RAMPS for Due!

hi,

my english is not the best.
For a long time I listen to this thread and I Think it can not be more a hard work, since ramps-fd is running well.
Maybe I (we) can help?

What exactly is not working?
32bit is the right direction for the future reprap electronic.
bobc has make a great job

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Mein Club: [hackerspace-ffm.de]
RADDS-Shield -> Commercial [max3dshop.org]

Status update: I've sent gerbers for PCB manufacture to Itead, now waiting for delivery. I guess there may be a backlog after their holidays.

In the meantime I'm trying to get some more printers working

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bobc
Status update: I've sent gerbers for PCB manufacture to Itead, now waiting for delivery.

I was unaware of this vendor, it looks like they have great pricing! I assume the quality is OK since it sounds like you've used them before. What sort of leadtimes do you typically see?

Do you consider the second usb port on due for using it with usb memory sticks? Also will we be able to use a touchscreen with ramps-fd?

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cdsteinkuehler

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bobc
Status update: I've sent gerbers for PCB manufacture to Itead, now waiting for delivery.

I was unaware of this vendor, it looks like they have great pricing! I assume the quality is OK since it sounds like you've used them before. What sort of leadtimes do you typically see?

The quality is great, even without considering the price. SeeedStudio do an almost identical service, the only difference I found is that Itead offer 100% etest for free. I've not had a single issue with any of the boards I have ordered. Fabbing usually less than a week, and DHL delivered in about 3 days which is pretty amazing. Usually I use the regular airmail service which takes a couple of weeks.

For small 2 layer boards the prices seem unbeatable. I guess they have a local pooling service out there.

I've just had a shipping email from them so I might have time to finish debugging the Getech board

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Quote
turutk
Do you consider the second usb port on due for using it with usb memory sticks? Also will we be able to use a touchscreen with ramps-fd?

USB host should be possible, it's a simple matter of software and a suitable micro B to A adapter.

The Due does not have native support for LCD broken out, so depending on which touchscreen is used more or less work would be required. It's one of those things I was going to look at later. I had something like this in mind [www.ebay.co.uk]

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After repairing my Due, I have been getting it set up with the Getech v1A RAMPS-FD.

I'm not impressed with the Getech board, apart from the issues previously noted, poor washing, sub-spec components for power connectors and substitutes for recommended MOSFETs, when I replaced the power connectors I discovered that the quality of the soldering is *really* bad. All the joints are quite dry. That is difficult to fix, it would need the whole board reworking.

To cap it off, I was struggling to get the SPI working for the SDRAMPS adapter. I discovered the problem was a break in the track for SCLK. The track was etched to nothingness at one point. I couldn't see any other broken tracks, but breaks are hard to spot if under silkscreen or connectors etc. Such a break should have been spotted if they had tested the PCB before assembly (or after!) so I guess they don't.

I don't like to use the term "pile of junk", but I really would not recommend anyone to buy the Getech boards, unless you fancy spending time debugging random problems and solder rework!

I appreciate Getech's attempt to bring lower prices to the customer, but if costs are cut too far quality suffers and then it becomes a net waste of time and money. If they built a better board for $50 it would still be good value.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/17/2014 03:13PM by bobc.

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I prefer ro buy my board US made, spend a little extra for the boards, but I've had VERY good experiences with Advanced Circuits in CO ( 4pcb.com ). They have a good special for two sided boards up to 60 sq inch's for $33 each, qty 4 they turn around in a week. Their extended services I often get 2 oz copper instead of the 1oz standard and it rarely changes the cost of my boards.

Edit: I figured out the issue. I disabled some features I wasn't using such as LCD feature controller and the ticking is gone.

I bought a ramps-fd from geetech. (I couldn't find any in the US). I'll definitely wait and get the next release board when it becomes available. For now I am playing with this one. It is on the bench and the only thing I have done is to install the stepper drivers and wire them up. I am using the latest repetier firmware as of date of this post. All the motors are working but I here a tick in the Y and Z stepper motors at a frequency of about 1 second. Is this a known issue with the geetech board or a firmware issue? I looked through pins.h and don't see any conflict for the pins. Perhaps there is some other setting I missed?

thanks,
Brendin

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2014 06:59PM by xnaron.

I'm trying to make sense of the v1 rev A board from geetech. I looked at the relevant schematics and I can't seem to find "P404" as labelled on the geetech board. Is this a power in? What does it supply?

