RepRap: Blog

Zach kindly let me have a prototype of his latest Sanguino board. I've just installed it on my RepRap (above) and it runs just fine.

The Sanguino is great as a RepRap controller, and I have been using one on my machine for months. But Zach rightly designed it as a general microcontroller with RepRap as one application, not specifically for RepRap.

He has now used the Sanguino as the basis of a dedicated RepRap motherboard, which is what is in the picture above. This has insulation-displacement connectors on for wiring to all the RepRap Generation 2 electronics, which makes it really quick and easy to hook up.

In addition, it has the components that will allow us to move to the Generation 3 Electronics, which will be needed for RepRap Version II "Mendel" somtime next year. Those extras are an SD card socket, which will allow an SD card with a G Gode file to be plugged in and run on the machine, so the RepRap doesn't need to be attached to a host computer to build things. It will also have RS485 communications to allow it to control an expanding number of other PCBs, particularly for multiple extruders and hence multiple materials.

As you can see, I haven't populated the board very fully. This was delibearate: I wanted to set up a minimal-Sanguino-to-contol-a-RepRap configuration. For that you need (on the new Motherboard or a conventional Sanguino):

1. C5
2. C6
3. SV1
4. C8
5. JP8
6. R1
7. S1
8. C1
9. C2
10. Q1
11. C3
12. JP5
13. IC1

And you can also have the unneccessary but useful power indicator (hang the expense):

1. R2
2. power LED

On the new motherboard you also need:

1. SV3
2. SV4
3. SV5
4. SV6
5. SV7

That's enough. Off to wrap presents now...