A review of Sainsmart

The nicest thing I can say about them is ........nothing. avoid this company at all cost! I made the mistake of ordering one of their ramps 1.4 kits. the kit had "everything " you need. the lcd was bad from day one. I spent weeks trying to get an rma with no luck. the only response I got from them is when I posted negative comments on fb. they said they would get e an rma.. never got it. I even offered to show them what the problem was on Skype. I had ordered an lcd from another site and it worked fine. I did need to add jumpers on the ramps for the steppers. I will gladly give more details to anyone who wants them. Again this is not a company worth doing business with.

This is not the first time I've seen this posted here. I think I'll take your suggestion...

Don't forget about the complete lack of documentation in their "kit," and how I had to source stepper motor plugs and jumpers despite my "kit" coming with the stepper motors. I'll bite my tongue on the packing job, with five stepper motors rattling around loose in a box with a controller board, graphical LCD, and a (warped!) Mk2 heated bed. Oh, and the icing on the cake was that one of the ribbon cables for the GLCD came with a keyed connector crimped on backwards, and by the time that I caught it the on-board 5V regulator on my Megatronics 2.0 clone was fried.

I bought an Azteeg X5 mini from Panucatt last month, and the experience was completely opposite. They even offered your choice of stepper motor connectors on the board, and sold complete wiring kits as an add-on for a reasonable price. If you don't need the power of the Smoothieware X5, take a look at the X3 and X1 boards for a more traditional Arduino-based solution. Night and day difference between the two companies and products.....

I forgot to add that SainSmart's Megatronics 2.0 board is missing several key silk-screened labels from the board, and it impossible to wire without downloading the official datasheet from another manufacturer's web site to look at pictures of the board with complete pin/connector labels.....