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.

I'm back at it finally. I put together a board to manage the heater connections and the power for them. It will also provide power to the Arduino Mega 2650. I have been using fritzing http://fritzing.org/ to manage my connections since I am wiring up the equivalent of a RAMPS board, utilizing the old Reprap 2.1 stepper controllers and the one pololu driver that I have been using for the extruder stepper.

Out with the old and in with the new. I had no idea what RAMPS was until after I had decided to get a Mega board and wanted to figure out how to interface it to replace my old Reprap motherboard that was itself trying to be an updated Gen3. You see the old motherboard there above and the new Mega below. I also got a general shield to interface to the mega. I will be scrounging the old connectors that will interface to the old reprap drivers. Eventually I may get the new shield that has the stick drivers ( I actually have one that I am using to drive my extruder). I am apparently retrofitting my Mega to become a Ramps like reprap using the old Reprap drivers.

I found a very interesting article that joins my two favorite things. Nano and desktop printing. I have been waiting for them to meet substantively.

http://www.nanowerk.com/news2/newsid=31440.php

I follow Reprap seeing what is happening, and I also follow the happenings in Nano Technology at nanowerk on a daily basis. Always something new. This was another of those crossover things. Nano manufacturing, I am waiting for them to become commercial and then hit the surplus market. ( I am so cheap ).