Hey guys, I am working on a new project that requires an abnormal amount of heating, fan, motor, and thermistor ports that no consumer board seems to have. I was wondering how hard it would be to develop a custom board. Is this something that one professional can do, or this something that a team of professionals develop over time?
MB3D
2
About how many heaters, fans (analog pins) and stepper motors etc. are we talking? Do you want the board to run gcode or do you want it for a different purpose then for a 3d printer. Generally it would be very expensive and difficult to design your own board, especially due to the need of so many electric components. Maybe consider running two boards or let the heaters be controlled by an arduino UNO.
The thing is, is that im trying to build a cnc and 3D printer hybrid with interchangeable parts. I was planning on using 4 stepper motors for 4 different extruders, along with 4 different hot ends. And each of these require a thermistor. Also my printing space is enormous, like 3 feet all around and I cant seem to find a heated bed that size so I was planning on using multiple heated beds. Even if it would be very expensive to create my own board, is it doable?
MB3D
4
I would take a look at the azteeg x5 pro, it can handle up to 8 steppers and is made to run 4 hotends individually. I don’t know, if you could use multiple heater mats with that, but I’d recommend to search for “Thomas Sanladerer heater mats” on YouTube. Aside from some other great videos that one explains how to install a heated bed, he also places a reference link to a store, that produces custom heater mats (maybe even in your dimensions). Given, that you also want to print in ABS, you will need a 1x1 meter heater mat with approx 10kW to heat up quickest, 3-5kW would be fine too. No board in the world can handle such loads. Imagine a 12V board that can control up to 900 amps 
You would need to get a solid state relay and even then normal power from the plug provides a maximum of 3,6kW (in Germany), I don’t think, that your power plugs can handle much more, so you’d have to go for the kind of industrial power cables, those with the very big 5 wire connectors and a special kind of AC. I have no idea, if that’s anyhow close to realizable, but if so, then please invest quite a bit in a proper enclosure around the printer, if you don’t I guess you could toast your workshop. PS: the enclosure should only go around the heated chamber, if possible it shouldn’t contain the motion system as that won’t benefit from the rising temperature.