The heater pin seems inverted in repetier (on when should be off and vice versa). This was in pins.h
"#define HEATER_PINS_INVERTED"

but it seems to have no effect commented or uncommented. Any ideas?

Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 02/24/2014 09:43PM by xnaron.

P404 is the heat bed output, labelled D8 (and also Digital pin 8 in Arduino terminology).

To support the inverted heaters requires a patch to the Repetier code which you can find on my repetier branch [github.com] (on development branch).

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Thanks Bob! I applied the patch found here [github.com] to the latest repetier firmware. The ui.cpp section to patch does not exist anymore. Regardless the patch works. Thanks. BTW I saw older comments about it losing steps. Is this still the case?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/25/2014 11:19AM by xnaron.

Bob and other contribs. Thanks for taking the time to design ramps-fd. Here is a pic with a print. I used latest repetier firmware and I can't detect any missing steps in this 1 hour print. Looking forward to picking up a newer revision board in the next few months.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/02/2014 01:38AM by xnaron.

Really great work Bob, can't wait to get my hands on one when youve tested the latest version.

I have a quick question though, I looked at your stuff on GitHub and you have .brd files but they don't open in eagle. What software do you need to view your files? I am after a BOM to see what parts you are using.

You have gerbers there too, are these the ones you sent off to manufacture?

I also wanted to ask what firmware is being modified to work with this? Will it be easy to upgrade to one of these when they are ready?

Thanks for giving us this great upgrade, will you be selling pcbs online somewhere when you get them?

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JNOD
I have a quick question though, I looked at your stuff on GitHub and you have .brd files but they don't open in eagle. What software do you need to view your files? I am after a BOM to see what parts you are using.

The files are for KiCAD, an open-source PCB design package. There is a BOM file on github, but it's for the previous board, so you'll need refer to the schematic and make a new BOM (or wait for someone else to do it).

I'll leave the firmware question to others, I'm using a modified version of this board as a BeagleBone cape and running LinuxCNC.

Hi bobc :
Now I am trying to make the lcd worked on RAMPS-FD , I have make some PCB which you design in your github , I have soiled ,I change 74HC07 to 74LS07 .is it OK to do that ? NOW MY LCD (smart controller,2004 ver and 12864 ver both) no working ....I am sure the LCD and 74LS07 is OK ,cause the RAMSP-FD and LCD working good with arduino MEGA2560 ,and I have checke the IO D16 D17 D23 which 12864LCD spi IO ,IO is OK ...I am thing whether
74LS07 is a good choice for 3.3V logic signal ? I have brought a logic analyzer ,waiting shipping .....longlong time ..... POOR....
DO you have try LCD ?

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cdsteinkuehler

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JNOD
I have a quick question though, I looked at your stuff on GitHub and you have .brd files but they don't open in eagle. What software do you need to view your files? I am after a BOM to see what parts you are using.

The files are for KiCAD, an open-source PCB design package. There is a BOM file on github, but it's for the previous board, so you'll need refer to the schematic and make a new BOM (or wait for someone else to do it).

I'll leave the firmware question to others, I'm using a modified version of this board as a BeagleBone cape and running LinuxCNC.

GOOOOOOD JOB！！！cdsteinkuehler ， but I do not know about the BBB...... raspberry , PCduino .BBB ,i can't tell which is better....

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sakunamary
GOOOOOOD JOB！！！cdsteinkuehler ， but I do not know about the BBB...... raspberry , PCduino .BBB ,i can't tell which is better....

Well, for machine control I would say the BBB is best:

The Raspberry Pi is a nice system, but it's CPU is basically designed to be a set-top box or Blu-Ray disk player. It's great if you want to play videos, but lacks I/O and hard-real-time for machine control.

The PCDuino is better, but still has issues doing real-time control. All ARM Cortex-A parts don't have great interrupt latency (this includes the Pi and BB and are not optimized for rapidly toggling I/O pins (ie: generating step pulses for servo motors).

The BeagleBone Black has lots of I/O pins, and while the ARM Cortex-A doesn't have great IRQ latency, there are dual 200 MHz 32-bit PRU micro-controllers you can use to generate timing critical signals like the step/dir pulses. It's also already got LinuxCNC running on it, as well as at leats two other motion control frameworks (one from Elias, maker of the Replicape, and one from Bas, maker of the BeBoPr).

