Thursday 18 March 2010

UK Suppliers

Recently, I've come across a couple of parts that might be useful to UK RepRappers.

I found a stepper driver board from DIY CNC

It's based on the A3977 stepper driver chip, like the version 3 of the RepRap stepper driver board. It has handy dipswitches to select down to 1/8 stepping, and handles up to 2.5 amps. There are screw terminals for the connections and an optional edge connector. Although the recommended voltage is 24v+, I've contacted the chap, and he says it should work down to 10v - and the board design seems pretty similar to the 12v RepRap boards. One board is £27 but there's a discount for buying 3 or 4 for a Mendel. Certainly worth a look as an alternative to a polulu-type board imported from the states, if MakerBot is out of stock.

I've just finished building a single-sided SMD version of the 2.3 stepper driver, and I've got the parts for a few more, so I haven't tried these personally.

On the other hand, I did buy an Arduino mega for £25 from D-Robotics from an Ebay auction. Arrived after a couple of days, seems to be a 'clone' of the reference design from a hong kong/chinese company.
From SMD_stepper

Plugged in, recognized as an arduino mega, example sketch loaded straight off.

Should be a good upgrade from my Gen2 (arduino) electronics: I should be able to load in the 5D firmware, unplug my breakout shield from the arduino and plug in the Mega!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

i have that arduino clone and i like it allot so far mine seems to be well built, and works great. no issues with it what so ever. and its black so its cooler

Anonymous said...

Ditto, the arduino mega clones are good.

I like the cnc board too, it looks like a well thought out design.