Octoprint with Prusa i3 MK3S

Duration: January 2022 - February 2022
Summary

I equipped 4 Prusa i3 MK3S printers with Raspberry Pi 4bs running Octoprint in our Robotics Lab.

Overview

For this project, I followed the guide A sleek Prusa i3 MK3S Raspberry Pi 4 Upgrade by Dennis Irrgang, with a few tweaks of my own.
My project differed from Dennis' in:

  1. the power supply; my setup used PoE to power the RPi
  2. cooling; my setup includes a Noctua fan with a duct to maximize airflow directly to the SoC

For these modifications, I used a Waveshare PoE HAT (Type D) and Noctua NF-A4x10 FLX fan for each printer. I also designed and printed a fan duct and custom breathable adddon hat for the case. This fan duct is designed specifically to allow a 40 x 40 mm fan to mount to the 30 x 30 mm space on the Waveshare PoE Hat. I also modified the case to better fit the RPi 4b.

Images


I attached a 120 µm mesh to the breathable addon hat to prevent dust from entering the case using a soldering iron to push points of the mesh into the plastic.


The addon hat also features magnets in place of screws to provide quick and easy access to the RPi.

Results

With the cooling modifications, the RPis were approximately 10 °C cooler than stock, idling at 38 °C, and peaking at 49 °C on average.

Files

Feel free to download my project files.