Ramps 1.4 Flaws still a issue?

In 2014 Thomas Sanladerer publish this [www.youtube.com] video on his youtube channel. In this video he is adressing 2 flaws that this board has. Is these flaws still an issue 2 years after?
The first thing he adressed was the polyfuses, that they are not strong enough, he recommended to use a automobil fuse instead. The seccond issue was the green power connectors that are made to take 10 amps only, and that they can overheat and melt. He recommended to solder the wires directly on the board.

Can any of you confirm if these issues still is a problem ? or maybe Tom himself if he read this.

I am very new to 3D Printing an bulilding a Prusa i3 Rework, have ordered a Ramps 1.4

Esimacio

If you shop around, and nope

In fact its now worse, with cheap board from china with connecters that are nothing like the correct spec, especially the heated bed. Some also supply crappy (not to spec) poly fuses.

Decent green connectors work fine, but people do silly thing, not screwing down the terminal hard enough, or soldering the cable ends (this make the connection worse)

You can now get the ramps 1.4.2 from limited suppliers, that has real fuses, but this board is limited to 12v, can't do 24 without replacing components

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/10/2016 07:39AM by Dust.

Thank you so much for responding to my questions. Well yes i did order from china, so what do you recommend that I do other than buying a new "real" one? I have in longer terms planned a Rambo instead of seperate Arduino and Ramps. Will I be able to use this board if I do some
improvment modifacations?

Esimacio

If you are on a tight budget, buy Arduino/RAMPS because nothing else is as cheap. If you can afford something better, go 32-bit.

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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].

The wiki claims the RAMPS project is still active but there hasn't been an update for years. Is there a group still working on it?

No. 8 bit is dead.

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Dust
No. 8 bit is dead.

Maybe the Re-Arm project will re-animate the Ramps development...Wouldn't be surprised to see them making their own batch.

On the kickstater they mention "Custom Shields for the Re-ARM" though I haven't seen any further mention of this

Re-Arm might well keep the form factor going. There are some half decent ramps boards out there. I've probably had 5 or so the worst flaw I came across was the jumpers for microstepping being joined by traces which provided your only planning to use 1/16th then this isnt really a big problem. If you keep the heated bed current switching off the ramps board using relays (mech/SSR), then there is a lot less that can go wrong.

This UK supplier make a "premium" ramps board [ooznest.co.uk] but whether it really does anything better than a well made standard one I don't know. The real issue is that re-arm is £45 (plus shipping/tax) add a reasonable quality ramps board £15 = £60-£75 all in, so not too bad for a 32bit solution. If the ramps is going to cost £35 then you're into the territory of much better integrated 32bit boards. I can't see many people starting out with a new machine with 32bit in mind, going down the re-arm/ramps route. I bought one for the novelty and as I have a machine already running on arduino with ramps that I could swap it into it seems like a reasonable upgrade path.

I'd actually be surprised if Panucatt make a custom shield, after all aren't they selling Azteeg boards as well?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/2017 03:12PM by DjDemonD.

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Simon Khoury

Co-founder of [www.precisionpiezo.co.uk] Accurate, repeatable, versatile Z-Probes
Published:Inventions

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DjDemonD
This UK supplier make a "premium" ramps board [ooznest.co.uk] but whether it really does anything better than a well made standard one I don't know.

It's actually made in Spain (LINK) but to give full credit to Ooznest they haven't bumped up the price - it would cost the same if you bought it directly from the maker and paid the postage.