New build what controller to use?

This has probably been asked but couldn't find it. I'm fixing to ( try ) to build a 3d printer. I have basicly seen 2 differant controllers used . RAMPS V 1.4 and Megatronics V2. Which one should I use? I think the Megatronics is the best but not sure from the specs. Also, which stepper driver should I use? The older A4988 or the new DRV8825 ? The new driver will micro step 1/32 .

Any preferences on software? I know autocad, but only in 2d.

Can I build the frame as big as I need and be able to tell , I think it's Marlin , how big the build area is? Or is there a limit on how big it can be?

Any sources on controllers and parts other than china? Any us based suppliers ? I've been looking at horror stories on amazon and ebay about people not getting their parts coming from china.

Take a look at SmoothieBoard. The AtMega2560/RAMPS combo is getting a bit old, and the CPU is pretty well maxxed out. Smoothieboard uses a much faster processor with more memory and is generally easier to use.

That looks like a good board but it only does 1/16th step instead of 1/32. Won't that take out some resolution?

SmoothieBoard has the stepper drivers built into the board, so if one fails, you can't just plug in another one... I'll stick with RAMPS.

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-David

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Check out my FolgerTech Prusa i3 (plexi) at MindRealm.net

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MindRealm
SmoothieBoard has the stepper drivers built into the board, so if one fails, you can't just plug in another one... I'll stick with RAMPS.

Actually David that is not quite true! see Smoothie firmware external drivers

The Smoothie board has breakouts of the signalling pins so that external driver modules such as external driver board and this one will do 128 microsteps (Should anyone need to go that small). This is also a way of upgrading a 3 or 4 stepper board to a full 5.

Doug

The Mega/Ramps configuration is getting older, that's true. But it stills works fine. Those new boars, smoothieboard, Rambo, etc. are better, but also much more expensive. Actualy, I don't know if the improvements justify the price. Anyway to me the price is still a factor. Otherhand, there is a need of consistency. If the machine will use Hiwin linear rails, a smoothieboard will match the guides quality. If the machine will use chinese LM8UU and M5 threaded rods, a Mega/Ramps is pretty enough. To me it's a nonsense to put a Smoothieboard on a machine using low cost vitamins. Last, remember the smoothieboard require its own firmware, there's still a few users, so you'll need to contact the developer for debuging/support if needed.

May I suggest you consider the MKS Gen board ? On the datasheet, it's a Mega/Ramps. But this board solves most of inconvenients of the regular Ramps shield : 2 hotends+fans ready, +24v native, easy wire management, hx connectors, possibility to duplicate drivers step/dir to external steppers cards (or a bulk slave printers for production purpose). The MKS Gen can run standard Marlin or Repetier firmwares, and use any standard external component (LCD, SDcard extensions, Bluetooth...) All that with the reasonable price of $48, so comparable as quality Mega/Ramps boards. With DRV8825, this board could represents a fully working solution, easy to install and manage, at reasonable price.

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

I don't know what the guides and bearings have to do with the controller board, but OK...
The smoothieboard has an on-line forum, google group, and the developers are frequently on IRC. Getting support is very easy and fast. It is also very well documented.

A couple of the other points in favor of smoothie are that the firmware is read from a uSD card on the board, as are the configuration variables. All config variables are in a single txt file. If you want to make any changes, you just edit the text file (accessible via USB or a built in web server via ethernet), save it, and reboot the board. Unlike Arduino based boards, there's no hunting through multiple files to find the variable you need and then recompiling the firmware and burning the controller chip. If you want to upgrade the firmware you just copy the new firmware file called firmware.bin to the uSD card and reboot the board. The bootloader will burn the new firmware to the controller automatically- you never have to deal with the Arduino IDE. The board is designed and built for up to 24V power- you don't have to worry about blowing up parts on the board if you want to run the motors from >12V. Almost all connections are brought to the edges of the board and connectorized making cable and thermal management very easy.

Yes, all the drivers on the smoothieboard are set to 16:1 microstepping, and you can't change it. If you want to run higher microstepping ratios, you're going to have to go to an external motor driver, whether you run one of the Arduino based controllers or smoothieboard. On Smoothieboard the step/direction/enable signals are brought to a header so you can easily connect to external driver modules (I am using two external drivers in my printer- it works great!). Whether you use the on-board drivers or external ones, you set the usteps per mm in the config.txt file and you're good to go.

