People always ask “should I get a ramps?” And I always say no. There are so many other options out there. I had my old ramps out today while I was messing with Printrbot stuff and I realize how thin some new boards are. The fact of the matter is that boards are changing to be directly for 3D printing. It’s exciting to see where this technology is moving!
And I know the printrboard is not new but I never put them side by side before haha but an example nonetheless.
Problem is this: I can get a knockoff Mega, and RAMPS 1.4 from China…for like $30. And most of the time they’re great. I just bought a laser cutter for $360. I can’t justify spending $120 on a set of electronics.
I’ve had 3 RAMPS and only the last one was any good. I’m very very unlucky with electronics so maybe it’s just me @ThantiK . Is it worth twice the price? I don’t know… But it shows a step in the right direction for this kind of board.
@ThantiK what cutter and hows it working?
@Mike_DiMare K40, and it hasn’t arrived yet. 
K40 is very popular (I think there is a whole community on here about it). Let us know how it works @ThantiK . I’m interested in getting one as well
A brand new (non-knockoff) Printrboard from Printrbot.com is $69.
http://printrbot.com/shop/printrboard-rev-f/
I’m not talking about price necessarily. Yes it plays some factor but this was more of a size comparison.
RAMPS from china is now around $25.
No other boards can defeat it as for price, I myself also doesn’t like RAMPS for dimension & wiring.
I wish I can get more compact and well designed board below $50, but $80~ is too much only for control board.
So you get a Printrboard. Educate me because I am no fan of frying RAMPS boards. What hoops do I need to go through to get it working on an i3, or a Delta? Is it just the same load as the RAMPS config or something different?
@Griffin_Paquette But your post has the question, “should I get a RAMPS?”
The answer is definitely a yes. They’re cheap, and as long as you buy from certain Alibaba vendors, they’re apparently super reliable.
Another thing, printrBoards are a little weird to program if you don’t have the Arduino bootloader. RAMPS/Mega allows you to use the Arduino IDE right off the bat.
I’ve not been one to have luck with them. I’m. 4/4 for printrboards. Could just be me having issues with the ramps but I wasn’t that big of a fan after losing two of them.
I’m not saying the ramps is crap or anything. I just like purchasing a product that was built for a purpose. The ramps in the end is a shield and in between there are tons of headers and whatnot. It’s just cleaner and eazker in my opinion to get as different/ newer design. I honestly feel like I must have had a had couple ramps. I’ve had loads of issues and I seem to be one of few all of the sudden haha
If you feel a RAMPS is too large, then get an integrated board. I have several Printrboards, and they work quite well on my simple cartesian printers. If I was building a delta, then I’d probably want something with a little more computing oomph to handle the heavier math a bit more smoothly. From what I’ve seen and heard from other people here on G+, a Smoothieboard is probably what I would go for. The BeagleBone Black plus a cape seems formidable, but hard to justify the price over a Smoothieboard. SmoothieBrainz may be another option.
RAMPS has a lot of failings now. The fact that the original design hasn’t been updated in a number of years says it all. The PTC fuses don’t do squat for most faults, none of the inputs have over-voltage protection (so it’s easy to fry the Mega), and lastly it just doesn’t support 32 bit boards of any sort, and 8 bit is really becoming a constraint if you’re trying to do anything decent.
The really annoying thing is that the cheap overseas market is happy to throw out tons of clones with no QA (99% don’t even power the boards on), and stick the users with the faults. The really cheap ones don’t even do random visual inspections to see if they’ve put the right components on the board. I’ve seen RAMPS and RAMP-like boards end up with 5V regs in place of the FETs!
For the printrboard, I have a new branch of Marlin that adds full support. $60 direct from printrbot is a great deal.
Or if you’re adventurous, I have my new TeensyluV1, basically an all-in-one like printrboard but with swappable stepper drivers.
If you’re even more adventurous I am working on the espressylu, a 32bit reprap control board. Once I have the funds I’ll build them and probably give a few away free as prizes.
I’m a big fan of “if you don’t like the options out there, build it yourself.” The espressylu is my next big project, bringing more repraps into the age of 32bit.
I bought a RAMPS for my second printer because it was so very modular. If I wanted to fit’n’forget an all-in-one solution then RAMPS wouldn’t be right for me. There’s a need for both in my opinion BUUUUUT… If you buy the really cheap ones quality suffers to the point that I’ve seen connectors melt.
You know @Nige_Cook , my HobbyKing PrintRite has worked flawlessly since I got it, compared to my Da Vinci Duo, my CTC and MOD-t. That has a version of the Duet board I believe. Granted, no heatbed but that upgrade is easy to do with a separate heatbed controller and heatbed. I think I might give Duet a try. My Smoothieboard is reserved for a special beast I am working on.
@Stephanie_A where does one go about acquiring some of the goodies you mention like the TeensyluV1?
I jut think that some features of these new boards are being overlooked as well. I hated tuning the pots on my drivers and trying to guess the current they needed. On the printrboard it’s an M code and that’s it. I just think at some point yeah they are cheaper but in a perspective of the technology moving forward, I’m seeing a lot of cool stuff. Zeropi, smoothie, etc
