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Reach expansion board for Replicape ready for review
I have gotten a few requests for an expansion board to accompany the Replicape lately, so I have made an inital version for anyone interested in adding more extruders than the standard two present on Replicape.
The Reach board uses the spare PWM and ADC pins from Replicape to keep the cost down and the software changes to a minimum. Reach adds three more high power mosfets controlled by PWM, three low power mosfets controlled by PWM for extra fans (12V) , three more thermistor inputs, and three stepper motors all individually programmable down to 1/32 step and with programmable drive current, just like on the motherboard.
This should make the board suitable for the new generation of hot ends such as Kraken or even color-blending extruders. CMYK color prints with support material anyone? : )
The trade-off is that there are no longer any available pins for backlight, resistive touch or buttons for an LCD3 cape to stack on top. For this reason, the 46-pin headers are not stacking. If you want to use a display, you need to use the HDMI and USB host ports on the BeagleBone Black, for instance by adding a Manga Screen (Kickstarter coming soon).
The first “batch” will only be some 5 boards for prototyping and testing the design. As always, anyone is free to make their own version, but unless you are in a big hurry to try it, I suggest you wait for my own review before trying it. The Rev A0-boards have a tendency to need updating.. : )
I’ll leave the design simmering a few days before sending it in. If anyone has any comments, feel free to add them and I’ll try to defend my design choices or make changes if I do not have an answer.
The design-files and gerbers are here: https://bitbucket.org/intelligentagent/replicape
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Would it be possible to drive a six degree of freedom mechanism like a Stuart/Gough platform or Sextupteron with the Reach, or would the drivers for the Reach steppers be too slow compared to the ones driven by the PRUs?
John, all steppers will be driven by the pru. There is no difference in speed.
So I’ve got one of the Rev. A and one of the Rev. B Replicapes on the way (after production issues get worked out, of course).
And then I went ahead and ordered a diamond hotend. So now I need six stepper drivers. If this had gone anywhere, it would have been overkill. But I don’t see a review post, so I suspect that it got shelved.
I don’t need everything that this provides. All I need is one more stepper driver.
Hi! I have the Reach A0 working in my office, blog post coon soon. Reach B0 havibg two extruders is still in development, waiting for Replicape B3 to finish.
[…] Reach board was ready for review over two years ago, but only now the software for it was ready. Some people have made their own versions of the board, […]