So, plan B was crazy - and will not work for the same reasons plan A did not work.
In the end, what we need is living hinges, and that will be the first thing I shall work on when I have some system I can print with. Chicken and Egg.
At the moment I am focussing on the electronics. Arduino is working, and I am looking into the shields for making the motors turn. Something that intrigues me is the power of the Arduino Mega, and how we are underusing it's capabilities. It should be possible to build a shield that can control the stepper motors with lower cost electronics than the pololu stepper drivers.
Looking into ways to modify either the "orginal" 5D code or the Teacup firmware to make this possible. The standard arduino stepper code available at the moment is "locking" code, preventing the system from doing anything else while the stepper is running... not ideal. It will have to be interrupt driven.
At the end of this experiment I would love to have a new shield, at lower cost - and single sided that will have the same functionality at the current RAMPS 1.3 board. Watch this space...
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