Why no affordable 32bit electronics

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ekaggrat
@dc42

can you point me to the github of your low cost 32 bit board . I cant seem to find it.. maybe it will be good to prototype it.

thanks

[github.com]

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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 use the Smoothieboard (original) extensively in our printers (Kikai Labs and i can vouch that it’s a great board, well worth the extra price difference. It has real support behind it, it will evolve (active R&D), and it uses a very nice firmware (smoothieware). It is always tempting to go cheap, but that’s one way to kill a very valuable developer and company… With MKS I saw very poor support, in contrast, just some diagrams posted online. The commercial and technical help is top-notch, I say again.

Paucus

@dc42

thanks. but i was looking at making one but this board needs some work. anyways..

Wouldn't the Replikeo Duet 0.6 at $50 be considered pretty affordable?

Even at $135 from Filastruder the Duet 0.8.5 is not bad I think. Unless you are getting super cheap questionable quality parts the $150 dollar range does not seem unreasonable.

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WZ9V
Wouldn't the Replikeo Duet 0.6 at $50 be considered pretty affordable?

Those have a very poor quality reputation. So you might end up having to buy a couple to get a good one.

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ElmoC

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WZ9V
Wouldn't the Replikeo Duet 0.6 at $50 be considered pretty affordable?

Those have a very poor quality reputation. So you might end up having to buy a couple to get a good one.

This "poor reputation" of Replikeo Duet 0.6 seems to come up every once in a while, which I find interesting as no relevant facts are provided.
Any evidence to back this up?

This is my point when I asked about the Geeetech gt2560, I got a lot of "don't buy geeetech they're rubbish" no actual negative reports, and one user who said he was very happy with it.

Maybe there would be a space for someone to do some real testing and report on these boards, pros/cons/price with a bit of controlling for various factors that form subjective opinions.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/12/2016 04:43AM by DjDemonD.

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DjDemonD
Maybe there would be a space for someone to do some real testing and report on these boards, pros/cons/price with a bit of controlling for various factors that form subjective opinions.

That would be tough to do. There's no question that the cheap boards can be ok, but knowing if you going to get a good one or a bad one is the question. Any testing would have to be of a statistically valid sample size of boards across vendors, and who has the time and money for that?

@DjDemonD

the problem is not the atmega2650 board . those things run fine. they are made cheaper by replacing the ftdi chip with a cheaper version. the problem is the ramps board. it works fine as long as your heated bed is powered from a ssr or relay.. the moment you use it to power your bed the ramps will fail somewhere along a long print with a nice puff of smoke .

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ekaggrat
the moment you use it to power your bed the ramps will fail somewhere along a long print with a nice puff of smoke .

Um, exaggerating for effect? There are clearly many ramps boards running heated beds for long prints just fine, including mine. They were designed for a typical mk2 bed drawing ~ 10 Amps, not large scale printers drawing multiples of that. If the power connectors run hot you can improve the situation dramatically by removing the bed +V line from the ramps board and taking it direct to the heat bed via an inline fuse (car blade style fuses are convenient). Leave the -ve line attached to ramps. The bed switching is done in the -ve line and there is more pcb area to handle the current. Leaving both -ve lines attached to the ramps also means the return current is handled by twice the connector area and twice the wire area. A heat sink on the D8 mosfet isn't a bad idea, after which everything on the ramps power side should run at reasonable temperatures.

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mandrav

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ElmoC

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WZ9V
Wouldn't the Replikeo Duet 0.6 at $50 be considered pretty affordable?

Those have a very poor quality reputation. So you might end up having to buy a couple to get a good one.

This "poor reputation" of Replikeo Duet 0.6 seems to come up every once in a while, which I find interesting as no relevant facts are provided.
Any evidence to back this up?

It's hard to quantify. There have been several reports on these forums of Replikeo Duet boards not working as received, and at least two of those had manufacturing faults (a missing diode in one case, and an incorrect chip in the ohther) that should have been apparent had the boards been properly tested before being shipped. Both of those were several months ago. It may be that Replikeo's QA procedures have improved since then. Also, we don't know how many people have bought Replikeo Duet boards and not had a problem with them, because it is generally when people have problems that they post here.