...but I could be biased.

The Cortex-M parts (like on the Due) DO have good interrupt latency and are great parts for "twiddling bits" like driving stepper motors. The biggest issue vs. the above parts is the Cortex-M won't run Linux, so you get to do custom firmware instead of running a regular OS.

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cdsteinkuehler

Quote
sakunamary
GOOOOOOD JOB！！！cdsteinkuehler ， but I do not know about the BBB...... raspberry , PCduino .BBB ,i can't tell which is better....

Well, for machine control I would say the BBB is best:

The Raspberry Pi is a nice system, but it's CPU is basically designed to be a set-top box or Blu-Ray disk player. It's great if you want to play videos, but lacks I/O and hard-real-time for machine control.

The PCDuino is better, but still has issues doing real-time control. All ARM Cortex-A parts don't have great interrupt latency (this includes the Pi and BB and are not optimized for rapidly toggling I/O pins (ie: generating step pulses for servo motors).

The BeagleBone Black has lots of I/O pins, and while the ARM Cortex-A doesn't have great IRQ latency, there are dual 200 MHz 32-bit PRU micro-controllers you can use to generate timing critical signals like the step/dir pulses. It's also already got LinuxCNC running on it, as well as at leats two other motion control frameworks (one from Elias, maker of the Replicape, and one from Bas, maker of the BeBoPr).

...but I could be biased.

The Cortex-M parts (like on the Due) DO have good interrupt latency and are great parts for "twiddling bits" like driving stepper motors. The biggest issue vs. the above parts is the Cortex-M won't run Linux, so you get to do custom firmware instead of running a regular OS.

WOW.... I think I should keep trying arduino ....Get a raspberry and install a Repetier-server to control arduino due+ramps-fd ......that is much easy for me ...

This board is great, I love it so far!
I've got mine at Getech, and am using it to drive my GUS Simpson, it is my first printer, and it is not printing yet - I am still testing, so RAMPS-FD is a test subject as well. I am using repetier (by the way RAMPS-FD pins are not really correct in pins.h).
So far I've had just one issue with it, but it is super-annoying. IDK if it is on the RAMPS-FD side or Iduino. Something wrong with USB here - it randomly gets my laptop shut down. It happens randomly sometimes, but it happens nearly all the time when I turn on or off external PSU, while USB is connected. Also it seem more stable if my laptop is connected to the power line.
Could it be something on the side of my PSU?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/18/2014 10:53AM by NeoTheFox.

The Iduino Due gives the 5V pin on the Ramps-fd probably 7.8V. Right?

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Mein Club: [hackerspace-ffm.de]
RADDS-Shield -> Commercial [max3dshop.org]

Is there anywhere I can buy a newer board then the geetech one on ebay? It has been working very well for me but I am building another delta and don't really want to use another geetech v1a board if there is a newer one out there. Not much activity on this thread lately. Is this project still actively being worked on?'

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2014 01:54PM by xnaron.

I've tried pinging bobc by email but not gotten any response. :/

Hopefully bobc will have time to get the new board built and checked out soon. I know he's a busy guy with m any tasks!
I want a board also, I'll even settle for a bare board as it looks pretty simple to build (plus I have a lot of SMD components on hand already).
Anyone interested in putting a kit together?

Nevermind, it was PSU. I switched PSU and it worked just fine. I switched PSU because it was underpowered.

Are there any news about this project?

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turutk
Are there any news about this project?

Bobc and Sublime got into a disagreement in another thread. From what I can tell, bobc took his ball and went home, removing references to RAMPS-FD from his forum signature.

I had the funds put aside to buy a revised board as soon as they were available, but gave up over the weekend and spent the money on a non-Arduino package.....

For those brave enough to etch a board, Gen7-ARM exists. Very affordable, but also work in progress. 48 MHz and of course 32-bit. One of @bobc's(!) printers is running it. For partial instructions, see [www.reprap.org]

If you want to make one, I'll send you design files. Not public, yet, because RepRappers have the habit to expect everything to be finished which is found on a server somewhere.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Also [www.panucatt.com] is now out and runs smoothieware

Not a due, but a 32bit, 120Mhz NXP LPC1769 ARM

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Dust
Also [www.panucatt.com] is now out and runs smoothieware

Not a due, but a 32bit, 120Mhz NXP LPC1769 ARM

Mine shipped yesterday.....