Depends on what you want to spend, I usually buy the cheap ramps 1.4 roughly $3.50 from china and a arduino knock off from china roughly $5. This gives you more versatility then a rambo or melzi as you can also wire a CNC board to the ramps/Arduino combo adding another 4 stepper drivers if you ever want to do more then 2 filaments at a time. I have a diamond hot end that requires 3 extruders and this is how I run them
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I have used two boards on my machines. Never had any issues.
- RAMPS 1.4 SB Premium (https://www.tindie.com/products/staticboards/ramps-14-sb-premium/?pt=ac\_prod\_search).
- Azteeg Mini Smoothieboard. (Controllers)
Well, same kinda firmware anyways.
Of course, the same is true for all markets. The first of a product will be more expensive because there been more R&D and work to finesse it. Later models just copy, change some stuff and sell it cheaper. That’s the way it’s been for a long time, everyone knows that.
It doesn’t hurt the open source movement though, that’s just about making ideas free and available to all. What it hurts is the innovative creators. In this way open source itself can hurt the innovators as there aren’t patent rules to protect them long enough to recuperate some money.
I have to eat my words, the Melzi board in my tronxy had a meltdown. The ground connector for the power coming into the board melted down yesterday on me rendering the board currently useless. Only had the printer up and running for 4 days!
Hmm, let me explain, firmware is setup for many boards. Gt2560 is a knock off of a RAMPs and Arduino mega combo. So arduino mega, which is the atmel2560 MCU that is on the GT2560. The research is not hard but why too much. Check out the blogs I did on georgeroblesjr.wordpress.com 17 And explains what happened with rev a, legacy board, etc. Plus I put up 4 version with autolevel, filament sensor, combo of both or one or simple setup. Not hard to mod for your own setup. Gt2560 is same as a RAMPs board but with a few less pins. The newer one is better but not been able to get large quantities yet. I stand by my product and am in USA southern California. I do most tech support via Skype and help/walk you through it yourself. Point is the difference between RAMPS board and gt2560 is really the heatsinks for the heater performance. The 24 volt setup is the real problem with that board. But if you plan on using dvr8825 stepper driver then go to a Rambo board, who’s is what the new Prusa uses and the original design is produced and design by ultimaker. Lulzbots taz 4/5/6 use Rambo board or the mini rambo. The drivers on those boards are still the regular a4988 drivers. So please, check out the info I gave you instead of just the forums where many who don’t know what they’re doing cause they just copy and paste. I ha e actually modded the firmware for my own and now many actually use it and don’t even know. I had made sure the runaway temp protection was enabled, tuned pid loops, setup and design my own autolevel and z probe bracket that fits on a mk8 or 40mm fan profile that uses magnets, printdparts, screws, tactile button, wires and, I did some g-code to use it, I flick it down bit does 9 point “auto tramming” which is the “autolevel” every one calls it. As for those out there saying Prusa is not open sourced it is, just not easy to find so they get ahead of China. Give it a month and China will be making new clones of the 4 color extruder. Yes it can do multiple materials but time is increased for the switch of filament for temp to change. Prusa uses open source ideas from the community as well. If you have a great idea then tell them and they will do the research.
I also have a RAMPs board but I stack a second 5/3.3 volt regulator on top the first to help handle the extra I put on it, servo control, fan controller, dual extruder with a heat bed, Bluetooth connection, filament sensor and a full graphics. However the MCU is too slow to handle most of it while reading an sd card so octoprint or a computer helps there to take some of the load.