So, in an effort to simplify my printer’s electronics, I purchased a combination Ramps 1.4/Arduino 2560 board. This particular board is apparently known as a MKS Base v1.2, whatever that means. Foolishly, I assumed it would have ALL the features that my Ramps board had, but for the life of me I can’t find a place to connect my second Z axis stepper motor. I was wondering if anyone had any experience with this type of board and if so… what am I missing?
It doesn’t have a second set of pins for a second Z motor. If you want to run both motors with one driver just splice the cables together or buy a splitter cable. If you need to use a second driver you can change the pin assignments for the second extruder driver to run the second Z motor (assuming you don’t have dual extruders).
For the price I’ve found it to be a great little board. I’m running it on 24v with quite a lot of current and it handles it like a champ. Also runs motors much quieter than my Rambo boards.
Rob.
Given the option, which would you recommend? Up until now I’ve been running them in parallel off my Ramps/Arduino stack. Does a second driver present more problems or increase performance? I only have one extruder (so far) so I’m not worried about giving up a slot. The main reason I’m switching to this setup is because my heated bed takes so long to warm up.
It really depends how much current your motors need, but if they’ve been working from the one driver I wouldn’t change it. The drivers on the MKS are 4982’s I think, which can go up to 2.5 amps, so two 1 amp motors should be fine (though cooling the board might be a good idea). Joining the cables is also much less hassle than modding the firmware.
I don’t know that this board will help your bed heating though, unless you run higher than 12v through it.
