http://store.solidoodle.com/image/cache … 00x500.jpg

I do not know what you mean by hour glass problem. It just wouldnt communicate. They said the FTDI chip died but I dont know for sure. I baught a new FTDI chip before I sent it back as I was going to swap it but I sent it back first. I was hoping they would at least confirm that it did have a problem. So I ended up buying a new one because I was sick of waiting.

The new board does seem to work much better. The heated bed has no problem getting up to 110 but the hot end does over shoot its target pretty badly. I wish they would tweak that algorithm to fix that.

How different is the board than this?

http://reprap.org/wiki/Printrboard

I wonder if your hour glass problem had something to do with the steeper drivers.

Headers are rearranged, and it uses a 2.5mm barrel plug is only difference.

And no...

are the answers to the questions

http://reprap.org/wiki/Printrboard

I wonder if your hour glass problem had something to do with the steeper drivers.

An added bonus is I got the new SD3 motherboard and they included the power supply necessary to interface with it. The new SD3 mother board has a barrel plug so I would have needed to solder one on the old one but to my surprise it came with it.

The new board seems to print much better than my old board. I used to have weird hour glassing when printing circles columns where the circle would be fine at the bottom and the top but the radius would reduce in the middle but only on the back side. This would lead to the front facing side being nice and the back looking like an hour glass. I did adjust the belts but that never fixed the problem.

The new board also seems to allow the heated bed to reach a higher temperature. The old board would cap the bed at 85 without an enclosure and with an enclosure I could only get it to high 90s. The new board I can easily get it to 110 and it will PWM to keep it there. (Basically it is not pegged at 100% duty cycle because it can not hit the target temp).

The new board seems to work really well thus far. The only complaint I have is they will not provide the schematic. I am a bit concerned that the extruder fan half ass runs while the 12V is off meaning it has 5V on it from the USB. I would really like them to fix that leakage path as things which are on the 12V rail should not have 5V on them. They likely have an esd diode conduction path that they did not protect from allowing to conduct. This could end up in the board latching up when 12V power is applied but I would need to evaluate the schematic. Who knows maybe they have a real diode to feed the 12V rail with 5V from the USB but I doubt that.

The last little thing is the new SD3 mother board needs different mechanical holes than the original one so they include printed adapters. Im not sure why they did not make sure the holes were in the same place but it is what it is.

I had the port set to 250000 and the printer was working fine then one day it just wouldnt connect correctly. Repetier said it was connected but it had commands waiting. I think the atmel chip lost its Firmware / bootloader corruption. That would explain why arduino could not connect I would think as it is a serial interface. Im not a SW guy but if it was only that they could have told me to reload the boot loader and I could have took it into work and made a JTAG or other programmer....

WTF just be honest with your customers SD. All I can say is if the new board I purchased from your store has problems I will be seriously pissed....

Do you get any errors?  I just replaced my ATMega chip and updated the firmware, and Repetier would not connect until I changed the Printer Configuration setting -> Baud rate to 115200.

Which is really strange because I never touched that setting in Repetier in the past and never had a problem.

As not to propagate ignorance.  I learned the default rate is 250000.

What a pain in the A$$!

I didn't run into any problems compiling.

In file included from cardreader.cpp:1:
/Marlin.h:30:26: error: WProgram.h: No such file or directory
In file included from /Marlin.h:38,
                 from cardreader.cpp:1:
MarlinSerial.h:116: error: expected ',' or '...' before '&' token
MarlinSerial.h:116: error: ISO C++ forbids declaration of 'String' with no type
MarlinSerial.h:135: error: expected ',' or '...' before '&' token
MarlinSerial.h:135: error: ISO C++ forbids declaration of 'String' with no type
/MarlinSerial.h: In member function 'void MarlinSerial::print(int)':
MarlinSerial.h:118: error: 's' was not declared in this scope
In file included from cardreader.cpp:1:
/Marlin.h: At global scope:
Marlin.h:110: error: variable or field 'manage_inactivity' declared void
Marlin.h:110: error: 'byte' was not declared in this scope

I do not see a firmware in that link you gave me.

I downloaded the pre-prepared zip file.

It's linked from the solidoodle.com page, here's the sd3 firmware zip:
http://www.solidoodle.com/wp-content/up … __SD3_.zip

I downloaded the pre-prepared zip file.

I got it to upload the FW and still nothing on the serial terminal and Repetier.

...

I am seeing a message at the bottom of the screen

avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00

So after uploading the firmware you saw "Done Uploading", and no errors at that time?  Or perhaps it failed after:
Binary Sketch Size…" and the upload never completed?

I don't know if it made a difference for me, but I did end up setting the baud rate to 115200 in the Configuration.h file when I was in the process of troubleshooting, though it was the placing the sanguino folder in the right place that finally did the trick for me.

avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00