There are three ways to kill a stepper driver. 1) break the tiny pot that sets the current- not a problem with smoothieboard- you set the motor current in the config file so you always know what the current is, 2) overheat it by setting the current too high- smoothieboard IS the heatsink for the drivers, so overheat is much less likely to occur, and since you set the current in the config file, you're unlikely to set it too high- with the step-stick type drivers you never know what the motor current is, 3) connect or disconnect a motor while it is energized - that will kill any motor driver - just don't do it. Unless you do something dumb like pull cables while a motor is running, you're very unlikely to kill a driver on the smoothieboard.

Yes, smoothie costs a little more than Arduino based boards, but it will save you many hours debugging your setup, and if your interest takes you toward building bigger, better machines, the smoothieboard will accommodate. There is a lower cost version (the Azteeg board) if the smoothieboard cost is just too much to bear.

I think I'm going with the megatronics. I don't like using anything too new. Let others work out the bugs. Any thoughts on software? I'm on a windows machine, not Linux.

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Embed
I think I'm going with the megatronics. I don't like using anything too new. Let others work out the bugs. Any thoughts on software? I'm on a windows machine, not Linux.

Smoothie is definitely not new. It's more than 3 years old, has thousands of users, and is very well ironed out.

It is also much simpler to configure/learn than the other solutions, as others have pointed out.

We also have a dedicated community, very good documentation, very good support forums/channels, and is probably the most actively developped system.

And if you have any question you can even email me directly at wolf.arthur@gmail.com

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MindRealm
SmoothieBoard has the stepper drivers built into the board, so if one fails, you can't just plug in another one... I'll stick with RAMPS.

As others have said, there are connections for external drivers, so if you burn a driver, you can just wire an external one, which makes this essentially equivalent to a RAMPs in case of failure.

Also, a failure is much less likely on a Smoothieboard for various reasons.

But if all this is not enough for you, we get so few people with burned boards ( very common for RAMPs, extremely rare for Smoothieboard ) that if you manage to burn one of your Smoothieboard's drivers, I'll just exchange the board.

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Zavashier
The Mega/Ramps configuration is getting older, that's true. But it stills works fine. Those new boars, smoothieboard, Rambo, etc. are better, but also much more expensive. Actualy, I don't know if the improvements justify the price.

Lots of users think they do. It looks like you are not very familiar with Smoothie's featureset, so maybe that's impairing your ability to judge if the price difference is justified.

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Zavashier
Anyway to me the price is still a factor. Otherhand, there is a need of consistency. If the machine will use Hiwin linear rails, a smoothieboard will match the guides quality. If the machine will use chinese LM8UU and M5 threaded rods, a Mega/Ramps is pretty enough.

Actually, the machine's quality is pretty much irrelevant.

You will get most of Smoothieboard's advantages ( simplicity of use, ethernet, smoother movement, less artifacts, more features, etc ... ) equally on a run-of-the-mill Prusa i3 or on a fancy expensive machine.

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Zavashier
Last, remember the smoothieboard require its own firmware, there's still a few users, so you'll need to contact the developer for debuging/support if needed.

Actually that's just false.

Smoothieboard has a very very active community from which you can get help. We have a forum, mailing lists, and an IRC channel, and you'll get help very fast on each of those

We also have a very complete documentation, and you can even contact me at wolf.arthur@gmail.com if you have any question.

Saying that "there's still a few users" is just being ignorant of the status of the project. The Smoothie projet is more than 3 years old ( which is like a century in reprap-time ), there are several boards using the firmware, and there are thousands of users.

I guess athur and dentist get me wrong. First, I understand how good the smoothie is. I appreciate the smoothieboard have a community of users. Both, conceptors and users are very proud of it, and argue for it. That's ok. Just the Ramps/Marlin users a ways more numerous. Aren't they ?

Then about the consistency between components and electronics. You're right in your arguing, everybody aggrees, so do I. There's still two aspects you did not get (wanna see ?), both are linked.

