Cheapest effect board?

I'm looking for the cheapest, but still effect at 3D printing and fairly straightforward to program, board. Is there a single one? Suggestions? Opinions?

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Realizer- One who realizes dreams by making them a reality either by possibility or by completion. Also creating or renewing hopes of dreams.
"keep in mind, even the best printer can not print with the best filament if the user is the problem." -Ohmarinus

I think the cheapest board around is Sanguish, I just learned that today, a few posts below. Its pretty basic but does the job of a XYZE printer with heatbed.

Another cheap option is RAMPS1.4 with an arduino mega clone and A4998s. You get them very cheap from china or ebay or dx.com

Depends a bit on what you need. For single extruder systems there are lots of options.
Sanguinololu, RAMPS, Melzi, Sanguish, printrboard.

I designed Sanguish as a DIY kit with the intention that hobbyists could save money by building themselves. But looking at Chinese boards on ebay it looks like prices have come way down lately, to the point that unless you are looking for higher stepper current or just like soldering, you may just want to buy a pre-built board. For dual extruder, first choice would likely be RAMPS. Just remember that RAMPS is a shield for Arduino so if you don't already have an Arduino Mega you'll need to get that as well. And you need the Pololu drivers too.

Looks like you can get a RAMPS system with drivers and a Mega clone for about $60 shipped from china. Sanguinololu about the same (with drivers). Printrboard about the same or maybe a little more. Melzi is about $55. Sanguish is $50 + shipping so it ends up being about the same price. Melzi and Printrboard have a built in SD card reader. RAMPS is the most popular I would guess and probably most compatible with any firmware you could find. Sanguish has higher current drivers and is DIY only. RAMPS and Sanguinololu use the Pololu driver boards which can be swapped easily if fried or upgraded with higher current TI based drivers. Sanguish uses TB6560 drivers in sockets so they are easy to replace as well as being the highest current drivers of the group.

If you have something against Chinese built boards then of course all the boards mentioned with the exception of Sanguish go up in price. For instance if you want to buy from the developer then Printrboard is $129.00 from Printrbot.com.

Bryan

Thanks. I think I'll go with Sanguinololu, $5 more for assembled version sounds good to me. I've got no problem with China based sellers, haven't had an issues so far.

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Realizer- One who realizes dreams by making them a reality either by possibility or by completion. Also creating or renewing hopes of dreams.
"keep in mind, even the best printer can not print with the best filament if the user is the problem." -Ohmarinus

If your thoghts were Ramps or Sanguinolou, you'd should stick to ramps for the sake of expandability.. once the spirit hit you, there's no way out.... ;-)

I like all in one solutions. Megatronics and Minitronics for life. I a simplistic builder. My personal way of getting places is that if it can't be done simply, it can't be done well.

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Realizer- One who realizes dreams by making them a reality either by possibility or by completion. Also creating or renewing hopes of dreams.
"keep in mind, even the best printer can not print with the best filament if the user is the problem." -Ohmarinus