BigTreeTech SKR2 - First Look

on today's makers mashup we're  taking the first look at the skr2   so on today's makers mashup we're going to be  looking at the skr2 now this is the next one   in line from the skr series if you've had an  skr-13 or 4 the skr2 is the next in the line of   skr 3d printer main board now this new main  board does have a lot of interesting new features   one of which is an arm cortex m4 168 megahertz  processor which also includes an fpu so this is   the first floating point unit processor on the  skr main boards now big tree tech has also made   a number of other different upgrades to this  board and kept a lot of the same features from   the 1.4 board we're going to be covering  all of these step-by-step and going over a   side-by-side comparison of the boards today and  we're going to be showing you all the different   features that this new board has and some of the  gotchas that it has as well so with all that said   let's get to work okay so here we have the skr2  and this is in the retail packaging so we're going   to open this up and you can see we have the same  cheesy usb cable that comes with all of them our   little rubber duck and we've got the big tree tech  business card let's pull the main board out and   we will see here that we've got some  jumpers in there and the main board itself   now this is a brand new one i did for the video  i did have another one of these that i opened up   uh for my own evaluation but i  wanted to open this live for you   so we're gonna pull the main board out  and we'll set that down on my silicone mat   and let's see if we can get  a better view of this board   okay so here we have the two boards side by side  now this side here you can see we have the skr   virtual 1.4 turbo and on this side we have the  skr2 now the overall form factor of these are   pretty much identical they both have the same bolt  pattern where they will attach to your 3d printer   and then one of the big changes  that i've noticed here on this   is that they now have this usb connector here  which is designed for udisc or essentially a usb   drive or hard drive you've also got an  sd slot here that is a bit different than   the turbo now on the 1.4 turbo what we had here  was an sd card that inserted all the way in   and on the skr2 what you find is that we have  a different type of sd card slot where the disk   pushes in but it is not spring loaded so that is  a complete design change now the result is that   the sd card sticks out much further and we'll  go over that in a little bit now some of the   other changes you might immediately notice is  that these larger fuses are now replaced with   these much smaller ones now that does save space  in the overall design and gives the developers a   little bit more room and as you can see they've  used this space for a variety of different chips   some of the other things that you may notice right  off the bat is that these are now removable or   detachable connections for your heater so you  can wire up the board and then wire in those   connections and then push them in these are push  fit so if you see here i'll just pull one out and there you can see that these are removable so  that will make assembly just a little bit easier   and i like this design but i don't know how these  typically last long term as far as whether or not   they stay connected my old race cube had something  similar and i never had a problem with it so along   with the heater changes you'll also note that  there is a whole row of fan pins here these are   the three controllable fan pins on the board and  each one can independently be controlled with pwm   in comparison to the skr14 which only has one  now this might be handy if you wanted to control   multiple things on your 3d printer and turn fans  on and off you could even have a large fan that   covered the entire bed of your 3d printer that  would go ahead and blow cool air and you could   control that through one of these pins now this  is a minor change but you can see we had two fan   pins here before and now we have two fan pins here  so they move things around just a little bit there   now when we talk about the end stops the end  stops are identical on both boards and then   you also have your filament detection here and  then you also have your power detection here   so those remain the same between the two boards  the bl touch connections also remain the same as   you can see these are the bl touch connections and  these are the bl touch connections here so that   way you have your servos and the probe now this is  a little bit tighter so you'll have to reference   the documentation to know what some of these  pins are because they did tighten things up here   the tft display has moved from here over to here  so that took up the space and why you can't see   on the silk screen anymore that this is for the  bl touch big treetech has also changed the wi-fi   connection in this this was the previous wi-fi  connection for an esp8266 and now they've added   a dedicated port here and a connector that will  allow you to plug in what looks like very much   like a wemos but it's an 8266 into these two pins  here and they sell that separately for the board   now the wi-fi connector is required if you're  going to install reprap firmware and you're   going to have to get the proprietary connector  versus this connector that you can pretty much   get everywhere so there's a little bit of a  change there but i would expect this component to   be very cheap considering that the board cost is  under fifty dollars so you can see big tree tech   also kept all of their closed-loop stepper  connections i don't know anyone that's really   using closed-loop steppers if you are leave me a  note down in the description i've seen a number of   videos and i have a couple of closed loop steppers  here myself but i find there's really no use on   most 3d printers for those because you can usually  adjust the current or change your printer tuning   to make that work successfully but i would be  excited to hear about those of you that are   using closed loop steppers so for those of you  using the skr and using 2209s or other drivers   with sensorless homing you're familiar with the  fact that if you're going to use sensorless homing   you need to use the 2209s here for your x and y  but then where the problem comes in is that you   had to clip the pins for your z and your extruder  if you wanted to use 2209s across the board   which pretty much committed you to never using  sensorless homing with a particular driver   big tree tech has changed this in  that there is a jumper here now   that with the configuration of setting this jumper  you no longer have to clip the pin here to use a   22.9 on these other drivers most people won't  use a 2209 and stencil is homing on the z and   obviously there's no use for that on your extruder  ports so being able to buy a package of 2209   and then not clip the pin and using just  the jumper is a great addition in my opinion   so one of the features that they've added is an  anti-reverse function so if you have a stepper   driver and you install it incorrectly  