Sanguinololu 5th motor axis / dual extruder upgrade

I have been looking into the possibility of adding a dual extruder option to the Sanguinololu board. I am a backer of the Eventorbot kickstarter which uses Sanguinololu 1.3A. There was some interest in using dual extruder and the hot end bracket was designed to support 2 hot ends so I think some people might appreciate being able to take advantage of it.

I have designed an adapter board which should allow the addition of a 5th axis Pololu as well as a thermistor and hot end mosfet. I also analyzed the design of the SDSL and SWA (bluetooh / SD adapters) and designed a pass-through port which should allow the 5th axis board to work along with these add-on boards.

I am going to make a small run of these boards so I can have my own and possibly sell the remainder at a minimal cost to others who are interested. I also intend on making the board design open source and seeing what can be done about adding an option to the various firmware packages to accommodate this.

I am curious if anyone has feedback or thoughts about this idea? Also I don't know where the best place would be to post the design files (I designed the board using Eagle with some components borrowed directly from the Sanguinololu design for consistency).

Where to drop design files depends a bit on your plans.

If it's just a one-off, you can drop that here.

If you plan to support your users you should at least write a wiki page, explaining things and setup procedures a bit.

If you plan to continue development, Github is an often used choice, in addition to the wiki page.

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Generation 7 Electronics	Teacup Firmware	RepRap DIY

I have posted an article for my design called SLUM (Sanguinololu Upgrade Module) on the wiki, including the source files. The design is very simple and I don't see it changing much so I think GITHUB would be overkill.

The design is very simple and just takes advantage of the pins exposed on the expansion header. I thought about making a more intelligent device powered by a AVR MiniAVR series and using digital communications but I wanted to keep it as simple and low-cost as possible and I think this design achieves that goal.

I have a small prototype run (32 units) on the way and will probably sell some on the forums if anyone is interested.

Once I have my 3d printer on hand I will be able to test out the firmware modifications. I am also sending a prototype unit to the designer of the printer (Eventorbot) so he can test it on his prototype printer. As far as I can tell it's just a matter of adding a board configuration entry to Marlin, although the PWM fan speed control feature will probably require a few small changes to the firmware if we want to get that fully working (turning the fan on and off should be fine though)

[www.reprap.org]

Hi kkronyak, I'm very interested in our dual extruder upgrade, how's the job? Can you make a prediction on the development of firmware?
Do you still have some cards that you can sell?
Thank you

This is something I would be interested in as well. I would even be willing to look into firmware support as a Marlin user. Thanks.