Difficulties with Makerbot board availability

A few of us have determined to make a Mendel, started ordering parts, went to order boards (we have a complete SMT soldering system available for use) and discovered no Stepper Driver boards and Extruder controller boards were available. In fact, it listed the stepper boards as discontinued. Discontinued??? Is the design being revved, or are there other problems I don't know about? I found (here on this forum) a possible link to a different design for stepper drivers, have enquired as to availability and pricing, but am still looking for extruder boards. Anyone out there have any leads, or can anyone tell me how long Makerbot may be out of them?

Same problem here, but I managed to find Stepper motor PCB here [www.reprapsource.com] .
But you wont find extruder PCB you just have to make it yourself.

That's the old 1.2 through hole board (Also available from makerbot?)

I assume it's because most people want the fully assembled ones.

I ame experimenting with Eagle and may try etching a few myself - using the laserprinter/home etch method.

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Reprapping blog and other rants: [renoirsrants.blogspot.com]
My Reprap: [sites.google.com]

DaveR Wrote:
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> That's the old 1.2 through hole board (Also
> available from makerbot?)
>
> I assume it's because most people want the fully
> assembled ones.
>
> I ame experimenting with Eagle and may try etching
> a few myself - using the laserprinter/home etch
> method.


You know,
my design-contest for adapting my
Milling-toolhead of the RepMan to the Mendel
is still open.
[www.thingiverse.com]

PCB-milling on the 3D-printer works like a charm.
(Only issue atm is a firmware-bug in my RepMan preventing
me from going slow enough but with manual movement it´s fine.)

visolate for creating voronoi-toolpathes (much faster)
also works fine after I gave it sone additional settings
about the g-code.

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I emailed them about this and the reply I got was:

"""

We can check, but it's unlikely we'll be getting them back in stock
any time soon. We're going to be moving to a different driver chip
for our next generation drivers.

-a
"""

I've got V2.3 stepper motor driver bare boards I can sell and ship to you.
As of now I have about 20 left. I can ship anywhere, they are $3US which is $0.07 more than my cost, plus shipping and $10 handling fee for packaging, labor etc.

Thanks for all the advice from everyone, , I found someone selling all the raw boards

[dev.forums.reprap.org]

Idaholion Wrote:
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> Thanks for all the advice from everyone, , I found
> someone selling all the raw boards
>
> [dev.forums.reprap.org]


Idaholion - did you find a business selling them or an individual? I'm looking to find some in the US.

If you go to the following link
[dev.forums.reprap.org]

you will see forum entries from kymberlyaandrus. They are selling boards, either raw boards, boards with kits, assembled boards, or an entire electronics set. They were great to work with. And after looking all through the forum, funny enough, they ended up less than 50 miles from where I grew up.

hello, i went with arduino. the reprap boards are custom, and hard to find. the arduino is used for more that just the reprap.
James

IMO, much better if we had a breakout board instead of motherboard. How hard would that be?

wouldn't it be more inline with - make it accessible, make it hackable, make it available.

All the customization and bogging down that's happening is really dissapointing.

not for those with machines already built - but for those without machines yet.


a simple arduino shield that has all the stuff the motherboard has - could be used on any pin compatible arduino board, yes/no? could be used with derivitive boards too.


just my $0.02 worth.

and is it me, or did Makerbot's prices just jump?

FWIW I had just decided I was going to bite the waiting bullet and order a makerbot - for end of march. I went to order, and THAT SAME DAY only hours earlier - SOLD OUT OF #12 - now it's a freakin' 9 week lead time... will I be done with my repscrap build by then? decisions decisions.

--- supply chain is a bit of a problem... focus needs to be on reducing the number of specialized components - not specializing.

get rid of things that aren't easy to find/get EVERYWHERE...

we want ANYONE to be able to do this - not just those with loads of time and money - so reduce bearing count. standard electronics... etc.

sorry for the rant


james villeneuve Wrote:
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> hello, i went with arduino. the reprap boards are
> custom, and hard to find. the arduino is used for
> more that just the reprap.
> James

James, when using an Arduino for a Reprap, what is missing compared to the Makerbot boards? Is there some documentation for doing it this way?

Andreas