Who sells the best quality ramps 1.4 board?

I've finely got my money saved up to by the electronics for my p3steel and thinking who makes/sells the best quality ramps board

Thanks Nikki

If you want a good board, my advice is not to use Arduino/RAMPS at all, because it has too many disadvantages e.g. slow USB-over-serial connection without flow control, tricky stepper motor current adjustment, no SD card unless you add an LCD, fragile voltage regulator, 12V power limitation, and poor performance (although sufficient for a Cartesian printer). Choose Duet or Smoothieboard instead. If you can't afford those, then there is little to choose between different RAMPS boards because there is very little on the board besides a pile of connectors. OTOH it is worth spending a little more for good quality driver modules constructed on 4 layer boards, to allow more stepper motor current if you need it.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

This Spanish company claim to produce a quality product - looks good, and not expensive.

Spanish RAMPS

Match that with an original Arduino Mega board from a reputable supplier and you will have as good a RAMPS experience as it is possible to get... but a Duet is probably better!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2015 01:39PM by David J.

For Ramps I emphatically trust RRD (RepRapDiscount) - Their stuff is trustworthy and of decent quality. If your in the UK ooznest.co.uk resell RRD Ramps setups.

Ill agree with dc42's comments aswell in the most part, but all electronics are fragile. Id rather blow a Ramps or Arduino to learn that lesson the cheaper way rather than blowing a Smoothie for example, but that said, a Smoothie is more robust. For a P3 Steel ramps will do for now.

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Mutley3D
Ill agree with dc42's comments aswell in the most part, but all electronics are fragile. Id rather blow a Ramps or Arduino to learn that lesson the cheaper way rather than blowing a Smoothie for example, but that said, a Smoothie is more robust. For a P3 Steel ramps will do for now.

I'll agree with that too: if you are a novice and think you are likely to blow a board up, then writing off a cheap Arduino/RAMPS clone (or just one of the stepper motor drivers) costs you less than writing off a Duet or Smoothie.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Thanks I will go down the ramps road till I have more experience the other boards do look tempting though!

Thanks Nikki

Just be aware that with Arduino/RAMPS, you will spend a lot more time re-uploading firmware to change configuration parameters, and trying to get the motor currents right.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

For the price of a quality RAMPS board (and I am assuming an authenticate Ardunio Mega or 24V variant), I think you will be better off looking at a 32-bit controller. Smoothie Board would be the obvious choice, perhaps an Azteeg v5, though I heard Replikate or something like that is now selling Duet's for $80.

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dc42
If you want a good board, my advice is not to use Arduino/RAMPS at all, because it has too many disadvantages e.g. slow USB-over-serial connection without flow control, tricky stepper motor current adjustment, no SD card unless you add an LCD, fragile voltage regulator, 12V power limitation, and poor performance (although sufficient for a Cartesian printer). Choose Duet or Smoothieboard instead. If you can't afford those, then there is little to choose between different RAMPS boards because there is very little on the board besides a pile of connectors. OTOH it is worth spending a little more for good quality driver modules constructed on 4 layer boards, to allow more stepper motor current if you need it.

Motor current adjustment is a simple trim pot and multimeter, hardly tricky.

You can run from SD card without an LCD.

Never had a failed voltage regulator and I have 4-5 RAMPS boards.

You can buy a "RAMPS" board from RRD that supports up to 35v I believe, I know for sure you can run it at 24v.

Some performance issues, yes but really only visible with delta printers when attempting to use LCDs.

Failed driver on RAMPS = $12 or so for DRV8825 which is one of the best, failed driver on Smoothie? I heard they would replace it if you killed a driver but not sure so you could be down an axis or $150 for a new Smoothie.

Really no reason for someone new to not use RAMPS, it was the standard for a very long time and has a ton of documentation and firmware support.

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Please add your printer design to [reprap.org]

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tjb1
Motor current adjustment is a simple trim pot and multimeter, hardly tricky.

You only need to read these forums to see that a great many people have trouble doing it. Some short the driver board out in the process.

