Whew! Ramps 1.4 complexity

[Tdeagan]

[Tdeagan]

Hours more troubleshooting has narrowed down the LCD problem to digital pin 27 on the arduino mega. Connecting the LCD directly with the Ramps removed and then sequentially moving the pins around narrowed it down. It's locked high and unfortunately there is no rational way to use an alternate pin. I'll have to do some tests with a single LED to see just how broke it is.

[REPRAP SQUAD]

I havnt dug into my ramps board as I recieved a faulty board and im currently awaiting the arrival of a new one. If anyone has any insight it would be great to hear.

[Tdeagan]

woo hoo! I built a single wire logic probe and determined that the ever so tiny pin 27 on the processor chip (aka pin 73) was fine. Careful inspection of the traces discovered a scratch in the varnish, sure enough, it had broken the trace to pin 27!

I (carefully) scratched the varnish back (close tolerance on each side to other traces,) tinned the exposed copper and managed to solder a single strand of wire across the broken traces. Per my standard project economics, this cost me a near third degree burn on my left middle finger (usually projects demand blood, but a good burn will often do.)

Now the LCD and menu system are working great!

Onward.

[Tdeagan]

Lotsa progress.

- I learned how to create new ReplicatorG machine definitions, so it's working well, but more happily for me;
- I finally read enough to learn that the pull-ups for the Ramps endstops are internal to the processor and not part of the circuitry I see on the set of endstops that came with the Ramps kit. Meaning that I can use the stock Printrbot endstops that are already in place. I was able to get the configuration.h in Marlin happy and now faithful Pronterface is working happily with the Ramps 1.4 board. All axis happiness and perfect homing.

I'll write all this up in part 2 of my dual extruder setup series.

Now I need to decipher the surprisingly rich set of menu commands on the LCD!

If the spool of 1.75mm ABS would arrive I should be able to start using my dual extruder Printrbot Plus!

[Tdeagan]

The beast;
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[REPRAP SQUAD]

Nice work buddy I am very impressed. I cant wait to read your write up as we are both going through the exact same process.

[ei8htohms]

Never even thought of a hybrid Bowden/direct combination. Very cool!

[Tdeagan]

Experimentation will have to show if it's the best of both worlds, or the worst

[Mochaboy]

Following with interest

[Mooselake]

Where'd you get that small LED ring (they seem to be aka Angel Eyes)? I have a 60mm, the smallest I could find, but it's still bigger than I'd like.

Kirk

[Tdeagan]

It's a 60mm ring I got from Amazon: . They're also referred to as 'Angel Eyes'.

2 for $9.05, Amazon Prime (aka free two day shipping.)

I'd love to find smaller ones as well.