[Arm-netbook] designing a low-cost decent 3d printing board

[mike.valk at gmail.com]

2017-05-23 3:27 GMT+02:00 Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl at lkcl.net>:

> hi all,
>
> ok so i've been looking around and the practice of creating a
> "modular" 3d printing electronics board is extremely common, thanks,
> many years ago, to the stupid, stupid decision to use prototyping
> (evaulation) plugin boards with 1.3 to 2.0 *amp* stepper ICs mounted
> onto micro-postage-stamp-sized PCBs.  the problems these cause are
> endless.
>

You're being a bit brief here. But essentially, the community has been
using "default" boards, which are cheapish and fairly
documented/understood, but too generic and thus not able enough?


> so instead of an on-board ATSAM4, you use an arduino due.  instead of
> WIFI you use a *standard arduino WIFI shield*.
>

Read about a guy RE'ing "hoverboards" and he's creating an OSS firmware
replacement for these, which seem to be desinged around the fafourite
STM32F*.
https://opensourceebikefirmware.bitbucket.io/About_the_project.html

But how about the ESP32? (Successor to the ESP8266). Reasonable beefy CPU
with build in WiFi. The Duet is using the ESP8266 as the WiFi bridge.

now, debatable is whether to split out the MOSFETs, endstops and
> thermistors into their own separate shield as well, which i feel might
> be sensible.
>

Why not place all controllers separately and direct to their HW and connect
them via a bus? This gives you freedom to expand and replace. And use a
EOMA card as the "master"?

Or would that kind of modularity up the costs too much?
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