... so, as much as i am reluctant to distract this conversation onto the topic of development, as you're aware i'm in a bit of a rush to get things ready for Shenzhen Maker Faire 2017 in under 3 weeks time, so i've prepared 3 extra boards, just sent off to the factory, and also the components for the other... errr... three i think... arrived this morning. the first new one is a diff-ir sensor boby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
Quotedc42 There are still companies and groups such as Duet3D, Prusa, Lulzbot and the Smoothie folks who are committed to open source. I hang around here as well as on Duet3D and a few other places. appreciated, dave.by lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
QuoteVDX ... but this wasn't the full story! - Zach Smith developed the first versions of RepRap-electronics up to Gen3 ... then, together with Bre Pettis, he started their "comercial" route with a promise to cooperate with the community (what he did for at least 1 year) ... then Bre rearranged it to "closed", found more money and "started big" with launching Thingiverse ... sourced even more monby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
QuoteVDX Are you aware of the "success-story" of Makerbot? yes - the f*****rs. i heard the story first from wim, he is a... backer / angel investor of open / libre projects. he was their first customer, ordered 10 of their very first printer cash up-front (so that they could actually buy the materials!). now he is very embarrassed by their betrayal. and, interestingly, look what's happeninby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
QuoteVDX Quotelkcl ... anyway my point is: if we go "underground", that's it: it's game over. ... no, it shouldn't be that dramatic -- IIRC when starting the RepRap project, we were around 10 to 15 individuals, located all over the world. Now, with the "localized teams", we're even more per team - so enough potential to get it rolling on. And with the Maker-fairs as exchange/communicating platby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
QuoteVDX ... not exactly "marketable" - but it's one of several different methodes to initiate desirable developments yehyeh. well it's a trick i learned along the way. nophead, dc42, many others, they're all extremely well-known because they write really, really comprehensive documentation and online explanations of the developments they're working on. that helps people... it gets them wellby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
QuoteVDX ... yes, I had similar experiences -- and not only limited to "Chinese cloners" but too with "borrowing" my ideas and IP's for comercial solutions here in Europe too without any mention of my originates or any feedback ... had this even with some collaborative/cooperation projects, meant for developing for a group of firms, while one of the partners used the information for his own "closby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
QuoteVDX ... which other solution? - I'm searching for since maybe 20+ years now (since my first "cloning/IP-stealing" issues). i hear ya: on one libre project i worked on (Exchange 5.5 reverse-engineering, back in 2000 to 2003), i had people in the software libre community (westerners) track every advance that i made, implementing it themselves... removing all mention of the fact that they gotby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
damnit, damnit this is why i can't find the firmware source code for the newly-developed filament width sensor concepts, and am having to replicate the designs as GPLv3+. frick. i really can't stand wasting my time replicating pre-existing code - certainly not when i have such bad RSI again. ok. i'm going over to Shenzhen for the Maker Faire on the 10th-12th, but there's a makerspace meetup aby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
QuoteVDX ... my "tactics" are different (and some of my friends do it similarly) - I'm developing and distributing my "critical" projects only locally and without too much traffic ... so it's mostly "under the radar" or not accessible from outsiders So actually only infos and projects, which aren't essential or critical or worth to do it for a life, are posted or blogged open - what's a shame iby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
QuoteVDX ... it's not this simple -- many of the involved companies aren't "real", but more a bunch of casual connected individuals, changing their "company" names or adresses by will or occasion pretty easy, so wouldn't be affected or hurt seriously by our "counter-measures" Even one of our "official partners" for SMD-pick'n'place machines is not a "normal company", but a group of three ingeniby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
Quotelkcl QuoteVDX .... however, these "first copies" are far away from being reliable or of consistent quality -- these "micro-companies" use what they just have or even "fake" components, such as re-encapsulated 6V capacitors, where actually 16Volt types would be required In the end, angry "customers" ran into you with: "why you've designed such scrap!" -- because the cloners boldly use yourby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
QuoteVDX .... however, these "first copies" are far away from being reliable or of consistent quality -- these "micro-companies" use what they just have or even "fake" components, such as re-encapsulated 6V capacitors, where actually 16Volt types would be required In the end, angry "customers" ran into you with: "why you've designed such scrap!" -- because the cloners boldly use your web pagesby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
QuoteVDX .... but this also explains why fewer and fewer competent developers are willing to present their own developments to the community... it sometimes takes only a few weeks until a clone from China appears at a fraction of the cost price.... great! design it... pretend you're going to make it yourself... get it cloned then buy and import it stock it to the ceiling and sell it to unsuspeby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
oh my god. USD $0.50 to $1 for A4988 steppers. USD $1 for a CNC "shield" that takes 4 stepper boards. USD $12 for a full RAMPS 1.4 kit. this is insane.by lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