First, the print quality depends much more of the mecanical parts and extrusion than from the board. I appreciate the smoothieboard can do her job better (hopefuly regarding its price), but there's excellent prints made out of a ramps too. Anyways, if you own a cheap chinese I3, the wobble you'll get on both axis, and the unconsistency of your extruder/hotend flow, will make any print ugly, whatever the board you use. There's no need to pay 200€ for a smoothieboard, you won't be able to see any noticeable difference on your prints. A board can eventualy makes things smarter, but it can't transfigure a machine printing quality on its own. A cheap city car improoved only by a high end electronic controler stays a cheap city car.

Second, the price. A reprap with a ramps that's a 250-500€ budget. Most repraps are within that range. A smoothieboard increases the budget of at last 40%. That's pretty expensive compared to the overall budget. As I said earlyer; there's other components you want to favor first, to be sure to get nice prints. Without a good extruder/hotend : no way to get nice prints. Without good guides, no way too. Then only comes the motors and the controler. They're important too, don't get me wrong. Both is important. As far as I get comparable quality of the best FDM prints I ever seen with a chinese ramps, with no lag or artefacts, I'm allowed to say the board is not the component you need to favour first.

If I wanted to build a high end production machine with expensive components at each stage, I'll logicaly consider a smoothieboard or any expensive board. Until I'll be able to find a smoothieboard at 1/3 of its actual price, I will buy and recommend less expensive boards for reasonable projects. Sorry.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/2015 05:50PM by Zavashier.

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

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Zavashier
Second, the price. A reprap with a ramps that's a 250-500€ budget. Most repraps are within that range. A smoothieboard increases the budget of at last 40%.

Yeah ... that's assuming you are using one of those extremely cheap chinese RAMPs that are not made to specs and that the community keeps continuously get reports of them dying all the time.

If you get a good quality RAMPS or RAMBO, the price is pretty similar to that of a Smoothieboard ...

Bad RAMPS that die frequently are bad for the users that loose their money, and are bad for the community as newcomers get discouraged. Encouraging people to use those is doing a disservice to the newcomers, and to the community.

The relatively small difference in price between a smoothieboard and an Arduino/RAMPS is returned a hundred times over by not wasting your time at unporoductive activities like debugging, adjusting, and repairing your printer.

Buy cheap, buy twice!

To each his own...

Easy sayings Dentist. To most of people, budget matters. Expensive does not always mean good, and inexpensive does not always mean cheap. Today lines are blured. I aquired my Ramps in the kit, it's surely a cheap chinese version (under $8 I guess). It still works fine up to 600 printing hours now. It already done its $8 job. I never had to debug or adjust anything on it after initial setup. No burn out to report, like most of the users. The "waisted" time (also "learning" time to me) with my kit was not because of controler issues, but extruder and mecanical parts only. Anyway, apreciate some people does not have $200 to invest into a controler board. Some cheaper controlers makes printers work properly for 1/4 that budget. Simple to understand, it's easy if you try.

Same price for an Aduino/Ramps than a smoothieboard ? Uh, I guess not ! Actualy you can buy a branded arduino mega for less than 25 bucks and a green or black ramps for the same price. The original MKS Gen is well built (at the specs arthur ) for under $50. I don't think that's so cheap. You can get low cost clones for under $10 each ! For half the price of the smoothieboard you can have a fully working PI/Octoprint solution with camera, wifi control and a 4" colour touchscreen. And you can get excellent prints.

Most of the machines works under Mega/Ramps boards and works just fine. They won't print at high speed anyway because of their overall engineering. So, that "old" boards match the actual printers needs. Once again, with that boards, you can get excellent print quality with no headaches or endless tuning. I'm aware the smoothieboard do it better, but don't say that older gen cards don't work fine. You know it's not true.

Arthur, I saw some days ago a video of you at Ponant Factories, when you were talking about the next gen Smoothieboard, with new features to strike back a possible "Milkshakeboard". If I understood well what you said. The smoothieboard looks to me like a swiss army knife. You said the new features will make the board a bit more expensive. Your company is based at a fablab's and your project follows an endless growth logical, like a commercial business. To me, a project is done when you've nothing more to remove, not when you've got nothing more to add. Is there a workshop in the smoothieboard community working on a simplified version of the board ? Like suppression of the features that are not used buy everybody ? I mean the RJ45 port for example, not realy usefull on our wireless world. That could make an affordable version of the board, at the same time, it opens to the board a huge amount of users with simple needs, and low budget, whom are most of us...

