All in one Mainboard?

Anyone interested in a Mainboard which includes the ATmega644 and three A3982 Stepper Motor Drivers? I already have the first prototype designed all on a 4"x5" double sided pcb board...but would like to know if there is interest for it? Its all SMT technology exepct for the headers. If anyone is interested, let me know.

Ben.

Estimated cost?

If you can't meet or beat the 130-140 for the motherboard and 3 steppers from Makerbot I don't see much of a point.

Would it be open source?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/2010 03:31PM by spacexula.

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i like the idea, but for me it would remove too much of the flexibility that i want. but i do think it is a good idea, i just dont know how easy it would be to beat makerbot they have a good kit and good price from all that i can tell.

A main board idea has been posted before, if you search back through the Electronics forum, an individual has done one based on an STM32 Cortex-M3 ARM chip, as has been said there needs to be a cost benefit.

Also the board needs to be very reliable, the main benefit I see will the separate motor boards is the capability to replace them if they break. The stepper drivers are $30 assembled from makerbot. So if one breaks its $30 to replace if you are in capable of repairing it yourself.

With the motherboard approach if you blow one channel and you cannot repair it, you have to replace the entire board.

Can't say I'm 100% happy with the existing design, running TTL control signals over wires being one, but at this stage there are many running this configuration with success.

feel free to add LVDS or similar converters to your machine if you wish

I'm also not a fan of running TTL over wires, but as long as the caveats are understood I'll go with it for the moment.

I would be more interested in an easy plug-in, LCD screen w/firmware to pull it all together.

Hardware design is in the RepRap blog about two years ago.

Its very simple easy to pop on vero board.

Firmware to drive an LCD display is on the Arduino pages.

Look on AVR freaks for other LCD interface designs.

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what may be better than a one piece mother board may be more of a back plain design so that you could replace each piece has needed, or up grade each piece has you go.

i am trying to remember who had it for there stepper motor drivers he had a really nice shield design that was rather nice. i think that would be a better way to go over a one piece mobo

what functionality does an LCD screen give? Is your device standalone, that would be cool, but is a small LCD practical?

i would like to add a small one, to display stuff like temp, and any errors that it gets, but i am also planning on putting on a few more temp sensors too, i would like to put them on the steppers too.

Thanks for the input everyone. All things said, I see and can understand your concerns. It only took me a few hours to design the all in Main board but as you guys have said, it does take away some of the flexibility. Another concern that was brought up what about channels burning. All of the electrical characteristics of the components used have been taken into consideration for the design, so as long as the voltage and current requirements are not overlooked, that shouldn't be a problem. In order to get a better hold on temperature control, heat sinks are to be installed on top of the A3982.

Furthermore, I like the backplane idea a little better. I will work on this. All things considered, it is my intention to make it cheaper than getting it from makerbot, there will be BOMs ready and everything WILL be open source.

I will check this post daily. If there are any other good ideas about how to go with this I would like to hear them. Last but not least, I consider the RepRap community educated people who are not strangers to respect or manners. If all you have to say is something of no consequence or help, don't waste your time or mine. I'm not here to see whether you see much of a point.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/03/2010 10:51AM by bbvega.