Driving a heated bed directly with the ramps is probably not a good idea because of the issues you raised. I'm using a home brew heated bed that runs off of 36 VAC and I'm switching the primary of a step down transformer with a solid state relay driven by the ramps. Instead of having to switch over 11A, the board now only has to supply maybe 20ma to drive the relay.
There are three serious design deficiencies with the RAMPS 1.4 board. First and foremost, the use of polyfuses. These should be replaces with non-resetting fuses, like automotive fuses. Second, the 5V line for the end-stops needs to have current limiting resistors. There is no reason to have more than 20mA or so through these pins, and people who accidentally shift their connectors by one pin will short 5V to ground and blow up the 5V regulator on the Arduino. Lastly, and related to the endstop current issue, is the stepper selection jumpers. Same story here, I had a defective Pololu driver that ended up taking one of the 5V lines selected by the jumpers and putting it right to ground, destroying the 5V regulator on my Arduino. Since these are only used for signaling, there is no reason to have any appreciable current on these pins, let alone full access to the 5V regulator's output.
Most RAMPS V1.4 boards that ship today have 35V electrolytic capacitors and 30V polyfuses, so they're good to go with a 24V 3D printer after snipping D1. Note that a 24V 3D printer won't overload anything on the RAMPS board because it uses half the current of a 12V printer to do exactly the same thing. There are virtually zero drawbacks to using RAMPS for your 3D printer.
@@sneakyguy4444 the difference is that even if they get em from china, they will test them, try them and check the quality to ensure that the items are up their standards while buying from china is a roullete where you can get a normal quality, low quality or mythic item (?
Using mosfets to run power for all heating elements would solve the board power problems. By simply using the ramps heater outputs as signaling for the mosfets, the board would have plenty of power capacity to run stepper drivers.
I'm here because my heated bed stopped working. Upon inspection the green power connection was burnt and the pins themselves were very dirty as a result. No connection was being made. I wiggled it a bit and that allowed for a connection but the contact was so poor that the area started to heat up a lot. I ended up throwing the connector in the garbage. Instead I soldered the wires to the pins. I made sure the area was good and clean. I took some sand paper to the dirty pin for the bed. I finished it off with some heat shrink tube. I've been running my bed for years at 60C. I recently changed it to 70C and has maybe 50 hours on it like that. I wonder if this exposed the limitation.
Greetings, i just discovered your channel while troubleshooting my Prusa i3. Realy nice work. About the Ramps Board, would you share what modifications you did to it and how? Greetings from the North
I like this video but it is more like a intro to ramps. Tom is it possible to see complete guide to ramps? Like run most of components on 24 volts: fans, heatbed, A4988. Calibrate stepper. Is it possible run DC motor with hall or strip film position (close loop, like ink printer)?
Hi Tom! Long question: I have a quite old 3DRAG that I am upgrading (I know there are affordable newer printers out there, but I like to thinker with it ...), now I am thinking at a new board that could benefit for what has been done during all these years since I have it. Any suggestion?
I've been having similar problems where my printer shuts down randomly after an hour or so of printing. How could I check too see if the fuses are blown?
Tom i like your reviews and explanations very much ( even more when you needet to speak a little more slower because when you were a little handicapped with your voice sometimes before ;-) ) because as a beginner in 3D printing i need to learn much. I got a MKS GEN V1.1 Z2 board with my Mendel Prusia I3 set but want double extruders. Is there any hardware difference between the Z2 and not Z2 version of the board? Can i simply connect 2 Z Steppers to one driver on the bord so that i have one driver free for the second extruder? Should i connect them parallel or in series? Thank's for your help Michael
If I connect the assembled motherboard - connect the LCD2004 and power it up....is it OK or does it needs motors etc,. to be wired up - I have a kit and want to see what is installed already on the board before stripping my A8 printer down to fit the Ramps kit.
