Will a Xylotex board work with Reprap software?

Will this work?

I already have the Xylotex package running my CNC mill, but want to use the controller on my Reprap and upgrade the mill to Geckos.

Here is a pic of my Isaac build so far.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/2011 09:21AM by stabbs.

gosh

cannot answer your question but the plastic components look good - are they milled? They don't look printed.

You don't specify which Xylotex package or driver models you have. According to this page, it's designed to run of STEP and DIR signals from a computers parallel port. If that's also the case with your setup, it'll be relatively easy to use with a reprap. Well, as long as the motors mount to the frame OK.

You will need to add the following:

An MCU, or microprocessor board, usually an arduino mega, a sanguino, or such. More rarely, PIC or ARM based boards are used, but you'll have problems finding a firmware to load onto those.

A temperature sensor & heater controller. Usually just a couple resistors & a thermistor for the sensor, and a MOSFET to control the heater. You may want two of each for a heated bed. You can also use a thermocouple and a MAX6675 chip for temperature sensing.

Endstops. Cannonically optical, but microswitches work fine too.

To get these together, the easiest thing to do may be to buy a bare RAMPS board and a arduino MEGA clone. Then buy the thermocouples, MOSFETS, and supporting LEDs, capacitors, and so forth. It should be fairly straightforward to figure out from the schematics. At first guess, you need power stuff (C4, C6, F1, D1) Thermistor 0 (R7, C5) Heater 0 (Q3, R4) and err, that's about it. So 2 resistors, a MOSFET, 3 capacitors, a diode and a fuse. Oh, and the thermistor of course. You'd wire the Xylotex stepper drivers into the step and dir signals on the RAMPS shield, probably easiest to install two pin headers where the pololu stepper drivers would normally mount. Probably have to tie grounds together too.

Please note that I'm no expert on these things, my real specialty is software. But I'm pretty sure that'd be the easiest way to go. The pololu stepper drivers that this RAMPS thing is designed to work with cost about $12 each, so you'd be saving $48 plus shipping, plus the cost of the motors plus shipping. Assuming you have a 4-axis driver with four motors, if not you'll need to buy one pololu stepper driver + one more motor for the extruder.

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I'm building it with Baling Wire

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cannot answer your question but the plastic components look good - are they milled? They don't look printed

Thanks- I used my CNC mill to cut out the parts from REN and painted them yellow. I got the parts from flemingcnc.com

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You don't specify which Xylotex package or driver models you have. According to this page, it's designed to run of STEP and DIR signals from a computers parallel port. If that's also the case with your setup, it'll be relatively easy to use with a reprap. Well, as long as the motors mount to the frame OK.

You will need to add the following:

An MCU, or microprocessor board, usually an arduino mega, a sanguino, or such. More rarely, PIC or ARM based boards are used, but you'll have problems finding a firmware to load onto those.

A temperature sensor & heater controller. Usually just a couple resistors & a thermistor for the sensor, and a MOSFET to control the heater. You may want two of each for a heated bed. You can also use a thermocouple and a MAX6675 chip for temperature sensing.

Endstops. Cannonically optical, but microswitches work fine too.

To get these together, the easiest thing to do may be to buy a bare RAMPS board and a arduino MEGA clone. Then buy the thermocouples, MOSFETS, and supporting LEDs, capacitors, and so forth. It should be fairly straightforward to figure out from the schematics. At first guess, you need power stuff (C4, C6, F1, D1) Thermistor 0 (R7, C5) Heater 0 (Q3, R4) and err, that's about it. So 2 resistors, a MOSFET, 3 capacitors, a diode and a fuse. Oh, and the thermistor of course. You'd wire the Xylotex stepper drivers into the step and dir signals on the RAMPS shield, probably easiest to install two pin headers where the pololu stepper drivers would normally mount. Probably have to tie grounds together too.

