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1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?

Posted by Zumba 
1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?
March 01, 2011 02:36AM
[reprap.org]

I want to start my build so I want to know if these electronics are still good to use. The makerbot electronics are plagued with a multitude of problems so I want to know if the reprap 1.2 is bug free and recent.
Re: 1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?
March 01, 2011 02:56AM
Quote
Zumba
The makerbot electronics are plagued with a multitude of problems

eye rolling smiley And what MULTITUDE of problems might that be? eye rolling smiley

I am only aware of one problem, EMI.
What problems are you referring to?


Bob Morrison
Wörth am Rhein, Germany
"Luke, use the source!"
BLOG - PHOTOS - Thingiverse
Re: 1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?
March 01, 2011 03:44AM
Makerbot electronics issues are well known.
Can we please stay on topic?
Re: 1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?
March 01, 2011 04:16AM
Silly me, I thought the topic was "gen3 electronics still good".

And since I use the gen3 electronics and obtain excellent print results...

tongue sticking out smiley


Bob Morrison
Wörth am Rhein, Germany
"Luke, use the source!"
BLOG - PHOTOS - Thingiverse
Re: 1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?
March 01, 2011 04:41AM
Excellent then! Thanks!
Re: 1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?
March 01, 2011 08:59AM
Gen3 works, but there is more to go wrong. Two processors to program, and they try to run a stepper extruder from a circuit designed to run a DC motor which works, but is louder than it should be. If you haven't bought anything yet, then have a look at RAMPS and Gen6 before you spend your money on Gen3.
Re: 1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?
March 01, 2011 09:07AM
Even though I have no problems with my Gen3 I would also recommend the RAMPS electronics.


Bob Morrison
Wörth am Rhein, Germany
"Luke, use the source!"
BLOG - PHOTOS - Thingiverse
Re: 1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?
March 01, 2011 10:21AM
Your Gen3 will work just fine. Use them if you got them. If you want to update them to make motion smoother and quiet just upgrade the steppers to pololu. (X,Y, Z and extruder)
What about future proofing? Does RAMPS support a second extruder?
Re: 1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?
March 01, 2011 12:35PM
It doesn't support a second extruder explicitly, but it would be easy to add. A carrier board could be added with support for another stepper driver and heater controller easily.


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Re: 1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?
March 01, 2011 01:20PM
One thing you should definitely do is get a stepper driver for your extruder. Driving the extruder stepper off of the extruder board H-bridges never worked very well and will give you no end of problems.
Re: 1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?
March 01, 2011 04:36PM
jsadusk Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> One thing you should definitely do is get a
> stepper driver for your extruder. Driving the
> extruder stepper off of the extruder board
> H-bridges never worked very well and will give you
> no end of problems.


you mean I have to get a mainboard+extruder board+stepper driver on top of the extruder board to use the extruder without issues? Is this only with RAMPS?

I had planned to use an industrial stepper driver for the 3 axes but this adds another issue I never anticipated
Re: 1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?
March 01, 2011 04:59PM
Zumba Wrote:

> you mean I have to get a mainboard+extruder
> board+stepper driver on top of the extruder board
> to use the extruder without issues? Is this only
> with RAMPS?
>
> I had planned to use an industrial stepper driver
> for the 3 axes but this adds another issue I never
> anticipated

You're getting mixed up. RAMPS is an all-in-one solution, see [reprap.org] .
If you have your own stepper drivers that's fine, you can use RAMPS without the Pololu stepper drivers and just wire your drivers to it.


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Just click "Edit" in the top-right corner of the page and start typing.
Anyone can edit the wiki!
Re: 1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?
March 01, 2011 05:03PM
The original way the gen3 electronics worked was, the separate extruder board had two h-bridges that were meant to drive DC gearmotors. When mendel moved to a stepper driven extruder, they made a software hack to drive a single stepper motor with both the h-bridges. It never worked. A better solution was to get a fourth stepper driver board (gen 3 electronics usually come with 3 standalone stepper drivers for the axies) and connect it to some pins on the mainboard which usually go to the extruder board.

What industrial stepper driver are you using?
Re: 1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?
March 01, 2011 05:11PM
its an issue with Gen3, not with RAMPS. The problem is that the Gen3 extruder driver was build to run a DC motor rather than a stepper. It can drive a stepper, essentially emulating a stepper driver in firmware, but its not an ideal solution. A better idea would be to run the step/dir connections to a real stepper driver and just use the extruder controller to run the heater on the extruder nozzle.

Or go with RAMPS, which uses a single board on top of an Arduino Mega to drive everything. This is also the route to go if you want to expand your capabilities later, since the Mega has plenty of IO pins left over.
Re: 1.2 motherboard/gen3 electronics still good?
March 02, 2011 03:02AM
jsadusk Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What industrial stepper driver are you using?


It's unnamed. I scavanged it from a CNC with broken mechanics that was getting thrown out
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