Always make sure to insert drivers in correct orientation and in the socket correctly.Ī RAMPS 1.4 board using traditional Pololu drivers provide from 1A to 1.2A of current and about 4V to a NEMA motor. Always make sure power and USB is disconnected when removing or adjusting stepper drivers. Incorrectly inserting stepper drivers will destroy your electronics and cause a fire risk. Usually the endstop will have their pins identified. The COMMON pin (marked as C or S) is connected to the S on the board. When wiring a 2-pin endstop the NC pin is connected to GND ( -) on the board. In a two pin connection the + pin is NOT used. This is also the case when you wire your endstops directly, in which case only the COMMON and NC pins of the switch are used.įrom top-to bottom you will notice that for each axis the first pin is the Signal S, the second is GND, and lastly the 5V pin. Is also common to find endstops with 2-pin connector or using only 2-wires (even if the connector has 3-pins). Now days when shopping online is very common to find 3-pins endstops with leds, mainly due to all the Ender 3, CR-10 and similar clones that use them. Check the wiki for mechanical endstops for more e info. In the above figure we illustrate two common mechanical endstops that you will find. Check this excellent page explaining endstops from the Marlin Firmware guys.) (Note: all of this can be configured at will but requires more changes in the firmware. The minimum is also know as the home location of your axis, on our traditional cartesian FDM printers we said that the end stop for the Z axis is in the bottom end of the frame, for the X axis is to the left of the frame and for the Y axis is somewhere near the back. To simplify the setup of the firmware it is easier to only use the minimum pins of each axis.
(Note firmwares implements software endstops for the opposite side using the dimensions on the build area of the printer.)
While you may connect both endstops for an axis the common setup is to use only one per axis. In the board you will find six 3 pin connectors labeled (from left to right) X-MIN, X-MAX, Y-MIN, Y-MAX, Z-MIN, and Z-MAX. The endstops are the switches that tell the firmware when one of its axis (X, Y, Z) has reached either (or both) its minimum or maximum limit. Wiring improperly an endstop that uses 5V may damage an IO port on the ATmega 2560 or the Arduino itself, this is a particular issue with clones of the Arduino ATmega2560. The RAMPS 1.4 offers no pull-up circuits, current limiting resistors or other protections. Before you continue we suggest you read our wiki page on mechanical endstops. Pay attention when connecting the endstop to the RAMPS 1.4. (The thermistor does not have a polarity.)Ĭonnect the extruder fan to the screw terminal labeled D9 The thermistor is connected in the terminal labeled T0 (uses pin A15 in Arduino). The temperature of the extruder is monitored by a thermistor also installed in the heat block. The heating element must be 12V and consume an average of 2.5 amps. The extruder has a heating element (heater cartridge) in the heating block that connects to the screw terminal labeled D10. When shopping for a heatbed consider a 120W/12V option that is well within the parameters or a traditional RAMPS 1.4 board.
The FET (fuses) on the boards together with the mosfets are the first candidates to burn out if your heatbed draws more power that the supported rating. The heatbed should be inside the operating parameters of these two. Second is the actually amperage that your PSU can deliver. Many RAMPS clones use MOSFET that are not rated for 11A or even the average 8A you will see on a 12V heatbed. Your theatrical limit is 11A at 120V that's about 120W that a heater can consume, if you get a heater that draws more power it will kill your MOSFETs. The first consideration is the MOSFET of your board. There are many factors when considering if a heatbed will work with your RAMPS board or if your heatbed will destroy your board. This board is mainly a 12V board and can be modified to work at 24V. This does add another set of steps to assembly, but we stuck with larger sizes to make it fairly painless. In RAMPS 1.4, the resistors and capacitors are now surface mount to fit more passive components. In RAMPS 1.4 the capacitors and resistors are now surface mount (SMD) which provided more space for other passive components and headers.