Please note that I'm no expert on these things, my real specialty is software. But I'm pretty sure that'd be the easiest way to go. The pololu stepper drivers that this RAMPS thing is designed to work with cost about $12 each, so you'd be saving $48 plus shipping, plus the cost of the motors plus shipping. Assuming you have a 4-axis driver with four motors, if not you'll need to buy one pololu stepper driver + one more motor for the extruder.

I was pretty vague in my first post- I have this 4 axis drive box with 425oz stepper motors - here is the datasheet. While it runs well, about 20 ipm, the 425's are a big heavy for the Xylotex board. My plan was to purchase Nema 17 stepper motors for the Reprap to run off the Xylotex board. I want to keep the 425's on the mill and maybe upgrade to Geckos.

Thanks for the fast reply! I am a real amateur when it comes to the electronics so forgive my slowness. So I would need to buy another controller board to run the heating elements and the end stops, bu the Xylotex board would run the steppers and provide the power?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/2011 02:44PM by stabbs.

stabbs Wrote:
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> Thanks for the fast reply! I am a real amateur
> when it comes to the electronics so forgive my
> slowness. So I would need to buy another
> controller board to run the heating elements and
> the end stops, but the Xylotex board would run the
> steppers and provide the power?

Uh, let me look over the specs. I don't see a power supply there. Are you powering it with 12V or 24V? I suppose it doesn't matter, the mega can supply the 5V, and just hook the 12 or 24 to the RAMPS board for the heater power supply. You'll want 1/8 microstepping on the X and Y, and less than than (maybe half stepping) on the Z (unless you use the fived_on_arduino firmware, which supports much higher step rates.) On the extruder you should also do either 1/4 or 1/8 stepping, just for the quieter operation.

As for the controller board, you actually need two. One microprocessor board (the arduino mega, though a standard arduino would do (barely) as would a sanguino), this will be your gcode interpreter and will generate the step/dir signals to control the Xylotex board, as well as the PWM signal for the heater, and will monitor the thermistor, reporting temperature back to the computer as well adjusting the PWM to keep a constant temperature.

The 2nd board is just for somewhere to mount the MOSFET that converts the 5V PWM signal from the micro into 24V 1.2A (or whatever) power for the heater. It also has a few components on it to assist in reading the thermistor - the thermistor is a variable resistance, which the micro can't read. The micro needs a voltage between 0 and 5 volts, and can then tell where between those two it is. To do that, the 2nd board uses the thermistor as one of the resistors in a voltage divider, giving a variable result. The capacitor is just to smooth the signal - noise suppression.

You could connect the step/dir signals directly to the micro, but if you have a RAMPS board anyway it'll be easier and cleaner to connect them to the RAMPS board.

The RAMPS board has space for three MOSFETS, so you can drive three heaters. It has two thermistor connections. It has four headers for plugging in pololu stepper drivers. And is has six endstop connectors. You don't need most of that, and could perhaps get away with breadboarding the few things you do need. All you need is the thermistor & one heater, and the endstops. You'll need to get the endstop boards, just three though. You only really need someplace to mount the MOSFET and someplace to mount the thermistor-helper circuit, you can hook everything else directly up to the micro.

One other option would be the older boards. The older electronics had every function on a separate board, like the PWM driver board. There is a similar board just for the thermistor. I have one of those, and felt a little silly at the time buying a board for one resistor and a capacitor, but it does look cleaner than anything else I could have done. If you can find these, it'd be cheaper than the RAMPS, and you'd simply hook everything up directly to the micro, getting the PWM etc signals to the PWM board, hooking the endstops up directly to the correct pins, running wire over to the Xylotec board for step and dir signals, and hooking the thermistor up directly to the correct pins on the micro as well. It wouldn't be as clean-looking as using the all-in-one RAMPS board, but it'd be cheaper. If you can't find somewhere to buy the bare RAMPS board from, it may be quite a bit cheaper. You could avoid almost all soldering by buying the seperate boards though. You'd probably still have to solder some connectors onto wires, but that'd be all. ( .1" headers make great connectors for plugging into the headers on most micros, but you do have to solder them on)

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I'm building it with Baling Wire