Interfacing an extruder with a G540 controlled Lumenlab CNC

Hey Guys! This forum is fantastic, a wealth of info.

I've got a lumenlab cnc setup using a gecko 540 board, controlled with emc2 and am very keen to try using it as a 3D printer (500 x 500 x 100mm bed!)

Video of the machine doing not much of anything.

I've been researching and although found you can use emc2 for 3D printing, my G540 board already has all the drivers occupied (X uses two motors) so interfacing an extruder has me stumped...

So, the other option I've been looking at is using a more standard arduino based control board and having that control the gecko driver with step/dir instead of pololu boards. Is this feesable? This way I get nice extrusion control and it removes the need for an old PC with parallel port make the machine somewhat portable... I'd also love to use two extruder heads in future if that's even possible, one for support and another for the part.

RAMPS is looking like the best option at the moment, but I'd love some suggestions!

Also, as the extruder mount would be totally non standard, I'll be fabricating most of it from scratch. Is there any designs out there 'most suitable'? The wade extruder seems the most popular and pretty simple.

Cheers!

As long as your Dir/Step signals recognize 5V signals, any Pololu-based electronics will work. Like RAMPS, Sanguinololu, Gen7.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

Yeah, as far as I can tell the G540 will work fine with 5V, you'd hope so for the price anyway! I've ordered a RAMPS board and 'tosduino' arduino mega clone so hopefully should work nicely. Took me a while to realise that the ramps board uses the one driver for both Z motors. The possibility of two extruders has me intrigued...! Cheers

Nice looking machine !

I have started various threads covering how you can use a Sanguino board to run normal CNC machines using their own stepper drivers that might be of interest.

[www.ukcnc.net]

But after all the experimenting, I decided to layup a Sanguino combination PCB with blocks to wire to any stepper drivers.

[www.ukcnc.net]

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Sean.

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[www.cncdudez.co.uk]
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... I've made the same with a Gen3 and my Isel-CNCmill by exchanging the interface-board, but now use an ArduinoMega with RAMPS with a similar BOB for the RAMPS terminals ...

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Viktor
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