Hi Tom, About 4 years ago i made a 3D printer and printed some parts. Quality not so good so i more or less forgot i have a 3D printer. Since then i have build my own CNC milling machine and made some new parts to upgrade the flawed design from earlier. However i use Ramps 1.4 EEF and i can see that at least one of the Power supply pins almost burned on the 4 pin green connector so i am going to buy a new ramps board as replacement. Do you have any knowledge about the Ramps 1.5 with the 3 MOSFET ? Further my new design use 2 extruders with V6 hotted and MK8 on the cold end. I have hot glued one 40mm fan on the back of each extruder stepper motor. So i have 4 fans for the extruder system in total. I used to use Gen7 firmware but followed your advise in some of your other videos to use Marlin firmware. But im am having trouble to get it to compile !! once i change to 2 extruders different errors occur in pins.h and temperature.h. !!! Further i think i can use some of the pins in the AUX1 or AUX2 to connect these little fans but i don't seem to find any pin numbers to assign in config.h. Hope you can help with some of the issues.
I have never had a single problem with my Arduino/RAMPS1;4/Pololu setup. But now I got worried about the connector issue, i will try measuring the current for safety.
That's why I don't like to read of people leaving 3D printers on overnight. It's not fire that kills you it's invariably smoke, inc the magic blue stuff.
can you please explain to me what the jumpers under the driver boards are for or what needs to be jumped I am having a hard time finding this info thanks
These jumpers configure the microstep resolution for the motor drivers. All jumpers seated means the maximum resolution is set for the drivers. Each driver needs its own set of jumpers
Hey so I have been trying to use a Ramps 1.4 board to drive my printer and two heated beds, they kept failing but now the problem seems obvious. Can you recommend a board (preferably marlin compatible) that could handle the 22+ amp draw?
+Thomas Sanladerer 3dprintboard.com/showthread.php?19807-FET-Bed-Heater-Board Take a look at this, i'm also playing with a 120V rectified version to run those big monster beds you showed off in another video;)
I just got ramps board and when I print it decreases the temp to the heating bed and when it done printing it goes back up. Does this mean the Polyfuse is bad?
tks for your information! please, what is your council for change the PTC fuse 5A? each amper i choice for the blade fuse or fuse holder? thank you. my bed 220v is on SSR. perhaps i replace the PTC 11a for blade 15A? thank you for your time
Ich werde bald mein Core-XY fertig bauen, mal gucken wie sich das mit 32 Microstepps und LCD bei hohen Geschwindigkeiten verhält. Wenns gut läuft, werde ich mir keine 32 Bit (RADDS) Elektronik holen. Wenns nicht läuft, hol ich mir nen RADDS und 128 Microstepptreiber. Sind bestimmt leise :D
Hey Tom, I'm using Ramps 1.4 and everything work just fine including motors but I'm not getting any output voltage from D8, D9 and D10 pins which are used for heat bed, hotend and fan. Any suggestion and help from your side?
Yes. I made a delta 3D printer controlled by an arduino 2650 w/ ramps 1.4 shield. I use octoprint in a raspberry pi model B to send the gcode to the printer.
Hallo Ich finde deine videos sehr hilfreich Weiter so Ich möchte meinen drucker vom printerboard auf das rampsboard umrüsten und wüsste gern ob du eine seite empfehlen kannst wo deine modifikationen beschrieben sind Und eventuell auch eine wo eine gute anschlussanleitung zu finden ist Ich möchte die drv8825 stepsticks verbauen. Oder mach doch am besten selbst ein video darüber. Ausserdem hätte ich gerne ein paar tips zum tunen der voltage für die motoren Vielen dank im voraus
Here is the most important thing between the "RAMPS" boards and these new MKS boards. The Ramps has a ton of support! For example I want to use the Servo and end stop switch for auto bed leveling because I prefer to have glass on my aluminum bed (why because you can remove the glass and stick it in the freezer for hard to remove big parts, open aluminum scratches to easy when you try to scrape off parts) Now I can find a dozen video on where and how to wire a servo and end stop switch to the ramps board, as for the MKS, I type in MKS 1.3 or 1.4 and I got a ton of nothing, a when i ask the China morons on Ebay for help they play like cant read English! I hop Tom here could do a video on how to set up a Servo endstop type of auto bed leveling using one of these MKS boards found on the Hictop, Anet, and what ever other China no name 3D printers hitting the market. In the meantime I am yanking them off and going back to Ramps (Ps I have two of these MKS board, and both have burnt up chips on them, Ramps have heat up issues too, but I have yet to have any compared to to 2 MKS board both frying when in normal use.
