grub screw we need to twiddle to adjust the Nozzle height. It makes adjusting the Nozzle height a breeze…

Here’s the link to my design… Hope it helps you:- CTC Dual Extruder Fan Mounts by KimBrown - Thingiverse

Thanks again,

Kim…

is there a way to upgrade to 7.7 with out internet

i have 7.4 just now

I can snail mail you a flash card with the hex’s? How without internet are you? Are you just having trouble getting repG to connect to sailfish update servers? Use the new version from thingiverse.

i only have a mobile for internet the pc is a stand alone forprinting

and my laptop wont keepthedriver in for the printer so cant update that way.can you not email the hex and i can get a card ?

thank you for your help

Hi,
I have a CTC Twin maker, I have the “not reading SD card” issue that lots of others seem to have, I would like to upgrade to Sailfish as that seems to be the thing to do but am a bit worried if it goes wrong I will not be able to go back.
Is firmware 7.4 available if I do need to go back.

Regards,
Bob

Resurrecting an old post, but did the OP find out why the bed temperature was over reading by 20 deg ?
Mine is the same after installing Sailfish. During installation the bed heated up high and I thought maybe this had damaged something ?