Season's Best to you all

I have had more success. I got some flux from Radio Shack and tried cleaning my traces that I bridged.
I got them to look cleanish and then got back to testing the axes and verifying what worked and didn't.
In the course of my testing I found lots of errors and after getting them correct, found more. Seems there are many more ways to do things wrong than right. Well after all that checking and testing I got all 3 axes working. Now to work on the extruder and then the thermistor connections and some real testing.

To all my readers who celebrate, a very Merry/Happy Christmas.
And to everyone, Happy Reprapping!

Limited success reviving my messed up Arduino Mega

I was wishing I had at least one axis so I could play with pieces of my new Delta 3D Printer to be. So I figured I couldn't hurt my damaged one much more since I deemed it unusable. After playing with the connections and solder sucking and trying to draw extra solder from between the tiny connections it looked better than when I knew I messed it up. So I managed to drill through the melted plastic on the connectors that occured when I was carelessly messing up the pin traces with blobs of solder. Anyways when I tried it, I was surprised to see that I had x and y axes working, the z only partially working. There is a trace that I pulled up I will investigate what that went to and maybe try soldering a single strand if that is for the z axis. So not bad, getting over my frustration and fear.

Replacing my Arduino Mega

I decided to just buy a new board to be able to move forward and will remember the painful lesson of not trying to do surgery on something I can't see so well even with my large lighted magnifying glass.
the board I am getting is from the same place as the last one I think. It was not too expensive, even for me at just under $17USD, and delivery is expected between Dec 24 and Jan 3. Delivery is free.

MEGA2560 R3 Control Board ATMEGA16U2 For Arduino Compatible USB Cable

Now I can concentrate on the hardware. I am relatively assured that I want to go with a delta printer. I think I can maybe get away with building the hardware from mdf or wood.

I ran across a neat metal delta printer. I'm very excited about the way 3d printing technology is taking off lately. Here is the 3d metal printer Open-source metal 3-D printer - Appropedia: The sustainability wiki.

Arduino Mega 2560 destroyed in attempt to do something even young eyes and steady nerves shouldn't probably attempt

Confirmed that the direction pin was not getting a signal for the y motor, it remained 0 while I saw that the x direction pin would be 0 or +5 depending on direction. Instead of just remapping the y direction and moving the connection to a remapped pin, I stupidly try to see if I can remove a solder bridge I am not even sure if I can see. The result is massive solder bridging over many pins and then after giving up and trying again, managed to pull up a trace because of repeated heating and scraping with soldering iron. So that will be another $17 or so dollars to get a new one from Ebay. Disgusted with myself but I will persevere after I can get the money from my wife.

Rock N Roll

Completed the wiring that I knew had to be done. Towards the top you see a yellow capacitor between taller and shorter black ones. Those are for the thermistors for the heaters. I still think there is something I have to figure out with D8, one of the 3 heater circuits. It didn't light up and am not sure if it is a configuration issue, where I need to add or adjust something I missed, or a potential wiring or other hardware issue. I will figure it out. I know that if the signal got there that the control worked, just wasn't getting there. I redid some other wiring and maybe retesting will find it working. We will see, but for now I think most of the electronics is done. So on to finish testing and then to figure out if I will go with the Mendel I have set up or to go for a Mini Rostock, a delta robot, named for the 3 arms connected to the triangle shaped effector that then looks like a Greek letter delta.. All for now and to my avid follower Marko, Rock and Roll!

Some success with testing

I tried the smoke test last night and was happy that nothing seemed awry. Today I loaded up Arduino and Repetier Firmware (works with Arduino, using a new pde file and controls configuration of the hardware at the lowest level). The Repetier host software that controls the operation of the printer seemed to work for small movements, but the large movements seemed stalled and the small movements seemed too large.
I went into configuration and where the steps/mm were set I changed the 98.something to 10.0. I had much better success with the movements, now 50mm moves worked but were perhaps not quite 50mm. I will have to calibrate now. So the first steps are successful. Now to hook up the heater controls D8-10 and fine.
Then I will be nearly back to where I was when my Reprap motherboard stopped accepting programming commands. I may try to get started with my delta printer hardware now that electronics are solid.

All wired up I think...

The top diagram is part of what I used from Fritzing, I posted the link to it last time. It helped me keep track of the wires by color so that I could better follow what connected to what. It worked beautifully. Below, you see the power distribution with the STP60NF06's the control the heaters, extruder and heated bed. The 12 volts from that connects to vin and gnd on the Mega 2560 via the extended connections on the shield plugged into it.
All that is left is to double check wiring and then test it out.