Circuit board construction
IMPORTANT NOTE : These pages describe the standard RepRap electronics. The electronics have improved substantually since the G3 design so it is strongly advised that before starting here you should also check out alternative electronics to see if there is something there that will suit your needs better. You will find much simpler and cheaper solutions there.
If you buy the printed circuit boards for Mendel ready-made from MakerBot Industries you will get versions intended for their CupCake machine. These can be used as they stand, but by making a few small changes to them (pliers, forceps, a small screwdriver, and a soldering iron are all that are needed) you can make the Mendel wiring a lot neater. Details of how to do these
If you get kit boards or buy the bare PCBs and then get your own components to populate them you can build them for Mendel from the start, of course. Here are the instructions for building the kit boards yourself. One Mendel will need:
- 1 RepRap Motherboard (mendel/electronics/motherboard),
- 1 Mendel USB and power connector (no Eagle design - it's a simple piece of stripboard),
- 3 RepRap Stepper drivers (mendel/electronics/stepper-motor-driver),
- 3 RepRap Opto Endstops (mendel/electronics/opto-endstop), and
- As many RepRap extruder controllers as you have extruders (mendel/electronics/extruder-controller).
The locations in your download that you made to install RepRap on your computer of the Eagle design files for these circuit boards is given in brackets after the links.
There is a Testing RepRap Electronics page at that link with details of how to test each board.
Back to How to make RepRap Version II Mendel.