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tjb1
You can run from SD card without an LCD.

Sure you can, if you can find an SD card addon separate from an LCD.

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Never had a failed voltage regulator and I have 4-5 RAMPS boards.

Again, read the forums, there are a lot of reports of failed voltage regulators.

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tjb1
You can buy a "RAMPS" board from RRD that supports up to 35v I believe, I know for sure you can run it at 24v.

Yes, but look at their prices! $59 for a board that is basically a pile of connectors and a few not-very-good mosfets. You still need to add the drivers and the Arduino (or Taurino if you want to run it for 24V) - and then you are spending more than a 32-bit boards costs.

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tjb1
Really no reason for someone new to not use RAMPS, it was the standard for a very long time and has a ton of documentation and firmware support.

It's old, out of date and high time it was retired in favour of something better, with a faster processor, native USB port, decent voltage regulator, and software control of stepper motor currents. Keep the plug-in drivers if you like, that and the fact you can pick up Arduino/RAMPS clones for very little are the only things going for it IMO.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2015 11:57AM by dc42.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

SD RAMPS adapter $3

I get you LOVE the duet... It's a Great Product. You have done some Great work with it's firmware. Thank You...but the hard sale is getting a bit old. As with everything It'll live/die on its own merits... No need to hard sale it every time.

Sometimes we don't need a Ferrari to drive 5 miles to work...

Actually, I think there is room for a cheaper 32-bit board than the Duet - one that would cost less than Arduino/RAMPS if it were ever made in the same quantities, but without the weaknesses of that system.

I see the same old issues with Arduino/RAMPS coming up again and again on these forums, i.e. problems with motor currents, jerky printing, blown voltage regulators, insufficient performance on deltas and CoreXY (although the CoreXY issue may just be a bug in Marlin). And I think it's really naff to have to rebuild the firmware every time you want to change a configuration parameter, or (even worse) have to build new thermistor tables if you have a thermistor that isn't already catered for. It really is time to move on and make things easier for the less experienced Reprappers.

Maybe I'll get time to finish laying out my design for a low cost 32-bit board with plug-in drivers sometime. Target price btw is GBP39.95 or USD59.95 - and that's with having a relatively small batch manufactured.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2015 12:28PM by dc42.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

I agreed with madmike8, 4 of my printers use mega and ramps Chinese boards, for 30 dollars I get everything including drv8825 drivers and LCD screen with sd card reader, not a single problem with it and it does the job.

Beginners should start with something that will be easy to replace if damaged. Once you learn your lessons you can move to better boards.

Over 2 years now printing and I haven't found the need to replace my trusty and quite cheap Chinese clone mega and ramps setting.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2015 12:33PM by ggherbaz.

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dc42

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tjb1
Motor current adjustment is a simple trim pot and multimeter, hardly tricky.

You only need to read these forums to see that a great many people have trouble doing it. Some short the driver board out in the process.

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tjb1
You can run from SD card without an LCD.

Sure you can, if you can find an SD card addon separate from an LCD.

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Never had a failed voltage regulator and I have 4-5 RAMPS boards.

Again, read the forums, there are a lot of reports of failed voltage regulators.

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tjb1
You can buy a "RAMPS" board from RRD that supports up to 35v I believe, I know for sure you can run it at 24v.

Yes, but look at their prices! $59 for a board that is basically a pile of connectors and a few not-very-good mosfets. You still need to add the drivers and the Arduino (or Taurino if you want to run it for 24V) - and then you are spending more than a 32-bit boards costs.

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tjb1
Really no reason for someone new to not use RAMPS, it was the standard for a very long time and has a ton of documentation and firmware support.

It's old, out of date and high time it was retired in favour of something better, with a faster processor, native USB port, decent voltage regulator, and software control of stepper motor currents. Keep the plug-in drivers if you like, that and the fact you can pick up Arduino/RAMPS clones for very little are the only things going for it IMO.

