The Megatronics electronics board has been a popular, well established model in the 3D printer industry for many years now. After several years and iterations, version 3.1 has established a proven track record with a rich and stable feature set. Megatronics is the first choice for many DIY 3D printer enthusiasts as well as professional 3D printer manufacturers because of its hightly configurable design and good quality components. Compared to other 3D printer electronics, Megatronics is the only single-board solution with a combination of efficient form factor, redundant processing power and good quality components. Although the board has been optimized for controlling 3D printers, the flexibility of the board also allows you to use the board in CNC machines for milling, drilling, laser cutting and more.
The board comes with a powerful Atmega2560 microprocessor having 256 kB memory and running at 16Mhz. The microprocessor can be programmed using the Arduino IDE, and you can easily upload software modified to fit your specific requirements using a simple USB cable. It has 54 digital i/o pins and 16 analog pins connected to the various components on the board, giving you the ability to enhance existing software to solve specific use cases. Existing software (firmware) can be downloaded from our software downloads page, which may need to be customized to your specific machine. Our current default recommendation is Marlin, but all major open source 3D printer firmware supports Megatronics.
Major features
Temperature reading
The board comes with screw terminals for connecting up to two thermocouples, which provide excellent accuracy over a larger temperature regime. The on-board AD597 is compatible with most firmware and supports temperatures up to 400 degrees Celsius, enabling you to print high-temperature thermoplastics. Four headers for industry-standard thermistors also come standard.
Autonomous printing
Autonomous 3D printing from the integrated onboard Micro SD card or an an external SD card reader is supported. The Megatronics board can also be connected to a LCD screen to provide visual feedback during printing. For all available autonomous printing options check the Autonomous printing category on the site.
Heaters and fans
Megatronics has three screw terminals for connecting hot-end heater cartridges, along with a heated bed terminal allowing 15A of power. Finally there are also two headers for connecting fans to the board. All these headers provide PWM controlled output.
Up to 6 stepper drivers
For controlling the stepper motors, Megatronics provides six Pololu-compatible stepper driver slots. By modularizing the stepper drivers, the design allows you to easily adjust the power of each stepper, replace any that become defective or upgrade to higher resolution drivers; all independently of the board and firmware. You can also choose to connect external stepper drivers to output headers near the slots, enabling the use of high power stepper drivers for example.
Other features
- USB 2.0 Full Speed compatible
- Auto reset can be disabled by removing a jumper
- The board can be powered from anything between 12 to 24V*
- Multiple 5V and 12V** pins for miscellaneous sensors or fans
- Min Max XYZ endstop pin headers
- LCD contrast trimpot adjustment
- 5V line protected by a 500mA resettable fuse
- A piezo is included to allow the printer to give feedback with sound
- Four layer high quality PCB board
- Ferrite core for improved USB signal reliability
*Requires that the peripherals connected to the board are also compatible to the designated voltage.
** Depending ion the input voltage. The board will not down convert the voltage.