controller board thoughts and observations

yo,

i've soldered up my 2nd board, this time it was a stepper controller
board. it went really well, and was much smoother than the comms
board... probably because of the experience i gained doing that.
anyway, i have a couple observations to make:

1. via's are easy and awesome. i was pseudo worried that things would
be really hard to solder and construct, but this board is really well
designed. the instructions could use a bit of sprucing up, but i dont
think there is much that would need to be changed about it.

2. soldering on the component side is a PITA. i would much rather
have to solder some extra via's in than to have to solder things to
the component side of the board. the exception to this is obviously
resistors, capacitors, etc. those are all easy to solder because they
have clearance between them and the board.

3. i cant wait until the rest of my components get here so i can
really test this thing out!!!

oh, also... i ran into some unclear instructions on the universal board page:

[reprap.org]

the section that states:

There is also a through-hole at B. This is a connector (P10) for a
slave stepper driver should you want to drive more than one stepper
off the board. But if you don't need that, just add the one through
connector. Then add the links at A (in place of the optional R7 and
R8)

needs to be more clear. infact, lets move that stuff about teh slave
stepper driver down to the bottom under the board modifications part.
we can link to there from that part, but any 'non-standard' board mods
should be separate or very clearly distinct from the rest of the
instructions.

~Zach
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Quoting Zach Hoeken :

> i've soldered up my 2nd board, this time it was a stepper controller
> board. it went really well, and was much smoother than the comms
> board... probably because of the experience i gained doing that.
> anyway, i have a couple observations to make:
>
> 1. via's are easy and awesome. i was pseudo worried that things would
> be really hard to solder and construct, but this board is really well
> designed. the instructions could use a bit of sprucing up, but i dont
> think there is much that would need to be changed about it.
>
> 2. soldering on the component side is a PITA. i would much rather
> have to solder some extra via's in than to have to solder things to
> the component side of the board. the exception to this is obviously
> resistors, capacitors, etc. those are all easy to solder because they
> have clearance between them and the board.
>
> 3. i cant wait until the rest of my components get here so i can
> really test this thing out!!!

There's no stopping this man! (Well. Maybe he'll be a little delayed
by the US Mail...)

> oh, also... i ran into some unclear instructions on the universal board page:
>
> [reprap.org]
>
> the section that states:
>
> There is also a through-hole at B. This is a connector (P10) for a
> slave stepper driver should you want to drive more than one stepper
> off the board. But if you don't need that, just add the one through
> connector. Then add the links at A (in place of the optional R7 and
> R8)
>
> needs to be more clear. infact, lets move that stuff about teh slave
> stepper driver down to the bottom under the board modifications part.
> we can link to there from that part, but any 'non-standard' board mods
> should be separate or very clearly distinct from the rest of the
> instructions.

Fully agree. Go ahead.

Yours

Adrian

[staff.bath.ac.uk]
[reprap.org]
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Developers mailing list
Developers@reprap.org
[reprap.org]

well.. i'm still confused by that part, so i dont know how to separate
it. would you kindly fix that paragraph so that it tells you what to
do in the normal case, and move all the slave stuff to the bottom
modification header?

~Zach

On 2/22/07, Adrian Bowyer wrote:
> Quoting Zach Hoeken :
>
> > i've soldered up my 2nd board, this time it was a stepper controller
> > board. it went really well, and was much smoother than the comms
> > board... probably because of the experience i gained doing that.
> > anyway, i have a couple observations to make:
> >
> > 1. via's are easy and awesome. i was pseudo worried that things would
> > be really hard to solder and construct, but this board is really well
> > designed. the instructions could use a bit of sprucing up, but i dont
> > think there is much that would need to be changed about it.
> >
> > 2. soldering on the component side is a PITA. i would much rather
> > have to solder some extra via's in than to have to solder things to
> > the component side of the board. the exception to this is obviously
> > resistors, capacitors, etc. those are all easy to solder because they
> > have clearance between them and the board.
> >
> > 3. i cant wait until the rest of my components get here so i can
> > really test this thing out!!!
>
> There's no stopping this man! (Well. Maybe he'll be a little delayed
> by the US Mail...)
>
> > oh, also... i ran into some unclear instructions on the universal board page:
> >
> > [reprap.org]
> >
> > the section that states:
> >
> > There is also a through-hole at B. This is a connector (P10) for a
> > slave stepper driver should you want to drive more than one stepper
> > off the board. But if you don't need that, just add the one through
> > connector. Then add the links at A (in place of the optional R7 and
> > R8)
> >
> > needs to be more clear. infact, lets move that stuff about teh slave
> > stepper driver down to the bottom under the board modifications part.
> > we can link to there from that part, but any 'non-standard' board mods
> > should be separate or very clearly distinct from the rest of the
> > instructions.
>
> Fully agree. Go ahead.
>
> Yours
>
> Adrian
>
> [staff.bath.ac.uk]
> [reprap.org]
> _______________________________________________
> Developers mailing list
> Developers@reprap.org
> [reprap.org]
>
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Developers@reprap.org
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Quoting Zach Hoeken :

> well.. i'm still confused by that part, so i dont know how to separate
> it. would you kindly fix that paragraph so that it tells you what to
> do in the normal case, and move all the slave stuff to the bottom
> modification header?

Done.

Yours

Adrian

[staff.bath.ac.uk]
[reprap.org]
_______________________________________________
Developers mailing list
Developers@reprap.org
[reprap.org]