Best plug and play board

Hello, im new to 3d printing and started designing my own, coreXY type printer. i know alot about the mechanics but im really not comfortable with electronic boards so im looking for something easy to program (something like the marlin firmware) that can accomodate x, y, dual Z, 2 extruder for stepper motors. 2 thermistors for hot ends and one for heated bed. 3 endstops, 2 fans, usb and sd card. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Just about any controller will satisfy your minimum specifications, but the most popular one nowadays is the Arduino Mega2560 + RAMPS 1.4 combination.

yes but that would require soldering and all the stepper drivers, im really looking for something that already has everything ready, just need to plug my motors and program away

I don't think any 8-bit boards are going to meet ALL your requirements. Dual fans, extruders, and Z-axis (presuming you don't just want to run them parallel or series) is going to be the hard part. You can get there with RAMPS, and fully assembled boards and drivers ("Pololus", stepticks, or DRV8825) are readily available that don't require any soldering, but you'll need to get some additional aux boards for the SD card reader and controlling additional fans.

Duet+Deux4 or a Smoothieboard I think would meet all your requirements, but you'd need to use a firmware compatible with those boards which I don't believe Marlin doesn't have a direct port. RepRap firmware or Smoothie respectively are the firmware for those 32-bit platforms.

I recommend a Duet with either X4 or shield expansion (you could start with just the Duet and add the expansion later). The think3dprint3d version has both screw terminals and push connectors so no soldering necessary.

You'd need to use DC42's firmware which supports CoreXY (it's a new addition but if it's anything like his other improvements to the firmware it should work very well - [forums.reprap.org]).

Configuration is by G code so no messing about with recompiling code :-) and the web interface makes it very easy to sort out the configuration.

Check out the Ormerod forum and DC42's blog (https://miscsolutions.wordpress.com/) for more info.

Freddie, thanks for recommending my firmware. I have just one thing to add. The T3P3 version of the Duet with screw terminals won't accept the Duet shield as-is, so you would need to either use the DueX4 to support the 2nd hot end and extruder, or replace some of the screw terminal blocks by header pins so that the shield fits. The shield is easier to fit and wire up than the DueX4, but only supports 2 additional extruders.

Thorbl, if you look elsewhere on this forum, you will find that the Marlin firmware (at least on 8-bit platforms such as RAMPS) has some limitations when used with CoreXY printers, in particular the maximum available speed is quite low.

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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].

im not familiar with these what does the shield do? also does t3p3 ship to canada?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/2015 01:43PM by Thorbl.

The shield fits on top of the Duet board so as to provide 2 extra extruder drives, hot end heater outputs, and thermistor inputs, and some more fan connectors. So 3 nozzles and extruders in total. It's quite new and RepRapPro haven't yet listed it on their shop, but the design files are on github and they've been shipping it for a few weeks.

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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 dual Z on the reprap wiki they show them attached to one terminal of the board and another card is used for the the two z platforms, is it possible to attach two z stepper motors to the card?

Quote
Thorbl
for dual Z on the reprap wiki they show them attached to one terminal of the board and another card is used for the the two z platforms, is it possible to attach two z stepper motors to the card?

If the current rating of your Z stepper motors is well-matched to the drivers and the voltage they need is low enough (e.g. no more than 4V), then it is best to connect them in series. See here [reprappro.com] for how to do that. The github files for the next version of the Duet show that it will have two Z motor connectors on the board, already wired in series.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2015 05:07AM 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].

Does T3P3 ship to canada? or are there canadian resellers? so far i havent been able to find any to have a concrete canadian pricetag, because pounds to CAD its around the same price tag as the smoothie board and im guessing i can make the parallel trick for dual Z with that one

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2015 11:25PM by Thorbl.

I have used standard Mega and RAMPS 1.4 shield that ( I think) will do all you want.
RAMPS has
5 stepper drivers available X, Y, Z (two steppers in parallel) Extruder 1, Extruder 2
thermistor ports for heated bed, and two extruders
Mosfet drivers for heated bed, Extruder 1, 2
ports for end stops (which I use as homing switches)

It is powered by 12V 20A power supply

Firmware --- Marlin or Repetier

LCD display / control with SD card slot

One system on Ordbot Hadron 3D printer
Another on WALLY development 3d printer

and the same is used on many other printers.

KISS and many of these systems out there and good firmware/software to drive system

Quote
Thorbl
Hello, im new to 3d printing and started designing my own, coreXY type printer. i know alot about the mechanics but im really not comfortable with electronic boards so im looking for something easy to program (something like the marlin firmware) that can accomodate x, y, dual Z, 2 extruder for stepper motors. 2 thermistors for hot ends and one for heated bed. 3 endstops, 2 fans, usb and sd card. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Arduino Mega/RAMPS is very popular, and one of the cheapest solutions out there if you buy the Chinese clone parts. It has plug-in stepper motor drivers, which means you can replace them individually if you damage them. But it has too many issues to be truly plug-and-play:

- It's underpowered for driving a delta printer, and has speed issues when running Marlin when driving a CoreXY printer too.
- It uses a poor choice of mosfet for the heated bed. It can just drive a standard 10A heat bed. Anything higher and you need to replace the 11A fuse and the mosfet.
- The 5A rating of the main 12V rail can just drive one hot end and the stepper motors. To drive two hot ends, you need to replace the 5A fuse by a higher rated one.
- If you use the second heater output, you have nowhere to connect a controllable print cooling fan unless you add external electronics.
- Most of the Chinese-built ones use 16V capacitors, so they can only be used with a 12V (or slightly higher) supply, not 24V.
- The voltage regulator on the Arduino Mega is fragile. There are lots of reports on these forums of people having damaged it and having to replace the Arduino Mega.
- The stepper motor currents can only be adjusted by twiddling potentiometers with a voltmeter attached. Lots of users have problems with this - there have been hundreds of support queries on this forum from users who have difficulty getting the stepper motor currents right. A few damage the drivers in the process. Modern controller boards have the facility to set the currents in software instead, which really is a plug-and-play solution.
- The cheap Chinese stepsticks that come as part of the package generally have poor heat dissipation, so it may be a fine line between too little and too much stepper motor current. You can buy better stepsticks to plug into it, but then you are paying as much as you would for a much more capable all-in-one board.

My advice is to avoid Mega/RAMPS unless you are on a tight budget and either you are building a standard single hot end Cartesian design with standard dimensions that is know to work OK with Mega/RAMPS, or you are prepared to hack it and add external electronics if necessary e.g. to control a larger heatbed or a cooling fan.

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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].