Difference Between TinyG and TinyG2 (3D printer)

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  • January 30, 2015 at 12:40 pm #7326
    lzracer
    Member

    Hi. I am wondering about the differences between the TinyG and TinyG2 in terms of 3D printing applications. I have already read the hardware differences and understand that the G2 has more processing power. However, thus this mean better path control, looking further ahead? How significant is this improvement versus the challenges of using the G2? From what I am reading, the G2 is much more involved and has much less documentation, which would be challenging for an inexperienced person like myself.

    In addition, I understand that the TinyG2 is able to support 6 stepper motors so I would be able to do dual extruder.

    Thank you.

    January 31, 2015 at 7:47 am #7327
    cmcgrath5035
    Moderator

    These are observations, not answers.

    Are you building a 3D printer from scratch, or purchasing a kit?
    If a kit, it will likely come with some sort of controller, you could use the experience of learning that to decide how much more customization and personalization you want. You might choose then to retrofit the mechanicals with tinyG2 based control.
    TinyG and tinyG2 provide Motor and Axis controls for machines, robots, whatever you want as long as you can control them with GCode. tinyG provides 4 motor/axis controls from 6 GCode defined axies: X,Y,Z,A,B,C.
    tinyG2 will have the compute resources to implement all 6 simultaneously.
    Does you vision of a 3Dprinter require more than 4?

    While G2 documentation might seem “thin”, consider that a significant amount of the tinyG documentation applies in theory if not in precise detail. The G2 wiki is rather verbose on the important aspects of G2, which are how you could implement additions and modifications to software based-on-tinyG2.
    A full 3DPrinter implementation will be a lot more than just tinyG or tinyG2 firmware. That said, there are numerous implementations of 3D printers implemented on machine cores running tinyG right now, they are easily foun online.

    I might suggest you sit back and watch this on-line video:

    While he video is Chilipeppr centric, think of CP here as a development environment for what needs to be implemented on top of tinyG or tinyG2. Tigershark is a project based in tinyG2 firmware compatible custom hardware. In the video look for the tigershark developers thinking on what the layer of functionality surrounding tinyG2 software needs to be. Along the way, numerous state-of-the-art tools and concepts are discussed.

    From there decide if you want to go it alone or lurk around a work in progress, building along with another project and making/contributing your own ideas and implementations.

    Good Luck! You will learn a whole lot, whatever you decide to do.

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