Monday 17 October 2011

Electrics and Filament

Which electronics package?

There are 2 main types of RepRap electronic packages.
  • All in one
  • Modular

All in one, does exactly as it says on the tin, everything is packaged on one board with the board being stand alone.
Modular, on the other hand is a base board to which other boards are attached to. For example the stepper drivers and usb host are separate.

On top of this each type of package has numerous variations and upgrades.

The most popular all in one packages are Gen 3, Gen 7 and Sanguinololu.
On the modular side there is only one choice RAMPS (RepRap Arduino Mega Pololu Shield), however there are numerous versions.



Which one did I pick and why?

After much research and a few questions on the offical RepRap forums I went with my gut and choice RAMPS 1.4.

I choice RAMPS for a few reasons.
  1. Its modular, if something breaks I can just replace the broken part without too much soldering or hassle.
  2. Upgrade-ability, as its modular I can reuse a lot of the parts if I ever need to upgrade to a newer package
  3. Add-ons, there are a decent amount of worthwhile add-ons which are exclusive to (or atleast easier with) RAMPS. Such as SD support, multiple extruders and heated print beds
 Cost wise they work out about the same in the UK as they have to be imported.


Assembled or DIY kit?

The next big decision once I'd decided upon RAMPS was do I solder the kit myself or buy it pre-assembled.

To help with the decision I needed to find a RAMPS 1.4 supplier which ships to the UK and doesn't cost an arm and a leg for it.
After looking at various sites I stumbled upon RepRapWorld which offers full RAMPS 1.4 kits including all the required items.

Cost of DIY Kit €100 + delivery
Cost of Assembled Kit €130 + delivery

So if I can solder the parts I save €30, seems simple enough.
That was until I read this line on the description;
In RAMPS 1.4, the resistors and capacitors are now surface mount to fit more passive components. This does add another set of steps to assembly, but we stuck with larger sizes to make it fairly painless.

Through hole soldering I'm fine wit, but I've never done any surface mount soldering with anything as small as the resistors required.

After more videos, research and a forum post I was assured it was just a little tricky.
Luckily I brought the tweezers, braid and flux (I was only expecting to through hole solder).

So I headed back over to RepRapWorld and added RAMPS 1.4 DIY Kit Full to the basket.
At the same time as I was checking RepRapWorld reviews/comments on the forums I noticed they also offered the lowest price on PLA filament so I threw in 0.5kg of blue PLA 3mm filament (to save on re-ordering later and paying for delivery again).

Cost of RAMPS kit + Filament - £108.29
Total Cost so far -  £190.29

No comments:

Post a Comment