Substitute RAMPS 1.4 board for gen6.d board?

My old Portabee printer uses a gen6.d electronics controller board to control the printer. One of these days, I expect the electronics controller board to die. I cannot buy gen6.d boards locally, but I noticed I can buy a RAMPS 1.4 board locally. Can I simply replace the gen6.d board with a RAMPS 1.4 board and expect it to work? Looking at the wiring for the RAMPS 1.4 board (https://reprap.org/wiki/RAMPS_1.4#Wiring), it seems to correspond well with my gen6.d board in what I think is a typical setup: there are connections for two Z motors, one X motor, one Y motor, heated bed, thermistor for heated bed, hot end heater, hot end thermistor, and fan.

Is it correct that a RAMPS 1.4 board cannot run by itself, but needs a separate Arduino board?

Are there other modern controller boards that might be a good alternative to my old gen6.d board?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/01/2021 09:38AM by qrp-gaijin.

Ramps is just a shield, it needs to be on a mega2560, or even better a re-arm 32 bit controller.

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Dust
Ramps is just a shield, it needs to be on a mega2560, or even better a re-arm 32 bit controller.

Thanks, understood. I managed to destroy my gen6.d board today by leaving the printer out on the balcony when it started to rain. I guess the rain shorted out the electronics. I'm assuming the stepper motors, hot end, and limit switches are all still undamaged by the rain, so I think all I need is a new electronics board to get back up and running.

A couple of questions:

1. What kind of 4-wire connectors should be used on the motor wires, to connect the motors onto the X, Y, and Z pins in the middle of the below image? In particular, I'm worried about the size for the Z motor connectors. The pins for both Z motors are very close to one another on the RAMPS board, so this requires a very narrow or thin 4-wire connector for each motor. The current connectors on my Z motors are rather thick (they are designed to fit a plastic locking clip that prevents insertion in the wrong orientation), and this thickness makes it look like they are too thick to fit onto the available space on the RAMPS board. What is the name of the proper kind of very thin 4-wire connector that would fit into available the space on the RAMPS board?

2. What kind of 2-wire connectors should be used on the limit switch wires? Again, the pins for multiple limit switches are located very close to one another on the RAMPS board (the "END STOPS" block at the upper-right of the circuit board), requiring a very narrow 2-wire connector for each limit switch. What is the name of the proper kind of connector?

[images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com]


3. Can the 11A and 5A power supply lines be wired in parallel and connected to the same power supply, assuming it can supply 11A?
[reprap.org]

stepper plugs are for 4-pin Female Dupont

endstops are 2-pin Female Dupont

You need 11+5 = 16 amps power supply (minimum) , and yes they are just wired in parallel to the suplly.
If you don't have a heated bed, you don't need the 11amp wires at all. (11amp circuit is just for heated bed/D8 mosfet)

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Dust
stepper plugs are for 4-pin Female Dupont

endstops are 2-pin Female Dupont

Thanks; with this information I could find some ribbon cables on amazon with the proper connectors.

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Dust
You need 11+5 = 16 amps power supply (minimum) , and yes they are just wired in parallel to the suplly.
If you don't have a heated bed, you don't need the 11amp wires at all. (11amp circuit is just for heated bed/D8 mosfet)

What would be the likely consequence of supplying only 10 amps total?

I ask because my original gen6.d board for the Portabee (which has a small 12 cm x 12 cm heated bed) could actually run everything (5 stepper motors, hot end, barrel fan, and heated bed -- plus the gen6.d electronics board) off of a 10A power supply.

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qrp-gaijin
I managed to destroy my gen6.d board today by leaving the printer out on the balcony when it started to rain. I guess the rain shorted out the electronics.

Well, miracle of miracles, I seem to have been able to revive the old gen6.d board by spraying it with warm tap water and drying it with a hair dryer. I'm assuming the years of dust buildup on the board (which is not enclosed in any protective housing), combined with the rainwater, led to some partial short-circuit, which now hopefully has been resolved.

At least, the board is now again recognized as a USB device when connected to a PC; yesterday, this was not the case. I didn't yet have a chance to test if the whole board functionality is still intact. I'm crossing my fingers that I can squeak out a few more years from the gen6.d board, but am still continuing to investigate the RAMPS 1.4 solution.

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[edit] Unfortunately, though the board now shows up as a USB device when connected to the PC, Pronterface is unable to connect to the printer through that interface (it just waits forever at "Connecting..."). Oh well...

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/22/2021 06:11AM by qrp-gaijin.