According to public pinout of MKS 1.4 and RAMPS 1.4 schematic, they work the same, using the same datalines for servo connections. On either, it's a 3x4 pin header array. The direction of connectors is the same too. The GND bus of the servos is at the very edge of the board, the +5V bus is the next up, and the PWM line for each servo is the last. Just use the pinout diagrams.
Just use a SSR25DD Solid State Relay, they are rated for switching 25 amps with a internal resistance nearly to 0 and they cost about 3-5 bucks from china
hey Tom, it would be awesome if you could do an updated video on RAMPS and alternatives for 2018! thank you
Driving a heated bed directly with the ramps is probably not a good idea because of the issues you raised. I'm using a home brew heated bed that runs off of 36 VAC and I'm switching the primary of a step down transformer with a solid state relay driven by the ramps. Instead of having to switch over 11A, the board now only has to supply maybe 20ma to drive the relay.
There are three serious design deficiencies with the RAMPS 1.4 board. First and foremost, the use of polyfuses. These should be replaces with non-resetting fuses, like automotive fuses. Second, the 5V line for the end-stops needs to have current limiting resistors. There is no reason to have more than 20mA or so through these pins, and people who accidentally shift their connectors by one pin will short 5V to ground and blow up the 5V regulator on the Arduino. Lastly, and related to the endstop current issue, is the stepper selection jumpers. Same story here, I had a defective Pololu driver that ended up taking one of the 5V lines selected by the jumpers and putting it right to ground, destroying the 5V regulator on my Arduino. Since these are only used for signaling, there is no reason to have any appreciable current on these pins, let alone full access to the 5V regulator's output.
Most RAMPS V1.4 boards that ship today have 35V electrolytic capacitors and 30V polyfuses, so they're good to go with a 24V 3D printer after snipping D1. Note that a 24V 3D printer won't overload anything on the RAMPS board because it uses half the current of a 12V printer to do exactly the same thing.
There are virtually zero drawbacks to using RAMPS for your 3D printer.
The price has dropped significantly since 2014, now you can get the RAMPS1.4, Arduino 2560, five drivers with heatsinks and a USB cable for 25 bucks
Poptart McJelly Yep, directly from chineese internet store ;) still now ramps cost 25£ on e3d page (bought mine for 4$)
that's because it's cloned hardware vs from the developers.
@@MyBrothersMario Developers probably get it from China too lol. As long as its the same design, materials and processes I can't really fault it
@@sneakyguy4444 the difference is that even if they get em from china, they will test them, try them and check the quality to ensure that the items are up their standards while buying from china is a roullete where you can get a normal quality, low quality or mythic item (?
I got a RAMPS board on its way and now I'm starting to prepare for what sounds like possibly a lot of modification!
Using mosfets to run power for all heating elements would solve the board power problems. By simply using the ramps heater outputs as signaling for the mosfets, the board would have plenty of power capacity to run stepper drivers.
+Marcel LeMay the RAMPS (and very other boats) is already using MOSFets. The problem is that the cheap ones they use are often total crap.
but when you add external mosfet you are more safer @@MadeWithLayers
have you seen the RAMPS 1.4.2 board yet? They got rid of one of your favorite features. They put auto spade fuses on and got rid of the polyfuses.
I'm here because my heated bed stopped working. Upon inspection the green power connection was burnt and the pins themselves were very dirty as a result. No connection was being made. I wiggled it a bit and that allowed for a connection but the contact was so poor that the area started to heat up a lot.
I ended up throwing the connector in the garbage. Instead I soldered the wires to the pins. I made sure the area was good and clean. I took some sand paper to the dirty pin for the bed. I finished it off with some heat shrink tube.
I've been running my bed for years at 60C. I recently changed it to 70C and has maybe 50 hours on it like that. I wonder if this exposed the limitation.
Greetings, i just discovered your channel while troubleshooting my Prusa i3. Realy nice work.
About the Ramps Board, would you share what modifications you did to it and how?
Greetings from the North
Do you have a list of mods you made to the Firmware? Also do you marlin? Thanks for the videos
hey tom can you tell me how to activate dual x and dual y both. using all 5 drivers ?