Quoteobelisk79 I'd love to take a stab at v2 (since v1 still had issues), if you pm me your info I can pay you for the expense of the materials/shipping. Also, thanks for the recommendation on the soldering station. sure, i can do that. smallest components are 0805. if you're interested, help on editing the wiki with photos to advise people on which components to do first much appreciated, ifby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
QuoteVDX ... this board is 160x24mm "big" (or better "small") -- the coolers will be much bigger Here's an image of the three populated boards - the one in the back is complete with coolers and base-plate: neat. hey, you use a microscope to help with soldering, that's a good idea. i left my silly-looking headwear in storage in the US when travelling to taiwan.by lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
Quotedc42 Perhaps you should switch from Eagle to KiCad? Then you would be able to make the board larger or 4-layer, which would make the routing easier. i appreciate the suggestion: bit of a long story, quite a lot of background - bear in mind that i've attempted to use kicad a number of times, the last time was an effort to make a libre 6-layer board with a 440-pin 0.6mm BGA with four 78-pin Dby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
ok so i did the DRC review, and i can get away with 10mil track-to-track and 10mil trace widths, but not 10 mil track-to-pad/throughhole. the reason is: the 2.54mm through-hole connectors have really large surrounds. i've nearrlly managed to get to 10mil for via clearances (0.25mm not 0.254mm)... honestly though whilst it would be really nice to get down to 12mil/12mil so that this board couldby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
Quoteobelisk79 There's quite a bit going on there... more soldering! I might have to order a full soldering station soon, that looks like fun. hey i'm happy to send you a PCB and a set's worth of components if it takes your fancy. v1 took me 2 days to do / debug. ok... 3 hours to solder, then 1.75 days to debug... btw my friend mike found me a soldering station, called "Yihua 8786D" - they'rby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
wha-hey! the 10th october board revision arrived - the one with the corrections and so on. this is on the table at the factory, my friend mike is waiting for the component vendor to put the (small) parts list together. the vendor's taking his time because there's very little profit in it for him. so, mike's being smart and has also given him a big order from another customer at the same time.by lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
ok so i decided i didn't like the idea of crossing over the STEP/DIR and VCC lines, and it occurred to me: if the motor connector is isolated in an island surrounded by GND and VM, why not do the same thing for STEP/DIR/VCC? so i did: i put them onto a separate header per TMC2660, requiring separate flying leads. it's an expansion board, so it's possible to get away with that. also i took the oby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
yep managed it. diagonal out with VM, plane width of around... 2mm so definitely a 4+ amp carrying capacity, that then allowed STEP and DIR to come out diagonally, staggered and separated by a GND area with VIAs each, linked to the GND flood-fill crossing on the other side at right-angles. there's only one VIA in the corner of those big (1206) capacitors - C10 - but i can live with that. theby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
Quotedc42 You can find the KiCad files for the Duets in the T3P3 github repository. We use the top and bottom layers for heatsinking, connected by thermal vias. The top and bottom layers are 20z copper, whereas the inner layers are thinner (I think 0.5oz is standard). gottem, thanks for the heads-up. hmm, that's a hell of a lot of vias no thermal problems there. ok so i figured i'd make anby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
ok so yeh i lined up the 2 "EN" headers to make the 2x7 effectively into a 2x9, which means that anyone wishing to use this board with hardware-controlled enable can do so. dc42, what's the layer stack like on the DuetNG? 4 layer? did you follow (precisely) the TMC2660 Reference Design? i'm curious to know if you stuck with the big power planes for the motor out(s) on Layer 2 only, rather thanby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
ok so i noticed that RAMPS says it can do between 12 and 35v, so i checked the ratings on everything: the MC7808 can do 35v, the STP55s and the IRLB3034s can do 60v, but the PMV40UN can only do 30. soooOoo.... i tried looking around to see if i could find a suitable similar SOT23-3 MOSFET-N with a higher max voltage, and found the Si2356ds: it looks to me like it's a drop-in replacement, 40Vby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
here's what i mean. each "thermal" is only rated for about 0.5 amps worth of copper in a 1oz board. there's only 2 layers. sometimes there are tracks about 1A wide connecting the two. often there are only three thermals per terminal per side, meaning a total of 6A. if you're very lucky the extra track width gives you 8A maximum safe power provision (for a 10C temperature rise). google "onliby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
i've been looking at the RAMPS PCB board layout (quite a lot) and i've noticed in the PCB design that the MOSFETs and the power terminals have "thermals" switched on. what that is intended to do, is, to reduce the copper connectivity to pins so that heat (thermal conductivity) doesn't travel up the pin (or down the pin from a hot MOSFET for example). in the case of power pins however this is veby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
hi rodrigo, as dc42 explained you get loss of synchronisation. i used 4 steppers, 2 in series times 2 in parallel - look up the mendel90 wiring diagram. exactly as dc42 explained: it regularly and consistently went out of synchronisation and the printbed required constant and monotonously-regular retuning. the reason is very simple: microstepping interferes with the "sync" on startup. basicaby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics
Quotedc42 SPI is too slow for commanding stepping on a 3D printer. really? iinteresting... that's a big surprise. mind you.... 25mhz serial speeds... commands take 20, 24-bits to send... 1M-commands per second, not including processing time (setup i.e. latency). i saw how RRF does the Step/Dir by pushing the same 32-bits to all the timers, but only enabling the pin-ports that are actually nby lkcl - RAMPS Electronics