it's supposed to protect the board from   short-circuiting and causing a problem however the  documentation on the website says that it's only   available in the marlin firmware i'm not sure  how that's completed but it is nice that they   have some safety features involved i've always  found it pretty simple to install these correctly   simply because they do have these color coded  ones so unless you're buying an off-brand   driver it's really hard to hook these up without  paying any attention at all to what you're doing   some of the other additional features  here that i'm not sure how they work   but big tree tech claims that there's an  anti-thermal runaway circuit here in their   documentation now it doesn't go into how this  anti-thermal runaway circuit works but i would   rely on the firmware for thermal runaway it's nice  though if there's a hardware based version of this   and i'd like to try in a future video on testing  this to see if this works by itself or requires   the firmware to really be effective big tree  tech has kept the thermistors in the same spot on   each of these boards however the new skr2s have a  advanced protection circuit for these thermistors   now there have been a number of reports where  these thermistors will get shorted and then what   will happen is it will fry the entire board and  that advanced thermistor protection circuit is   to prevent that sort of burnout i'd be interested  to see how effective that is in the wild another   thing that was preserved was the port for the  neopixels this is the neopixel port on the 1 4 and   1 4 turbo and the same thing exists on the skr2  so let's talk about a few gotchas of this new skr2   the first one i want to talk about is this new sd  card those of you that were familiar with the 1 4   and the other skr lines will know that most of the  sd cards push in and then they're spring loaded   and come out this one is much different when you  push this in that's all you do now that does have   a nice advantage that if you had a 3d printed part  and that 3d printed part was coming up to say here   you would be able to easily pull this out so  this will work really well for an ender upgrade   where you want to replace the main board and you  have the 3d printed case it will make accessing   this sd card much easier however if you're not  using an skr the thing that you're not going to   like about this is that this does stick out this  really is waiting to get snapped off in my opinion   but i can see advantages with either option  so just be mindful that this is sticking out   a lot further than you've noticed before in  the past with the skr boards so let's talk   a little bit about some of the new features and  the documentation so the ps on feature right here   is for a power relay and this is a dedicated pin  so when the main board shuts down this sends a   signal to the relay which shuts down everything  and powers down the entire board and any other   peripherals now i've seen these sort of relays  before but it's interesting that we now have   a dedicated pin on the skr2 so one of the things  that i thought was a bit odd was that if you want   to use this u-disc connection and these jumpers  control that the wi-fi connection is then disabled   or if you're using the wi-fi connection then the  u-disk is disabled so they're mutually exclusive   components according to the documentation and if  you're using reprap firmware you have to use the   wi-fi connection which means that you can't use  this usb connection on the front so it's just   kind of an odd design choice i understand that  most users using reprap firmware will want to   do it wirelessly but i think it would be nice  to have the option to use both on this board   so the skr2 really has a much better processor on  it and it does have some new circuit protection   and a few other minor features but overall  it's for the most part very much an skr144   turbo with a couple of different additions it's  not a huge revamp of the board it is simply   an additional upgrade from what the 1 4 and 1  4 turbo were already providing so let's talk   about a couple of gotchas with this board that  hopefully this will save you a little bit of time   first when you're compiling the firmware if you're  familiar with the one four and the one three you   know that if you simply plug in the usb cable it  comes up with a flash drive that's accessible so   that way you can load firmware onto it directly  from your ide that's changed considerably in that   you no longer have that ability and  it is a footnote at the very bottom   of the skr documentation where you'll now have to  manually copy the build file over to an sd card   of which this board does not include an sd card  so make sure you buy one with it when you buy this   board you'll need to get your own sd card and then  you'll load this firmware onto it and then from   there you place it in the board and then that will  load the firmware onto the skr2 so it's a little   bit of an inconvenience and if you're doing this  for the first time you wouldn't necessarily know   that you would need to copy this file manually and  of course the ide just pops up with an error which   is very frustrating because you don't know why  it won't upload unless you read the documentation   thoroughly i ran into this myself i'm a maker i'm  just going to hack at this so when it wouldn't   upload i started doing a little research including  reading the manual and then from there i ended   up discovering that you have to copy this file  manually so a little bit of frustration there not   the end of the world but something to definitely  look out for with this new version of the board   so overall i think it's a pretty exciting new  board i'll be interested to see how it performs   hopefully we don't run into some of the bugs that  we ran into with the 1.4 early on it would be   really interesting to see how this board performs  once i get marlin loaded on that and i'll also   have some upcoming videos showing some of those uh  different things as far as compiling the firmware   and getting drivers in that installed so with  that it's going to bring the end of today's video   if you enjoyed it make sure you mash that like  button and don't forget to share and subscribe   so you don't miss our upcoming videos i also  want to put a special thanks to all of the   patreon members i did give them a little bit of  preview to some of this board uh in our discord   channel and i definitely suggest you check out our  discord channel there's a lot of great makers in   there that can help you getting this board up  and running and links for all that are down in   the description so with that i want to say thanks  again for watching and we'll see you all next time you

Channel: Makers Mashup

Views: 24,340

Keywords: 3d printing, 3d printed, 3d printer build, 3dprinter, wifi, big tree tech, biqu, bigtreetech, skr, skr2, skr v2.0, skr v2 bltouch, skr v2.0 bltouch, skr v1.4, first look, makers mashup, bigtreetech skr 2.0, marlin, reprap, reprap firmware, klipper

Id: 6vQVRnfSfF8

Length: 15min 34sec (934 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 23 2021