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2015 05:43AM by Zavashier.

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

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Zavashier
Easy sayings Dentist. To most of people, budget matters. Expensive does not always mean good,

The point is : in this case it does.

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Zavashier
and inexpensive does not always mean cheap.

The point is : in this case it does too.

There are some very expensive electronics that are not that good ( thinking r2c2 here ), and some quite cheap electronics that are pretty good.

But in the case of a Smoothieboard, as in the case of a counterfeit RAMPs, you actually get what you pay for.

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Zavashier
Today lines are blured. I aquired my Ramps in the kit, it's surely a cheap chinese version (under $8 I guess). It still works fine up to 600 printing hours now.

Personal annecdotal experience is completely irrelevant in the face of the overwhelming trend in the community : since the cheap RAMPs appeared, the number of reported failures has skyrocketed.

Your RAMPs works fine, that's good, we are happy for you. That doesn't mean much.

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Zavashier
It already done its $8 job. I never had to debug or adjust anything on it after initial setup. No burn out to report, like most of the users. The "waisted" time (also "learning" time to me) with my kit was not because of controler issues, but extruder and mecanical parts only. Anyway, apreciate some people does not have $200 to invest into a controler board.

You keep giving that price of $200, but a 4 axis Smoothieboard is actually $130 ... Which is what a good quality RAMPS costs, pretty much.
Even a 5 axis Smoothieboard is not $200 ...

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Zavashier
Most of the machines works under Mega/Ramps boards and works just fine. They won't print at high speed anyway because of their overall engineering. So, that "old" boards match the actual printers needs. Once again, with that boards, you can get excellent print quality with no headaches or endless tuning. I'm aware the smoothieboard do it better, but don't say that older gen cards don't work fine. You know it's not true.

Actually, I really think that you are biased by the fact that you have never used a Smoothieboard. Lots of users -do- think the RAMPS setups -are- too much of a headache once they have tried the Smoothie system.

You probably do not realize how much work ( setup, tuning, learning, configuring, compiling etc ... ) you have to do with RAMPS that you would not have to do if you used Smoothie.

But if you actually listened to Smoothie users ( or tried it yourself ), you'd realize there is actually a very significant difference.

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Zavashier
Arthur, I saw some days ago a video of you at Ponant Factories, when you were talking about the next gen Smoothieboard, with new features to strike back a possible "Milkshakeboard". If I understood well what you said.

I don't think you did.

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Zavashier
The smoothieboard looks to me like a swiss army knife.

It's not.

The Smoothie firmware aims at implementing as many features as possible.

The Smoothie -board- aims at being as cheap as possible while still allowing for extensibility where that does not impact price too much.

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Zavashier
You said the new features will make the board a bit more expensive.

Actually no, there will be a more expensive board, with many hardware peripherals, and an inexpensive one, with a more limited set of hardware peripherals.

The features are in the code, and all the boards have them.

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Zavashier
Your company is based at a fablab's and your project follows an endless growth logical, like a commercial business.

I have no idea where you got that from.

Smoothie is an open-source project dedicated to try to create the best possible motion control platform, with a particular focus on extensibility and ease of contribution.

My company's goal is to provide boards to users that want them, and if possible sell enough boards to finance development of the platform ...

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Zavashier
To me, a project is done when you've nothing more to remove, not when you've got nothing more to add. Is there a workshop in the smoothieboard community working on a simplified version of the board ?

That's already the direction taken by the Smoothieboard design.

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Zavashier
Like suppression of the features that are not used buy everybody ? I mean the RJ45 port for example,

That's definitely not something that is going away.
It's the most unique feature of the platform, it's used more and more, and there is a lot of functionality coming soon that will use it.
It's also probably one of the most loved features.

The fact that not everybody uses a feature does not mean it should be removed ... Many things on a RAMPs are not used by everybody, and are still there ...

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Zavashier
not realy usefull on our wireless world.