SD adapters without the LCD are widely available and if someone can't manage to turn a screw to set a voltage than maybe building their own printer isn't something they should be doing. The failed voltage regulators are most likely from everyone buying the $5 mega board off ebay. All of my RAMPS use the stock mosfets and polyfuses and I have never had an issue with either one that is supposedly the problem of all RAMPS boards.

Why do you need a faster processor when RAMPS will do just fine for 90% of printers? The only thing I've seen that would cause RAMPS to be dropped is lack of drivers and the speed when using and LCD with delta.

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Please add your printer design to [reprap.org]

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tjb1
if someone can't manage to turn a screw to set a voltage than maybe building their own printer isn't something they should be doing.

That's a rather contemptuous attitude. All sorts of people build repraps, some with a lot of mechanical experience and zero electronics experience. Software control is also much more convenient. I've just reduced an extruder stepper motor current to resolve a problem with the extruder chewing up filament. I'm glad I didn't have to remove the bed to access the controller and mess around with pots and multimeters.

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tjb1
Why do you need a faster processor when RAMPS will do just fine for 90% of printers?

The fact that the atmega2560 is more than double the price of a much more capable 32-bit processor (with around 8x the performance, 6x the RAM and a native USB port) tells me that Arduino/RAMPS is an obsolescent design.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

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dc42

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tjb1
if someone can't manage to turn a screw to set a voltage than maybe building their own printer isn't something they should be doing.

That's a rather contemptuous attitude. All sorts of people build repraps, some with a lot of mechanical experience and zero electronics experience. Software control is also much more convenient. I've just reduced an extruder stepper motor current to resolve a problem with the extruder chewing up filament. I'm glad I didn't have to remove the bed to access the controller and mess around with pots and multimeters.

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tjb1
Why do you need a faster processor when RAMPS will do just fine for 90% of printers?

The fact that the atmega2560 is more than double the price of a much more capable 32-bit processor (with around 8x the performance, 6x the RAM and a native USB port) tells me that Arduino/RAMPS is an obsolescent design.

You don't need electronics experience, I am saying the process for doing it is so basic that if you can't handle it then you shouldn't be building a printer. It's not checking a diode or voltage drop or capacitance, you put black to ground and red to screw and read voltage. Turn screw a bit and repeat until you get the desired number that you have to calculate anyway to enter in the firmware. Most of the time the voltage is a set and forget adjustment.

Your whole argument for getting rid of RAMPS is it being old and not powerful enough yet we have nothing new pushing firmwares to require Smoothie or other arm boards. I would take a shot and say you could run a delta with an LCD without a problem if the firmware was started fresh for a delta. There is nothing wrong with ramps for a beginner and from my cursory look at the Smoothie page I would say it is much easier to wire as well since everything is labelled on the board and many well written guides.

I have no problem with Smoothie, in fact I just bought one during the group buy and plan on moving my delta to it so I can run an LCD. I can't take advantage of features like octoprint or wifi control because of the way my apartment handles wifi. I also have a Rambo and the 4-5 RAMPS boards.

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Please add your printer design to [reprap.org]

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tjb1
Your whole argument for getting rid of RAMPS is it being old and not powerful enough..

That is only ONE of my arguments for replacing Arduino/RAMPS. Read the whole thread.

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tjb1
...yet we have nothing new pushing firmwares to require Smoothie or other arm boards.

Marlin is stuck in the dark ages when it comes to configuring printer parameters, or adding new thermistors - in part because of the constraints of running on slow processors. I am hopeful that MarlinForDue will eventually get rid of the shackles.

No hardware engineer in their right mind would now design a 3D printer control board around a slow and expensive 8-bit processor. No software engineer in their right mind would write firmware that is so hard to configure as Marlin, unless they were forced to because of platform constraints. I'm not saying there is a good alternative to Arduino/RAMPS at the budget end of the market yet (perhaps the AZSMZ Mini comes close), but it's time there was.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Theres nothing like a good strong debate - I wont bother with quotes of quotes of quotes

RAMPs/Arduino are NOT out of date. They are a reliable staple of RepRap. There is far more performance headroom in a Ramps/Arduino setup than people give credit for. Its all about setup. And the printers themselves are not really advancing. Only being made more mechanically stable. The principle control system demand is not increasing. Functionality demand by way of dual and triple extruders is, however the 8-bit hardware still handles this no issues. Only Deltas suffer a high computational requirement due to floating point innacuracies on the 8-bit platform. In fact the degree of microstepping used on cart based machines is also debatable/excessive.