Testing a 3D printer control board fully is not a trivial operation. For the next generation Duet board, I am designing automated test equipment that will simulate attached stepper motors, thermistors, heaters etc. and test the board thoroughly without taking a lot of time.

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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].

Quote
ekaggrat
@DjDemonD

the problem is not the atmega2650 board . those things run fine. they are made cheaper by replacing the ftdi chip with a cheaper version. the problem is the ramps board. it works fine as long as your heated bed is powered from a ssr or relay.. the moment you use it to power your bed the ramps will fail somewhere along a long print with a nice puff of smoke .

Well I've never had any serious ramps problems on account of not really overdoing it and making sure everything is properly tightened and of sufficient gauge for the current in use. But there is a huge variation in quality and this isn't easily determined by price.

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dc42

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mandrav

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ElmoC

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WZ9V
Wouldn't the Replikeo Duet 0.6 at $50 be considered pretty affordable?

Those have a very poor quality reputation. So you might end up having to buy a couple to get a good one.

This "poor reputation" of Replikeo Duet 0.6 seems to come up every once in a while, which I find interesting as no relevant facts are provided.
Any evidence to back this up?

It's hard to quantify. There have been several reports on these forums of Replikeo Duet boards not working as received, and at least two of those had manufacturing faults (a missing diode in one case, and an incorrect chip in the ohther) that should have been apparent had the boards been properly tested before being shipped. Both of those were several months ago. It may be that Replikeo's QA procedures have improved since then. Also, we don't know how many people have bought Replikeo Duet boards and not had a problem with them, because it is generally when people have problems that they post here.

Testing a 3D printer control board fully is not a trivial operation. For the next generation Duet board, I am designing automated test equipment that will simulate attached stepper motors, thermistors, heaters etc. and test the board thoroughly without taking a lot of time.

There's no denying cheaper boards means cheaper quality, most of the times. Yet, there are many cheap products that do work as advertised.
The fact is that people who meet problems will post about them but that is no reason for generalizing any issues reported. Unless we know how many total units were sold so we can derive a percentage of bad/faulty units then we can't holistically approve or disapprove the product/manufacturer in question. And doing so in public too...

For example, a couple of months ago, I was disappointed with T3P3 for some reason. Now that I said that, will you (not *you*, anyone) start saying to other people that "I 'm hearing T3P3 is no good and people had problems with them"? I hope not

For the record, I do own a Replikeo Duet 0.6.
I 'm very happy with it (thanks to you too for you firmware).
And as a disclaimer, I don't work for Replikeo nor I make any profit from them.

I suppose some sort of database of survey results related to boards and their quality would be biased by negative reports being more forthcoming. I wonder if there is any way to encourage those happy with their product to say so.

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DjDemonD
I suppose some sort of database of survey results related to boards and their quality would be biased by negative reports being more forthcoming. I wonder if there is any way to encourage those happy with their product to say so.

I think the fact that you don't hear many complaints of Duet boards purchased from think3dprint3d.com or filastruder.com speaks volumes as to their quality verse those from other vendors. As you said, negative reports are more forthcoming.

Can someone inform me about how the Ramps is flawed as described in the first post? I can get ramps for 6$ and not had any really bad issues yet

What is wrong with the MKS BASE at 55$??

I have a Geetech RAMPS board and they are rubbish. You want specifics
1) Low quality PCB
2) Poor soldering quality
3) 16V capacitors (limited to 12V but specs say can do 24V) and a regulator not designed to work at 24V without overheating.

I also have a Taurino RAMPS
1) Good PCB
2) Good quality soldering
3) Parts rated to work at 24V (35V capacitors) and regulator

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DjDemonD
This is my point when I asked about the Geeetech gt2560, I got a lot of "don't buy geeetech they're rubbish" no actual negative reports, and one user who said he was very happy with it.

Maybe there would be a space for someone to do some real testing and report on these boards, pros/cons/price with a bit of controlling for various factors that form subjective opinions.