I'll just let hundreds of smoothie/ethernet users laught at you now.

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Zavashier
That could make an affordable version of the board, at the same time, it opens to the board a huge amount of users with simple needs, and low budget, whom are most of us...

[/quote]

What makes the board cheaper is not removing features.

What makes it cheaper is that it is made and sold by somebody that does not participate in it's development ( code, hardware, or documentation ), does not provide any kind of support for it, and does not care about quality. That makes a board cheaper.

Removing features does not.

AZSMZ Mini

Photo from [www.aliexpress.com]


The new kid on the block, the AZSMZ Mini comes in at an astoundingly cheap £46 from AliExpress. This increases to about £60 when you include 5 DRV8266 based stepper drivers.

Assuming we ignore the incomprehensible name for now, it has some interesting features. The size is slightly bigger than the X5 mini.

It is the only SmoothieWare compatible board for sale right now that has removable stepper drivers, which a lot of people seem to like. While this gives you the choice of which stepper drivers to use, it also means you’re limited on how much heat you can remove from the driver, decreasing your total motor current. It has 5 slots for stepper drivers, using the standard pololu-style pinout. As Pololu carriers are in use, there is no digital current control on this board.

There are 3 MOSFET outputs total, 1 High Current, and 2 Medium Current, Labelled Bed, Fan and Heat, along with 3 Thermistor inputs, allowing for dual extrusion. I would have liked 1 more medium current output, as assuming you want to use dual extrusion, you can’t have a fan without adding an external MOSFET board. Provision is made for 4 endstops, labelled X, Y Z and A.

Like the X5 Mini, there is no networking provision on the AZSMZ.

This board has a dedicated GLCD controller available, also from AliExpress [www.aliexpress.com] for £19. This LCD connects directly to the EXT2 and EXT3 ports, meaning connecting it is zero hassle. Though it uses the same connectors, these controllers arent the same as the ones on the RRD GLCD, so if you really want a RRD you’ll have to make an adaptor.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2015 08:43AM by cxandy.

Very interesting cxandy. Thanx.

@Arthur, communication is problematic with you. It's the seccond time I saw you investing a topic and trying to close the mouth of anybody who are not amazed by your board. I wonder if you just want to promote your board or if your're basically bloated with pride ? To treat right people who don't think like you, won't lower your succès or decrease the quality of your board. You could make friends instead of ennemies. Never mind.

I could do like you, extracting questionable pieces of your sentences and dislaiming step by step with claim and smugness. Of course I won't, it's useless and nasty. There's just thoussands of happy Ramps users printing everyday pretty nice parts. Oh arthur, forgive them they know not what they do...

Oh, I forget the source (french inside) [www.youtube.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2015 01:02PM by Zavashier.

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Collective intelligence emerges when a group of people work together effectively. Prusa i3 Folger (A lot of the parts are wrong, boring !)

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Zavashier
Just the Ramps/Marlin users a ways more numerous. Aren't they ?

At some point about 500 years ago, I'm sure that sword soldiers out-numbered musket soldiers. When the Spanish and other explorers arrived in the western hemisphere, there were orders of magnitude more arrows than guns. Arguing that the 8-bit RAMPS is better than a 32-bit platform is like bringing a sword or arrows to a gun fight.

As a Smoothieware user, I will say that cartesian-based printers do not benefit as much from the 32-it performance as delta printers and their heavy math processing so, Before saying that 1/32 stepping is important, I would take a look at the threads here about Marlin and clock cycles with 1/32 and 1/64 micro-steps.

My last board was a SainSmart Megatronics 2.0 clone. Other than the hyper-sensitive on-board 5V regulator, it ran reliably for several months until I got tired of the stuttering prints trying to do too much delta math while running a GLCD on an 8-bit processor. For a cartesian at 1/16 micro-steps, it is a fine choice if you want to play with the Arduino software toolchain.....

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Zavashier
@Arthur, communication is problematic with you.
It's the seccond time I saw you investing a topic and trying to close the mouth of anybody who are not amazed by your board.

That's absolutely not what happened here.

You made statements about Smoothieboard and other subjects that I find are inexact or false, and I tried to correct them.

And in my answers I am not even giving my personal opinion, but reporting what I generally hear in the community, or simply stating facts.