"which has a small 12 cm x 12 cm heated bed"
its the 20x20cm bed that take about 11 amp.

if it was working before on 10 amp total, you bed probably takes less that 5amp..

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Dust
"which has a small 12 cm x 12 cm heated bed"
its the 20x20cm bed that take about 11 amp.

if it was working before on 10 amp total, you bed probably takes less that 5amp..

In that case, my plan will be:

1. Connect 10A power supply in parallel to 11A input and 5A input on RAMPS 1.4 board.

2. Do not connect the bed heater or thermistor at first (leaving those wires disconnected), and get everything else hooked up and working. I assume total current draw (without the heated bed) will be around 5A, which is less than the 10A capacity of the power supply, which should be fine.

3. After confirming that I can move all the motors, detect all the limit switches, and actually make 3D prints -- then I will try hooking up the bed heater and thermistor.

Some more questions:

For step 2, can I expect the firmware to work if I just leave the bed heater and thermistor disconnected?

For step 3, can I expect that nothing permanently damaging will happen if the total current draw, after connecting the bed heater, exceeds the 10A supplied by the power supply?

2) yes, as long as you don't send any bed heating gcodes.
3) if current exceeds capabilities most power supply simply shut down. but some will let out the smoke.

Sigh... doing more research, it seems the RAMPS 1.4 boards are prone to burning up.

For one, the power connectors may be working at their limit: [reprap.org] .

Much more troubling is the ominous-sounding warning on the wiki that there are some thermal design flaws in production RAMPS 1.4 boards:

[reprap.org]

I can't really understand the problem that the above wiki page is describing, or how to recognize if it exists in my board. Here is a photograph of the RAMPS 1.4 PCB that I am considering buying. Does this board have the thermal design flaw described at the above wiki page?


Perhaps a safer alternative to the ultra-cheap RAMPS 1.4 might be the MKS GEN: [reprap.org] . Specifically, I could find a vendor selling "MKS GEN L V1.0". The only thing I notice is that there is only support for 1 Z motor, where as my Portabee has two.



As I understood, I would need to wire the two Z motors in parallel to connect to the one Z motor connector on the MKS_GEN board: [reprap.org] ... uh, or maybe I need to wire the motors in series: [reprap.org] ...?

Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 03/22/2021 11:14AM by qrp-gaijin.

That is technically correct, but in reality total bs.

Been running ramps for years, and never had any issues like these.
Some ramps are not as good as other, in particular the 11amp plug is not rated for 11amps. but your not running an 11amps heated bed.

MKS-GEN1 is a nice looking board. I'd just throw in I'm totally happy with the SMART RAMPS board being sold on AliExpress lately. Note that it can be used with a DUE or a MEGA2560 with Marlin now. Some details here

For that Z motor issue on the MKS board, you'd just need to make a parallel wired cable for the two motors. That would be same difference as it is on a RAMPS board. Actually, it is identical, Marlin can have E1 configured (as it does with RAMPS) to be the second Z motor if you're in to that.

And finally, I'd just add it is totally worth going all in on 24volts bed, fans, the works. My bed heats up to 110 in under a minute and thankfully, I have no experiance with waiting 10+ mins for it to heat as I'm hearing others are with 12V systems. Also, I expect my stepper drivers are able to run cooler with the higher input voltage (I interpret that as they have more 'room' to do their magic).

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/23/2021 07:39AM by NovaHuta.

To be clear, the story of ramps burning up could be related to incomplete conversions to 24V (change polyfuses!), to poor connectors from cheap clones, poor user wiring practices (use ferrules!), or use on 3.3v logic (DUE) with Mosfets poorly suited.

If you are familiar with all those issues, you are in good shape to use any RAMPS

Stories from 2018 or abouts, were about the green plastic connnectors melting down, and possibly causing a fire.
Not the PCB itself.

Many youtubers did stories about how to make it safer.

Seems one thing was if you soldered the wire ends from your power supply. When you inserted these into the clamping connectors, theres no 'squish', so the electrical contact is very small, and pumping 11 amps thru it caused enough heat to melt the connector.

Tom Saladerer told people to leave the wires unsoldered, this allows the strands to squish and create maximum contact surface.

fwiw my homebuilds dont have a heated bed, so I never worried about it.

I discovered that pressing the reset button (circled in red) on my gen6.d board allows the connection to Pronterface to succeed. However, now the Y axis motor is now intermittently failing to move the bed, instead simply making a buzzing sound. Increasing the current to the driver (with the trimpot) can temporarily fix the problem, but sooner or later the Y axis motor stops moving and starts buzzing. I guess the rainwater damaged the Y axis motor driver circuitry on the board.

