I have everything printed out and mostly assembled. I am now looking to electronics. I am not super familiar with Ramps so I want to make sure that I do not order the wrong stuff. It looks like amazon has some full ramps 1.4 kits with good reviews for around $35 like this one :
I like the idea of a kit because it comes with all the extra accessories like a screen. I noticed that the stepper drivers are incorrect (A4988 instead of drv8825). Will these stepper drivers work temporarily (I have seen mixed stuff when I tried to do a search)? I was thinking about ordering this and then ordering 3 of the correct steppers. Should that setup work or are there any other concerns?
Yep I noticed that the drivers are incorrect. what kind of problems with I have with the 4988 drivers. From what I saw online it looks like they have a slightly lower amp capacity and will only handle 1/16th stepping. is it the amps or the stepping that causes the issue? it looks like the correct ones are pretty cheap anyway so I was thinking that I would just buy the 8825 drivers on top of this. Alternatively, I could just piece it together. Are there any other issues with this kit?
The A4988 drivers will not handle the amount of voltage the DRV8825 can, that is needed for something like a CNC.
If you plan is to use it as a 3D printer, or even a laser it would be fine. You’d only lose resolution. It also depends on the size of your frame footprint. Smaller would be easier, combined with a lighter cnc like a dremel or something.
They will be fine. The stepper power has never been an issue. This had 42ozin steppers for the first 6 months in the kits, I only upgraded them because these large ones only added a few dollars more to my cost.
Spend you time learning about the ins and outs of cnc milling/routing, chip load, climb vs conventional, bit style, ect. All those have a much larger impact that a few tenths of an amp to the steppers. Have fun with it if you break something it is only a few dollars to replace it I tried to build something people would be scared to try. If you buy a really expensive machine you are much less likely to experiment with it, this is built to learn on for sure.
FWIW I bought that exact ramps kit off amazon a few weeks ago ( thought I had fried the Mega board on my 3D printer and wanted another graphic LCD anyway so just bought a full kit.) It’s my 3rd RAMPS setup and I was more impressed by it than the other 2 I have.
The first one came with my FolgerTech 2020 i3 and was serviceable but had the worst workmanship. I had to resolder parts of the RAMPS and the adapter for the LCD was only half soldered! It did come all pre-assembled but didn’t have pins on the auxiliary 12v which I ended up having to add because I needed that for the inductive sensor I added.
The second one I ordered from China for my MPCNC since I wasn’t in a hurry. It was the cheapest but did come with DRV8825’s and the workmanship was better than the Folger one. But it came un-assembled and several of the microstepping jumpers were damaged. Thankfully I had plenty of spare jumpers laying around.
The 3rd one from Kuman on Amazon was the fastest to ship, had the best soldering of the three, was the only one to include the aux 12v header pre-installed and came with the longest LCD cables (almost twice as long as the next longest set!) It did come with the A4988’s which I’ve not had the best of luck with on my 3D printer (but still use for X/Y on there because I’ve been too lazy to swap them like I did on Z and the extruder where I was having issues.) and it did come un-assembled. But no parts were missing or damaged and it was packaged nicer than the other two I’ve got.
Having tried both drivers I do tend to prefer the DRV8825’s but would use the A4988’s in a pinch without a second thought.
Awesome, thanks for all the help. I am starting with the included 4988 but will probably upgrade once I get everything setup. I got the firmware loaded, resistor and resistor added. just need to finish up my build and start calibration.