I like this video but it is more like a intro to ramps. Tom is it possible to see complete guide to ramps? Like run most of components on 24 volts: fans, heatbed, A4988. Calibrate stepper. Is it possible run DC motor with hall or strip film position (close loop, like ink printer)?
Hi Tom! Long question: I have a quite old 3DRAG that I am upgrading (I know there are affordable newer printers out there, but I like to thinker with it ...), now I am thinking at a new board that could benefit for what has been done during all these years since I have it. Any suggestion?
I've been having similar problems where my printer shuts down randomly after an hour or so of printing. How could I check too see if the fuses are blown?
Hello Tom, my question is how can I fix the RAMPS 1.4 to HanoRun arduino motor shield
Tom i like your reviews and explanations very much ( even more when you needet to speak a little more slower because when you were a little handicapped with your voice sometimes before ;-) ) because as a beginner in 3D printing i need to learn much.
I got a MKS GEN V1.1 Z2 board with my Mendel Prusia I3 set but want double extruders.
Is there any hardware difference between the Z2 and not Z2 version of the board?
Can i simply connect 2 Z Steppers to one driver on the bord so that i have one driver free for the second extruder?
Should i connect them parallel or in series?
Thank's for your help
Michael
2023, I just got one of these with an ancient hero 101... what fun.
Can i put tiny heatsinks on the fuses to cool them down (probs sounds stupid)
If I connect the assembled motherboard - connect the LCD2004 and
power it up....is it OK or does it needs motors etc,. to be wired up -
I have a kit and want to see what is installed already on the board
before stripping my A8 printer down to fit the Ramps kit.
Can you make a review of the ramps FD PLEASE?
How do I wire 2 Z steppers?
can i use ramps 1.4 to power up 5v 2 phase 4 wire stepper motors?
Hi Tom,
About 4 years ago i made a 3D printer and printed some parts. Quality not so good so i more or less forgot i have a 3D printer. Since then i have build my own CNC milling machine and made some new parts to upgrade the flawed design from earlier. However i use Ramps 1.4 EEF and i can see that at least one of the Power supply pins almost burned on the 4 pin green connector so i am going to buy a new ramps board as replacement. Do you have any knowledge about the Ramps 1.5 with the 3 MOSFET ? Further my new design use 2 extruders with V6 hotted and MK8 on the cold end. I have hot glued one 40mm fan on the back of each extruder stepper motor. So i have 4 fans for the extruder system in total. I used to use Gen7 firmware but followed your advise in some of your other videos to use Marlin firmware. But im am having trouble to get it to compile !! once i change to 2 extruders different errors occur in pins.h and temperature.h. !!! Further i think i can use some of the pins in the AUX1 or AUX2 to connect these little fans but i don't seem to find any pin numbers to assign in config.h. Hope you can help with some of the issues.
I have never had a single problem with my Arduino/RAMPS1;4/Pololu setup. But now I got worried about the connector issue, i will try measuring the current for safety.
Don't take this issue lightly. I just had mine melt down on me, and was lucky not to have caused a fire. I will now be doing a RAMPS 1.4 overhaul...
That's why I don't like to read of people leaving 3D printers on overnight. It's not fire that kills you it's invariably smoke, inc the magic blue stuff.
can you please explain to me what the jumpers under the driver boards are for or what needs to be jumped I am having a hard time finding this info thanks
These jumpers configure the microstep resolution for the motor drivers. All jumpers seated means the maximum resolution is set for the drivers. Each driver needs its own set of jumpers
What board would you recommend for my corexy printer.I am currently running the board in this video.
can you do one on the mks base séries
Hey so I have been trying to use a Ramps 1.4 board to drive my printer and two heated beds, they kept failing but now the problem seems obvious. Can you recommend a board (preferably marlin compatible) that could handle the 22+ amp draw?
+Thomas Sanladerer
3dprintboard.com/showthread.php?19807-FET-Bed-Heater-Board
Take a look at this, i'm also playing with a 120V rectified version to run those big monster beds you showed off in another video;)
I just got ramps board and when I print it decreases the temp to the heating bed and when it done printing it goes back up. Does this mean the Polyfuse is bad?