As for people blowing things up through adjustment - Often the easiest mistakes are the most common, in this case, fried electronics or drivers through rushing and forgetting often one small step, like using a ceramic or plastic screwdirver for adjustment of pots, or unplugging main power before doing this adjustment. And often for novices and learners the only way of learning these mistakes is a hit on the wallet and a few hours down time.

All my own machines have Ramps/Arduino (or 8 bit derivative) - Uploading firmware is easy as Pi and quick. In normal operation, i never need to reupload. Only if experimenting, in which case if you develop and test etc you shoul dbe aware of what your doing, otherwise you quickly will do with another hit on the wallet. As for SDCard readers, these come with good kits, and are easy to deploy - LCD not required.

It would also appear that the RAMPS-FD and 32 bit Arduino-Due pairing should make this basic architecture competitive with most anything out there. Myself, I like the modular concept - processor, RAMPS card, and drivers that gives better economies of scale in components, and likely also less expensive oopsies . . .

- Tim

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2015 07:50PM by tadawson.

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Mutley3D
Theres nothing like a good strong debate - I wont bother with quotes of quotes of quotes

Thanks for joining in!

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Mutley3D
RAMPs/Arduino are NOT out of date. They are a reliable staple of RepRap. There is far more performance headroom in a Ramps/Arduino setup than people give credit for. Its all about setup.

And that's part of the problem. When we only had slow (by modern standards) 8-bit processors with slow USB-over-serial interfaces, and RepRappers were a small group of technically competent individuals, complicated setup was OK. But 3D printer kits are moving towards being a mass market. Given that we can do better than Arduino/RAMPS from performance, cost and ease-of-setup points of view, there is really no excuse for thinking that Arduino/RAMPS is where the budget market should remain.

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Mutley3D
And the printers themselves are not really advancing.

The facilities offered by 3D printer firmware in the 32-bit world are advancing very rapidly - although if you've only used Arduino/RAMPS/Marlin, you won't be aware of that.

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Mutley3D
Only Deltas suffer a high computational requirement due to floating point innacuracies on the 8-bit platform.

It's not FP inaccuracies that are the problem, it's the lack of compute power. With Marlin on a delta, you have to compromise between print accuracy and printing speed, by adjusting the delta segments/second. With purpose written 32-bit software, delta segmentation can be avoided altogether. Marlin also has problems with high speeds on CoreXY printers, according to reports on the CoreXY forum.

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Mutley3D
In fact the degree of microstepping used on cart based machines is also debatable/excessive.

Personally I've only used 16x microstepping; but reading other posts, I think a lot of people would disagree with you because higher microstepping makes the printer quieter. A luxury perhaps, but in a mass market luxury features are important.

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Mutley3D
As for people blowing things up through adjustment - Often the easiest mistakes are the most common, in this case, fried electronics or drivers through rushing and forgetting often one small step, like using a ceramic or plastic screwdirver for adjustment of pots, or unplugging main power before doing this adjustment. And often for novices and learners the only way of learning these mistakes is a hit on the wallet and a few hours down time.

My point is that novices should not have to learn these mistakes the hard way, when they are so easily avoided through better electronics design. I adjust my stepper motors currents in software, while the printer is live, so that I can see the effect immediately. I wouldn't want it any other way - it would just waste my time if I had to power down, find a ceramic screwdriver (which hardly any novice has anyway), find a multimeter, adjust, power up, re-home and perhaps re-calibrate - only to find that I haven't got the current right yet.

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Mutley3D
All my own machines have Ramps/Arduino (or 8 bit derivative) - Uploading firmware is easy as Pi and quick. In normal operation, i never need to reupload.