I'm sorry, but a Smoothieboard is not $200, bad quality RAMPS do fail much more than they should ( and as I said many times, good quality RAMPS are fine ), making their apparent inexpensiveness an illusion, and using Smoothieboard rather than RAMPS does make a lot of difference no matter if your machine is a junkrap or a marvel.

And when you say the contrary, you are making false statements ( not saying you are being dishonest, you could just not have enough information ), and I see no issue with correcting the problem.

Am I really smug and bloated with pride, or just trying to make sure this forum does not contain false information about a project I'm working on ?

And is doing that wrong ?

Is that the same thing as «trying to close your mouth» ? Did I ever tell you to close your mouth ?

Is anyone trying to tell you you are wrong, oppressing and censoring you ?

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Zavashier
I wonder if you just want to promote your board or if your're basically bloated with pride ?

I certainly do want to promote the Smoothie project generally, but that was -not- what I was doing here.

You said things that were false, and that do not match at all what I generally hear in the community, and I tried to correct you. You'll note I was not even the only one.

Do dentist and dougal "try to close your mouth" when they present different opinions or explain that you are wrong in this topic ?

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Zavashier
To treat right people who don't think like you, won't lower your succès or decrease the quality of your board. You could make friends instead of ennemies. Never mind.

I absolutely did not try to make an enemy out of you, just to point out you were wrong.

If to you that's trying to make an enemy out of you, I don't think you'll ever allow me to become your friend ...

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Zavashier
I could do like you, extracting questionable pieces of your sentences and dislaiming step by step with claim and smugness.

Are you accusing me of quote-mining ?

Please point out a single instance where I quote-mined you. Either do that, or stop accusing me of being dishonest.

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Zavashier
There's just thoussands of happy Ramps users printing everyday pretty nice parts. Oh arthur, forgive them they know not what they do...

There are also a lot of users with broken RAMPS, and they happen to mostly be the same recent cheap chinese RAMPS, but you completely ignore those, every time they are pointed out to you.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2015 01:28PM by arthurwolf.

Just to try and calm this down a little (Before the MODs get involved) each solution has its place.

As Vreihen as stated the Ramps setup is very much at it's limit with a printer that requires more processing power than a Simple Cartesian design. It will not work effectively on a Delta if you attach a GLCD to it, it just cannot cope with the math's etc hence the move towards 32 but controllers.

I have a RADDS setup on a due a Smoothie 4xc and a Duet along with the usual Ramps. The ramps is on a I3 and it works the Smoothie is going onto a CNC Router the DUET on a large Delta and the Radds will go on a Core XY Machine.

The things I like about the Smoothie is the way the Config's are done Firmware updates are the easiet of them all (No Arduino environment needed to compile your firmware first which is needed on both the Ramps and the RADDS solutions) the Duet is also easy in the way the config is done (Possibly even easier than the Smoothie as the file is smaller and I'm sure that Arthur won't mind me saying this) but the Duet is slightly harder to flash but still much easier than either of the Arduino solutions.

All in all each have there place and each to their own preference.

I commend the likes of Arthur, Dave (DC42) and the like because without these guy's we wouldn't be moving forward in this field and would just stagnate.

I will now just sit back watch But I WILL NOT comment again

Doug

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2015 01:39PM by dougal1957.

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dougal1957

The things I like about the Smoothie is the way the Config's are done Firmware updates are the easiet of them all (No Arduino environment needed to compile your firmware first which is needed on both the Ramps and the RADDS solutions) the Duet is also easy in the way the config is done (Possibly even easier than the Smoothie as the file is smaller and I'm sure that Arthur won't mind me saying this)

You said something bad about Smoothie I'm going to kill you !!!

More seriously, yes, we are aware of the issue, and we are working on removing some options from the default configuration files to make them more compact.

It'll also solve the issue of people modifying options that they don't understand and that are very rarely used ( the options will still exist but be documented in the wiki and be absent from the files by default ).

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arthurwolf

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dougal1957

The things I like about the Smoothie is the way the Config's are done Firmware updates are the easiet of them all (No Arduino environment needed to compile your firmware first which is needed on both the Ramps and the RADDS solutions) the Duet is also easy in the way the config is done (Possibly even easier than the Smoothie as the file is smaller and I'm sure that Arthur won't mind me saying this)

You said something bad about Smoothie I'm going to kill you !!!

