Well it’s not going well. I hooked up a stepper and almost immediately the driver went up in smoke.
Upon closer inspection, the board says Robotale on it and the driver’s are A4988 StepStik. It would appear the genuine part ees was a lie.
Now the board display will boot up and work fine on USB power, but nothing when the ramps is only connected to 12v. I’m assuming it’s junk. I am ordering a hopefully genuine ramps board tonight.
Of anyone has any advice on this other board, I’d appreciate it.
Im sorry its not got off to a great start, Looking at your attached picture, the red/black wires look fairly large. How did you try and power it? What Voltage?
It’s a 12 volt power supply from my 3d printer. It’s something crazy like 17 amps. I used some leads from a lipo battery because I used Deans connectors for everything from my rc cars to my printer, so It allowed me to just plug it in. The wires are huge.
The arduino still works independently from the ramps board so I ordered a ramps kit with new drivers.
In the meantime, I pulled an old USB CNC controller off a machine I started a few years ago but never finished. I resoldered the connector and plugged everything in. I used the free Planet CNC software to jog everything and it starts drawing but the free version limits you to 25 commands. So everything works, but now I need to know if there is a free software to control the board. Estlcam won’t recognize my board so I’m not sure what my other options are.
I have yet to set the stepper voltage because my meter is in the shop, so I’m not playing with it too much. I will include a pic of everything cobbled together and see if anyone has used this type of controller with any success.
Thank you. I gave Repetier a shot and it won’t connect to the board either. The only software I have found that makes it work is the USB CNC Controller software from Planet-CNC. This board is not his though, so I cannot use a full version of the software. But the fact that it did move the machine and attempt to make a drawing tells me that the board is good.
Unfortunately, I don’t know what this board is called, or I could perhaps look it up and find an alternative control program.
I have given up on it. It works with the Planet CNC software, but I can’t get it to work with anything else. My replacement Ramps will be here Tuesday, so I will just wait until then.
I hope I figure it out with the new board. I’ll be re-reading everything again until it shows up.
Hey again. New Ramps showed up. Hooked it all up and works fine on USB power but when plugged into the 12 volts it won’t do anything. Is there a jumper or something that needs to be in place?
Not usually. When you say ramps do you mean the whole stack, or just the top board? Chances are that the 5v regulator on your mega went out like Barry pointed out, not the ramps.
Yeah, the top board. The first one came with some weird jumpers in weird places on it. Should I still be able to connect with repetier? I can jog with the LCD but repetier doesn’t respond when connected.
Sorry. No LCD without the usb. I reloaded the V1 firmware and repetier worked. The regulator is toast. Does anyone have a part number for it?
I managed to draw the crown with a sharpie zip tied, but it isn’t very smooth. I cannot figure out how to set a home position for the gantry to return to in repetier. I’ll read up on that tomorrow.
Does estlcam control this or is it easier to use it then import it? The end goal is to use the sd card since my laptop is an antique. I have so much to learn but am beyond thrilled to have gotten this far. Ryan, your design is amazing and exactly what I wanted to learn cnc on since I got a printer. I cannot thank you enough for your help and everyone else on the forums.
My main goal is to be able to dragknife some FliteTest planes and build a Lowrider plasma table in the future.
on the ramps board did you put the drivers around the right way ?
the 4988 go the other way around from the drv8825 drivers shown on the forum build…
4988 pots go away from the power connectors – drv8825 pots go towards the power connectors.
Using another board you are going down a rabbit hole,go back to the arduino ramps board and you will get support from the forum as many have used that board for the mpcnc with success.
Amilo, that’s exactly what I did wrong. I read on the site that the pots face the power connector without realizing I had different drivers. I looked up the pin location on the board and the driver and double checked the second time. No big deal as now I have a second Ramps board for the Lowrider I wanted to build. I just need to find a genuine Arduino Mega.
I’m stuck at work for a boring 8 hours but can’t wait to see what I can figure out tonight.
