I got in the queue late, probably won't see the first of things until early next year. Either way, time rolls on and the Duet 3 has come out. Will there be any work to use that as an alternate or should I just plan on (another) Duet 2?
if they release the tool board in time I would go for the Duet 3 other wise there is no real advantage over Duet 2 as you will not benefit of the CAN-BUS System the duet3 has. the SOC for the web interface is a nice to have and as per Duet they are working on adding this to the newer version of the Duet2 when is again a game of patience. So maybe you being late to the queue is a good thing after all.
Some more detail: - A Duet 3 main board by itself has bed heater output, 3 high current outputs (intended for heaters), 6 low current outputs (intended for fans), and 6 stepper drivers. So with no expansion boards or tool boards, the limiting factor in a TC is the number of stepper drivers. You could drive the axes + coupler + 2 tools from the main board. That would get you started until the tool boards are available. You could use the 3HC expansion board to drive the other tools, but for direct-drive extruders the tool boards will be a better option. - The tool board is planned to be the next Duet 3 component we release, after the 3HC expansion board (which is currently on pre-order). My guess is that the first tool boards will become available in February or March - I suspect it will be some time before pre-made wiring looms for a TC with Duet 3 are available. So if you intend to use Duet 3, plan to make the wiring loom yourself, or else hack the Duet 2 wiring loom and throw some of it away. - For Duet 2 we are looking at adding firmware support for a single board computer connected to the socket on a Duet Ethernet that the Ethernet module normally plugs into. So a TC using Duet Ethernet may be convertible to use SBC. But we haven't set a date for doing this work yet. Later next year we plan to release a revised Duet 2 with a 26-way socket for connecting the SBC.