It means your PSU isn't high enough rated
tks for your information! please, what is your council for change the PTC fuse 5A? each amper i choice for the blade fuse or fuse holder? thank you. my bed 220v is on SSR. perhaps i replace the PTC 11a for blade 15A? thank you for your time
do a honest revievw about the kflop board for the cnc please :(
Tom I would to see you use a PC power supply to power the RAMPS. TY
hola amigo. como puedo copiar el eje x. con la ramp 1.4
can you elaborate by which method octoprint can be hosted without raspberry pi
Ich werde bald mein Core-XY fertig bauen, mal gucken wie sich das mit 32 Microstepps und LCD bei hohen Geschwindigkeiten verhält.
Wenns gut läuft, werde ich mir keine 32 Bit (RADDS) Elektronik holen.
Wenns nicht läuft, hol ich mir nen RADDS und 128 Microstepptreiber. Sind bestimmt leise :D
Hey Tom,
I'm using Ramps 1.4 and everything work just fine including motors but I'm not getting any output voltage from D8, D9 and D10 pins which are used for heat bed, hotend and fan. Any suggestion and help from your side?
Can I connect raspberry pi to arduino for 3D printing and use octoprint?
Yes. I made a delta 3D printer controlled by an arduino 2650 w/ ramps 1.4 shield. I use octoprint in a raspberry pi model B to send the gcode to the printer.
João Mendes thank you
You may be tried ramps 1.4
together with arduino due ?? wil it be faster ??
Anyone know how to d/loasd marlin without doing a course on Github>????
GLEN Dooer: A year later, it looks like the answer is a resounding NO! :o(
Hallo
Ich finde deine videos sehr hilfreich
Weiter so
Ich möchte meinen drucker vom printerboard auf das rampsboard umrüsten und wüsste gern ob du eine seite empfehlen kannst wo deine modifikationen beschrieben sind
Und eventuell auch eine wo eine gute anschlussanleitung zu finden ist
Ich möchte die drv8825 stepsticks verbauen.
Oder mach doch am besten selbst ein video darüber.
Ausserdem hätte ich gerne ein paar tips zum tunen der voltage für die motoren
Vielen dank im voraus
Here is the most important thing between the "RAMPS" boards and these new MKS boards. The Ramps has a ton of support!
For example I want to use the Servo and end stop switch for auto bed leveling because I prefer to have glass on my aluminum bed (why because you can remove the glass and stick it in the freezer for hard to remove big parts, open aluminum scratches to easy when you try to scrape off parts)
Now I can find a dozen video on where and how to wire a servo and end stop switch to the ramps board, as for the MKS, I type in MKS 1.3 or 1.4 and I got a ton of nothing, a when i ask the China morons on Ebay for help they play like cant read English!
I hop Tom here could do a video on how to set up a Servo endstop type of auto bed leveling using one of these MKS boards found on the Hictop, Anet, and what ever other China no name 3D printers hitting the market.
In the meantime I am yanking them off and going back to Ramps (Ps I have two of these MKS board, and both have burnt up chips on them, Ramps have heat up issues too, but I have yet to have any compared to to 2 MKS board both frying when in normal use.
According to public pinout of MKS 1.4 and RAMPS 1.4 schematic, they work the same, using the same datalines for servo connections. On either, it's a 3x4 pin header array. The direction of connectors is the same too. The GND bus of the servos is at the very edge of the board, the +5V bus is the next up, and the PWM line for each servo is the last.
Just use the pinout diagrams.
Could you review this: www.geeetech.com/gt2560-3d-printer-controller-board-p-915.html ?
Just use a SSR25DD Solid State Relay, they are rated for switching 25 amps with a internal resistance nearly to 0 and they cost about 3-5 bucks from china
Are you reviewing the board in your hand in the video? I might be confused about your review. You give good facts but something's just not right.
good
Very usefull, Thanks
Why don't 32 bit boards have this many Servo ports Step backwards in technology
Muy Bueno Compañero ;)
*evered
yo are so $%/&#$# greAT THANKS FOR YOUR VIDEOS
That is a RAMPS 1.5 BOARD