To the best of my knowledge none of the Reprap/Makerbot hosts currently work with a parallel breakout board. I'm not aware of anyone controlling the temperature directly from EMC, so Sebastien is right to push the more traditional designs. However, with EMC or Mach3 you'll still need an Arduino (or the like) to control the temperature of the extruder and/or bed, so EMC/Mach3 become a lot less compelling.
With EMC you would need/want to use a breakout board and drivers - EMC will not work with the Makerbot mainboad (or any other USB based microcontroller board). Oops - my mistake about this being about a router. Remember, you're all RepRap developers (once you've joined the super-secret developer mailing list), and the wiki,, is for everyone and everything! Since we've got docs and devs that know how do to it with EMC, I already have Mach3, can I use that instead of EMC?ĭunno. And since you want to hold the extruder(s) at a particular temperature. Or you can use the extruder controller board from Gen 2, as per:īasically, your Gecko g540 doesn't know what a thermocouple or thermistor is. You will need something like an entire RAMPS or Gen 4 Electronics board in order to heat your extruder head and control its temperature. Do I have to use a Makerbot mother board at all? Can I just use say a Gecko g540, which has 4 axis and a built in parallel port breakout board. If not, you'll want to spend some time on the site as they have a lot of information concerning DIY CNC machines, as well as CNC in general.
Between the larger steppers that you are using and the much more "dangerous" tool head (a router), you'll want to spend more time thinking about how to mitigate the hazards.įinally, I assume you are familiar with. The plastic extruder machines are pretty low power and as such the safety considerations are pretty minimal.
And if the cam software you are planning on using is known to work the controller/firmware you choose then it is a non-issue.Īnother thing consider is that you'll want a real emergency stop button. This is probably more of an issue with a mill than it is with a router, however. It is that "mostly" that causes a lot of headaches.
I know that GCODE is supposed to be universal, and it is, mostly. Many cam programs will generate GCODE tailored to EMC simply by selecting the correct machine profile. Part of the problem with using the Makerbot board for the controller is that the GCODE support is somewhat limited. One final pitch for EMC (and then I promise not to mention it again in the this thread). Connecting the outputs from an controller board directly to the gecko drivers is pretty reasonable. You certainly could use a RAMPS board as a breakout board, but it is really only going to provide a thermistor circuit (not needed for a CNC router) and some MOSFET drivers for a couple of heaters (also not needed on a CNC router), so there is little to be gained. Once you've chosen a controller board and firmware, post up a list of components and I'm certain someone will help you sort out the connections. I'm not aware of a preexisting connection diagram, but it would be pretty straightforward.
In fact, you'll be gaining a much more robust driver and midband resonance suppression, which will be a useful benefit on the machine you are building. You'll not be giving up anything by not using the makerbot drivers, especially since the makerbot drivers are not going to work well with a 3.2 amp stepper, as you've noted yourself earlier. I have 3 gecko g203v drives sitting around, would it be possible to hook these up to the Makerbot motherboard and drive them separately with a 48v powersupply? It seems that the Makerbot driver is not an option. I'd like to use a 48v power supply to drive the stepper motors to get a bit more torque and speed out of them. The latest stepper driver board from Makerbot can only handle 2.8a. I know nothing about software and programming so I plan to use the Makerbot 2.4 motherboard to ensure compatibility and the ability to correctly use the stepper driven extruder. From what I'm reading, these slides should be super precise, though not necessarily speedy. The screw pitch on the x and y axis are 8mm/turn, the z axis around 1.5mm/turn. The x and y axis will be powered by a 3.2a NEMA 23 motor, the Z axis by a Nema 17 1.2a stepper motor. I have a 24" ballscrew driven slide for the x axis, a similar 11" ballscrew drive for the y axis and a small 9" ballscrew driven slide for the z axis. My machine is not built yet, but I do have the mechanical components already. I want to build a custom 3D printer and would greatly appreciate everyone's advice on the electronics components. I'll start by saying thank you to everyone in advance.