MANTA M8P questions.

[neon ravine]

Hi Everybody, so I started on my Voron 2.4 build (Formbot kit I believe they call it the pro?) and loving it. After having a blast building my Voron 0.2R2 (formbot kit) I quickly decided to buy the Formbot 2.4 pro kit and until now it has been quite good, frame is doen, bed and gantry finished now I am moving on to the cables and soon the electronics .
Now my question. A couple of weeks after I bought my kit Formbot introduced the Manta M8P/CB1 with CANBUS etc. After a couple of mails to Formbot they suggested (because of the shipping prices) for me to buy the new electronics (MP8/CB1 and CANBUS) at discount and they paid the shipping. So now I have 2 sets of electronics. I think I am going to go with the MANTA M8P/CB1 and CANBUS but the wiring I got in my kit is intended for the Octopus. Will this cause problems? I haven't looked into it, but am wondering if anyone has upgraded from the Octopus to the MANTA M8P and ran into issues with the cables.
Also on one site I found someone suggesting to install the DIN rails paralel to the bed extrusions, is this needed? I have the 350 kit.

[indigo crag]

wiring doesnt matter much. Open the VORON config for the manta and its pinout and plug in stuff how the config says

if u download the pinout u can use CNTRL+F to find the pins/ports

[neon ravine]

Thnx! Is it a good choice to go with the MANTA over the Octopus? I Think I will use the OCTOPUS to klipperfy the BLV MGN CUBE I have lying around catching dust. It was a DUETT with ReRap on it now.

[indigo crag]

well octopus is the most used board here on this server, so is the support for it.
manta is getting more and more famous/used but still not on the same level

if that solves your question please add the "solved" tag to the post 🙂

[earnest summit]

I'd personally pick the Octopus over the Manta, unless I was really constrained for space. They are pretty similar feature-wise, but the Manta means you need to have a RPi CM4 or BTT CB1 or such instead of a "regular-sized" RPi (or equivalent), and it all seems slightly less flexible for tinkering with. It's a pretty nice "both in one" unit though.

Also for which way to install the DIN rails: Both do work. On the 300mm 2.4 I have (which I got partially assembled, someone elses leftover project) it had the rails "lengthwise" (going front to back parallel with the bed rails, contrary to the assembly guide) and everything seems to fit well and I see no reason to change it. And on the 350mm i built, I used the LDO toolhead breakout board left over from the 300mm one, and I had to mount them like that to put the adapter board right next to the Z chain or the cable was too short. Everything seems to fit just as well either way, biggest difference seems to be where the side skirts fans are blowing air. Now I have mine aimed at the Octopus board and it seems perfectly fine (and it also seems to help cool the RPi a fair amount).

[reef meadow]

PWM fans with tacho though 🤔

[earnest summit]

Perhaps. I've never really missed having tach outputs from my fans, and if I did they'd be connected to a toolhead board anyway.

[neon ravine]

Thank you! Yeah I have seen some pictures and I think I will go fore the lengthwise approach paralel to the bed extrusions. I have a CAN beard, not sure if that changes anything, but on youtube I saw someone advise to do it that way and he had a CAN setup with a formbot 300

[neon ravine]

Hi Thank you! Yeah that was my idea also, especially when I bought it, there was not much MANTA setups going on here, but now there is quite some info. Choices Choices. 😦
For the MANTA setup I bought 6 TMC 2240 (because I am going to use CAN apparently you only nee 6 instead of 7 drivers) and for the Octopus PRO TMC 2209V1.3. But Obviously I could swap them and the fact that I need 6 instead of 7 is due to CAN which I am going to use anyway. What I like about the MANTA is less cables as with the OCTOPUS you will still have to connect the PI or BTT-PI with the Octopus etc. So I think I am going with the MANTA. If it gives me too much headache I will switch to de OCTOPUS.

[earnest summit]

With or without can doesn't really change the octopus vs manta equation much. They can both run as a can bridge, or coexist with a dedicated can interface (U2C or such). Different variants of them have different canbus connectors on the mainboard though.
Also I now want there to be a toolhead board called "Can beard" 🧔

[neon ravine]

🤣

[indigo crag]

It comes down to personal taste.
If u feel like u got enough information, please add the “solved” tag to this post so people know

[earnest summit]

As for amount of wiring, it's just two or three fewer cables with the Manta. The cable from the pi to the mainboard, and power cable to the pi you won't need. You can also skip the power cables to motor power (if you run all stepper drivers on 24V and set their power jumpers to "main power"), though the Octopus Pro also does that. Everything else (fans, thermistors, endstops, toolhead stuff, bed heater and whatnot, usually being the majority of the wiring) is pretty much the same deal regardless of mainboard.