When I built my original Mini Kossel kit with Arduino/RAMPS, I lost count of the number of times I had to edit the config file, rebuild/upload the firmware, and rehome the printer during calibration. With RepRapFirmware on the Duet, I can change any of the parameters and see the result instantly, without resetting the machine. That's the difference between a system designed for early adopters of a novel technology (which is where Arduino/RAMPS/Marlin has got stuck), and a system designed for a much larger market in which most users expect the system to just work.

I enjoy a lively debate too!

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2015 05:01PM by dc42.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

dc42 re: floating point innacuracies are due to rounding and approximations due to lack of computing power/capability. and yes slowing down speed will inevitably help.

dc42 re: "1/16 for quieter motors".....but is this optimal..?

a good RAMPs/Arduino is a good entry level piece of kit and does the job well but although, if its for a delta build machine it might make sense to go straight in at 32bit. fwiw my next board will be a smoothie. I think its unfair to describe RRDs product as above though , they are well made and reliable when correctly assembled/wired/cooled etc, but yes a poor cheap fleabay will likely have crap mosfets and be a crap pile, failing even when well fitted. i agree.

RRD (or Ooznest in the uk that i know of) for decent ramps/arduino kits. and if one fails, its usually because on or the other failed, stepper drivers easily replaced to although as is possible, blowing an arduino and all drivers can be painful

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2015 10:03PM by Mutley3D.

I have high respect for all the inputs, members of this forum are putting in!!
Great info and I have read all the ping- pong comments.....
But aren't we forget something here?
The person is asking....
Who sells the best quality ramps 1.4 board?

And not the differences of boards!
We should move the discussion elsewhere with proper title so who has the point of view could express and discuss them in depth! Right?
Hope my comment will not offend anyone here, because everyone who has post in here has great contribution to this community!!!
Cheers!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2015 12:42AM by Bobyni.

Best Quality?

That means the most features and the least bugs.

Any ramps board that supports LCD has masses of features already, i presume you want a 12v reprap and motors.

for 12v i can say mks 1.2 is awesome. no bugs, lots of features. i have it running with a 24v psu going to the heatbed controlled by it.

no one has done a roundup and there are no voting and reviews sites for them, so you won't get an answer to your question.

I have to agree more with dc42. I'm gonna build my own reprap very soon and wasn't sure what electronics to take. Ramps 1.4, or something like the duet. After all I think I go for the duet. They are more in line with the future (32 bit) and are not much more than the real ramps (105€ instead of 70€)

The biggest reasing I was switching between those two was because I rather blow a veeery cheap ramps1.4 than a duet. But those ramps+mega from ebay for 20€ have bad mosfets, bad fuses,... And I don't want to be messing with that all the time, because it's a waste of time.

I would rather blow a 20€ board then one from 105€, ok, that's true, BUT the chances you blow a Duet are allot less then with a Ramps. You just put it in a case, and you don't have to touch it anymore, everything is software controlled. Wich makes it safer. After all I go for the duet like stated above, it's simple, all in one, controllable from the software and is 32-bit. 105€ for this kind of a board is not much at all, if it can save you 10+ hours...

FWIW I have been in communication with a supplier of Duet boards, and he said that the number of Duets he had to replace because of blown drivers was tiny. The important thing is that users make sure that the stepper motor connections are sound, and not to connect or disconnect them with power applied.

OTOH if you mix up your hot end wires so that you put 12V into the thermistor inputs, you will blow up the Duet.

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But aren't we forget something here?
The person is asking....
Who sells the best quality ramps 1.4 board?

I don't know about the "best" RAMPS, however the RAMPS I received with my original Mini Kossel kit from Think3DPrint3D had good (IRLB8743) mosfets, with a heatsink on the one for the heated bed. The driver modules were 4-layer A4982-based ones, which are less prone to overheating than the usual 2-layer A4988 ones. So for anyone in Europe looking for a good RAMPS board and drivers, I can recommend Think3DPrint3D.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].