I’m new here and expanding my knowledge to upgrade my Leapfrog Bolt (pro). I’m thinking of implementing Klipper as my printer is not supported anylonger by the manufactorer.
Klipper seem to be the right way to go and trying to understand if someone has already tried it with the Leapfrog bolt printer?
The other route I thinking off is to go with Duet 3 6hc motherboard and reprap firmware, but that might be a more difficult route to go.
Anyway looking for advice, as the printer itself is quality parts all over and upgrading it seems the way to go.
This a good board BUT your printer has 7 motors. The Duet 3 6hc only 6 motor drivers.
You could put toolhead MCU boards to drive the extruder motors. That would leave 5 motors for the mainboard.
The only info I can find that would help with the Klipper conversion is a hand drawn pinout at
If you can identify the microcontroler on the mainboard you could probably build/flash Klipper firmware. Building a .cfg from scratch for an IDEX machine is considerable work but not exceedingly difficult.
Depending on the connectors there is high likelihood your touchscreen can be used.
It also seems the BoltPro as a embedded Linux machine. The one picture I could find of the electronics seemed to show a board similar in size/layout to a Raspberry Pi. If you can identify the brand/model it might be possible to flash it to host Klipper.
Your mainboard seems to run a 8 bit ATmega1280. It should be able to run Klipper. The newer board would be easier as the pin mapping is known and UART drivers are nice to have.
It all comes down to $ vs time. The fastest way would be new mainboard (don’t forget the plugin driver boards) and a Pi5. On the other hand it may be possible to convert to Klipper without changing any hardware,
There are a couple other boards that can handle 7 motors and 3 heaters.
As your machine is already configured to hold a RPi the integrated boards wouldn’t be my first choice
I’d recommend you start with the sample configuration for the board. They can be found here
and from the board manufacturer. I would recommend you ignore the right hand extruder and focus on getting your printer running using only the left one. Once you’ve solved that adding the IDEX functions will be easy.
First I’d see if I could salvage the Pi. If an generic OS image is available I’d install it and klipper+klipperscreen and see if the display and touch are going to function.
Then I wouldn’t be able to resist the challenge of trying to get the antique mainboard to run klipper. BUT as soon as I succeeded I’d most likely rip it out and put a new board in.
I personally don’t like socketed driver boards (I’ve actually never owned one) so I’d be tempted to put in 2 boards with 5 motor drivers. Hook the extruders to 1 and the rest to the other.
Then when system loads on the Pi bug me for being too high I’d upgrade the Pi.
BUT that is the longest path to a reliable functioning printer (and I skipped the eddy current upgrade). If you are a curious type and enjoying learning how and why things work go ahead. If you just want a printer that works buy all the hardware first and get to it.
I don’t have any personal experience with any of the candidates. I find the documentation for the MKS to be VERY slightly better. I know of no issues with any of them that would narrow the field. BTT has more market share so forums like this may be more helpful if you have issues.
Don’t forget the driver boards (7 needed). OR buy 2 BTT SKR Mini E3 (4 TMC2209 soldered on) and forget the 8 motor board. Klipper will happily sync up the 2 MCUs and run everything.
As for the Pi I’d pop for a Raspberry Pi 5. It’s considerably more powerful than absolutely necessary but that insures it’ll last several future Klipper versions.
I guess you have little Klipper experience.
If everything is true, what @cardoc and me stated your hardware is ready for the Klipper approach
Make sure it is really an
Will the 8bit chip not be a limiting factor? That why I was looking for other motherboard, but if that is not the case then maybe i will proceed with the orginal board.
No BUT unknown pin addresses and motor driver configuration are a PITA to reverse from the Marlin configuration files. Not that difficult but very tedious.
The Leapfrog github is still there and you can download the Marlin source.
The Rpi OS is OctoPi plus custom code. You could probably reverse what the GPIO daughter board connects to by examining the code. For example powerbutton.py shows the pins used for the power button and LED.
So if i put in a new board and a new sd card in the rasp pi, i can easily go back to original without anything major to install. (Just put back the motherboard and the sd card and everything is back to original) ….Im a right?