More seriously, yes, we are aware of the issue, and we are working on removing some options from the default configuration files to make them more compact.

It'll also solve the issue of people modifying options that they don't understand and that are very rarely used ( the options will still exist but be documented in the wiki and be absent from the files by default ).

Smoothieboard,
azteeg x5 Mini,
AZSMZ Mini,
Snbeam 2.0
Momoinololu M3

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New 32 bit ARM based Motion controller for 3D printers, CNC Machines and Laser cutters. Like Azteeg x5 mini or smoothieboard(no network).
AZSMZ Mini [www.ebay.com] [bancuit.aliexpress.com]
AZSMZ 12864 LCD [www.ebay.com] [bancuit.aliexpress.com] [azsmz.aliexpress.com]
SMART RAMPS [www.ebay.com] [bancuit.aliexpress.com] [azsmz.aliexpress.com]
[www.facebook.com]

I really hate to waiste my time and answer the original question, but :
I like the Megatronics solution because
1. it combines the Arduino and Ramps into 1 compact board
2. you can use the 1/32 drivers (though, at first I was confused about how many jumpers to use)

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Fitz
I really hate to waiste my time and answer the original question, but :
I like the Megatronics solution because
1. it combines the Arduino and Ramps into 1 compact board
2. you can use the 1/32 drivers (though, at first I was confused about how many jumpers to use)

3. It is one of the rare boards that has two K-type thermocouple inputs native. It was (and still is) a forward-thinking feature, and one that I wish other boards would adopt.....

Not meaning to poke anyone in particular, but I have been in the electronics business for a fairly long time and while there are arguments for integrated solutions (having the MCU, drivers, regulators, MOSFETs, etc. on one board), these are problematic in case of a component failure (or damage by a novice).

I, for one, would much rather have the option of replacing individual drivers (or updating from A4988 ro DRV8825) on a RAMPS board than any alternative that requires adding them, reconfiguring addresses, wiring, etc. Also, the Arduino Mega 2560 is useful for other projects if I ever do upgrade past RAMPS.

This is very much like the old Apple vs. PC argument where Apple groupies would rather pay much more for a computer with everything integrated than a PC that is much less expensive, easily repaired and upgraded without throwing out the motherboard. This eventually sunk in, as Apple hardware architecture is very much the same as PCs, having adopted the use of Intel processors and off-the-shelf compatible hardware.

I love technology, and see many advantages with Apple's aesthetics, operating systems, etc., but I can't justify buying a new iAnything before the warranty is out on my old one... Genius marketing or a sheep-like customer base?

I'm done. Thanks

---

-David

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MindRealm
Not meaning to poke anyone in particular, but I have been in the electronics business for a fairly long time and while there are arguments for integrated solutions (having the MCU, drivers, regulators, MOSFETs, etc. on one board), these are problematic in case of a component failure (or damage by a novice).

Well in this case the thing is : the added modularity of the pololus, is also what makes them much more likely to get damaged. So you get the choice between a solution that is ( more ) likely to burn, but that you can replace easily, or one that is unlikely to burn, but that is a bit less simple to replace ...

Nothing wrong with external drivers ... if they are done right.

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arthurwolf
Nothing wrong with external drivers ... if they are done right.

I consider the above to be a challenge to do it right!

Seriously though, (doing my Jeremy Clarkson impersonation) how difficult would it be to design a driver board similar to the Pololu, but with whatever extra hardware is needed to do software-controlled current limiting? Of course, everyone will want to be able to re-use their old Pololu drivers, so being backwards-compatible will be a requirement as well. I'm not an EE, but I assume that it would mean adding a few extra pins to the sockets to "do it right." Can a Pololu-sized board provide adequate heat sinking?

Personally, I like the DRV8825's soldered on the Azteeg X5 Mini, and do not fear them being damaged. It seems like removable drivers is a deal-breaker for a large number of potential customers though, which is why I'm wondering if it is possible to make a board that supports the older drivers *and* has custom removables that have all of the features of the on-board drivers?????