Has anyone tried to upgrade to MEGA from UNO?

X-Carve
1

I have an extra Mega laying around and I’m thinking about upgrading to a faster processor. What’s the best route to take?

2

GRBL is not official supported on the MEGA but someone did a port a few years ago.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=arduino+mega+grbl

3

Better question is - what do you hope to accomplish with the upgrade?

-Tom

1 Like
4

It’s supported. Has been for a while.

5

Hi,

the speed will be exactly the same. The Mega provides no benefits for GRBL (even though it can be recompiled to run on a MEGA) except maybe being able to buffer more code lines if you change the GRBL code accordingly.

If you have speed issues maybe give Estlcams integrated Arduino controller a try. It can output steps at 45kHz / 800 code lines per second.

6

I was looking at the TinyG upgrade and there seems to be a faster platform than that. Just thinking out loud at this point. I do like the separate y- motor setup instead of slaving them.

7

TinyG uses AtXMega Processors but those have nothing to do with the Arduino Mega.
All those “Megas” for different processors and controller boards can be quite confusing…
The XMega processors are in fact faster and more powerful than their “just Mega” counterparts.

9

i switched from tha arduino uno with cnc shield to an mega2560 with a ramps version 1.6, using grbl version 1.1n , that gives me up to 5 axis on my machine, Q: is easel compatible with the 2560/ramps setup?