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I don't think much of the build quality of this board. After using it for a few months, the bed heat stopped working last week and now the thing is unable to read the SD card at all.

I ordered a new one because of the bed heat, but it's all screw terminals. They don't even HAVE vertical connectors as an option anymore. Now I'm thinking about whether I want to cut off all my connectors to just use the screw terminals on the board I have, or maybe order a Smoothieboard instead. This is really frustrating. I was right in the middle of modding Smoothie to be better at calibrating delta printers, and now this.

Wish I'd waited for version two of this thing, seems like they have some quality issues to work on.

626Pilot wrote:I don't think much of the build quality of this board. After using it for a few months, the bed heat stopped working last week and now the thing is unable to read the SD card at all.

I ordered a new one because of the bed heat, but it's all screw terminals. They don't even HAVE vertical connectors as an option anymore. Now I'm thinking about whether I want to cut off all my connectors to just use the screw terminals on the board I have, or maybe order a Smoothieboard instead. This is really frustrating. I was right in the middle of modding Smoothie to be better at calibrating delta printers, and now this.

Wish I'd waited for version two of this thing, seems like they have some quality issues to work on.

I feel like bed heating as a whole should stay off the boards - too much power going through that part of the board, even if it's just a little MOSFET section. One of the very first upgrades I did on my printer was a 24v supply via SSR for my heated bed. I kept that when I moved to Smoothieboard recently. I actually ditched the PC power supply completely, since I have a 750W 24V supply - I just used a stepdown converter to run the fans and hotend at 12V.

The stock connectors for the steppers that come with the Smoothieboard if you get the presoldered kit suck too, compared to the locking ones on the RAMBO. I made adapters, but I had problems keeping good contact because the pins only touch one side, versus a wraparound female pin on the RAMBO.

That said, it's printing well. I got up to 160 mm/sec with some aggressive jerk without missing corners by much.

I'd be okay with them just making the board a little bigger, and using fatter traces and a better MOSFET.

I had problems with the smoothie crimp connectors also. The locking ones are much better, and they need to slide completely over the pins instead of just touching on one side.

If you get a smoothieboard, you really need to get some better crimps and connectors. The ones from polulu are good.

Generic Default wrote:I had problems with the smoothie crimp connectors also. The locking ones are much better, and they need to slide completely over the pins instead of just touching on one side.

If you get a smoothieboard, you really need to get some better crimps and connectors. The ones from polulu are good.

Yeah, I used Pololu crimps / connectors to make up a wiring harness for my GLCD to go on the SmoothieBoard. Very jury-rigged - I hadn't bought any 2x5 connectors to mate with the LCD, so I took a 2x3 and 2 1x2 and taped them together. Voila, a 2x5 connector.

I did discover that if you pull the crappy white plastic connectors off the SmoothieBoard gently with a pair of pliers, you can pull the pins out of the latching polarized board-mount headers from Hansen Hobbies (which are what's on the Rambo), and slide the plastic housing down onto the pins. So, I was able to rectify the problem without resorting to desoldering.

You still have to do an adaptor for the thermistors, since those are just on a 0.1" header, so it's too tight for the latching connectors.