My RepRap Mendel has been out of commission for about 6 months. I was running into firmware issues and the challenge of trying to keep Gen3 electronics running. The main problem is that the newer firmwares do not support the RS485 external extruder boards. A solution to this is to use a Gen3 plus board which is a shield of sorts that plugs into the Gen3 motherboard and supports a Pololu stepper driver. Kliment’s version is available to buy on LulzBot, however I have several minor issues with the PCB layout, the biggest of which is a lack of an easy way to plug in the stepper motor, so I made my own modified version.

I then flashed the board with the Marlin firmware and re-calibrated the machine.

After some initial calibration I was able to print the following items using Repetier-Host and Slic3r.

I still have some tweaking to do but overall I am very happy with the results of the switch.
I plan to post the source files for my version of the Gen3 Plus board soon.