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After several hours of debugging, it seems that the Y-axis driver actually works, and temporary failure is primarily caused by one thing: leaving the motors on after the end of a print. I started a new thread to ask about this: [reprap.org] .

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/2021 10:30AM by qrp-gaijin.

Hi, The RAMP1.4 wiki pages were updated, since you going through this fresh experience any feedback will be appreciated...


RAMPS1.4 Wiki

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ctkjose
Hi, The RAMP1.4 wiki pages were updated, since you going through this fresh experience any feedback will be appreciated...
RAMPS1.4 Wiki

Thanks for the tip. I ended up ordering a MKS GEN L V1 board. Will my experiences with the MKS GEN board be relevant for the RAMPS 1.4 wiki page? I guess MKS GEN is in fact just an integrated Arduino+RAMPS solution?

Correct a MK Gen L V1 or V1.4 are just that an arduino and a RAMPS 1.4 together.

The main difference is the physical location of connectors, electrically almost the same, uses the same pins for firmware purposes Marlin sees a Ramps 1.4.

The endstops on the MK Gen L V1.4 does have an RC circuit on the endstops which the ramps does not. So you can connect microswitches direct to it. This section on endstops was also updated is good read to understand the setups. I added a good explanation (or so i think) on Marlin's X_MIN_ENDSTOP_INVERTING, settings.

[github.com]

Note: This boards also have the same issues as RAMPS clones, while the actual design has good noise protection, some clones remove capacitors to reduce costs, this may manifest in different ways depending on which ones were skip. Also the ATMega2560 on clones (even Arduino Mega2560 clones) have poor protection of their IO pins, so they are a tad more prompt to damage.

My MKS GEN L v1.0 board finally arrived, and I was immediately able to upload my self-compiled Marlin 2.0 onto the board, with no hassles. I was happy to see that I could upload firmware and test the endstops without needing to connect the 12V power supply -- the power supplied over the USB cable was sufficient to power the microcontroller.

Next, I want to test the motors, which will require the 12V, 5A power supply to be connected. It would be more convenient if I could use a pluggable connector instead of the screw connectors. Can anyone suggest a small form factor connector that can safely handle the required current (16A maximum, including the heated bed)?

The reason i want a small pluggable connector is that my printer is a small portable type that I move around often (I put it outside, with good ventilation, while printing, and take it back inside when done). When moving the printer, I want to disconnect the bulky power supply easily. But the current screw connectors for the power supply can't be disconnected quickly.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2021 08:50PM by qrp-gaijin.

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ctkjose
Also the ATMega2560 on clones (even Arduino Mega2560 clones) have poor protection of their IO pins, so they are a tad more prompt to damage.

Damage from what? Static electricity?

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qrp-gaijin
My MKS GEN L v1.0 board finally arrived, and I was immediately able to upload my self-compiled Marlin 2.0 onto the board, with no hassles. I was happy to see that I could upload firmware and test the endstops without needing to connect the 12V power supply -- the power supplied over the USB cable was sufficient to power the microcontroller.

Next, I want to test the motors, which will require the 12V, 5A power supply to be connected. It would be more convenient if I could use a pluggable connector instead of the screw connectors. Can anyone suggest a small form factor connector that can safely handle the required current (16A maximum, including the heated bed)?

The reason i want a small pluggable connector is that my printer is a small portable type that I move around often (I put it outside, with good ventilation, while printing, and take it back inside when done). When moving the printer, I want to disconnect the bulky power supply easily. But the current screw connectors for the power supply can't be disconnected quickly.

It is simple to go to an electronics supply outlet and pick up the polarized connectors used for power to radios, amps, etc in vehicles and add those to the ends of your power cords. One end of the connector goes to the board connections and the other end on the printer wires. Then plug in and unplug to your hearts content. They are similar to the 4 wire plugs used for trailer light connections but only have 2 wires. Those connectors are rated for at least 15 amp.

BTW, I am using the MKS GEN L v1.0 board with a 24V PSU and it works great.

If you're partial to RAMPS, I'd suggest the following variant of it

SMART RAMPS GITHUB

It is supported in Marlin to work with either the MEGA 2560 or an arduino DUE -- I've had it working on both.

So, you have option of 8-bit or 32-bit with little wiring changes and a board swap.

Either that or one of the combined boards already mentioned that are newer. I would say though, I do like having independent boards for each driver.

That URL provided shows the key details for making it work with 24V system plus the other common mods.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/17/2021 04:16PM by NovaHuta.