We’re very excited to announce that our Extruder Controller v2.2 and RepRap Motherboard v1.2 kits are now also available as pre-assembled boards! You can order them today from the MakerBot Store. These boards are pre-programmed with the Arduino/Sanguino bootloader, so you don’t need an AVR programmer to use them– you can upload code with the Arduino software over a standard USB-TTY serial cable.
Unfortunately, we don’t offer pre-assembled stepper drivers just yet. We hope to make them available sometime in late August.
Thanks for bearing with us– I know that these have been eagerly anticipated. Happy hacking!
(Also, please don’t actually throw out your soldering irons! Soldering irons are handy and awesome, especially nice old Hakkos like this one. If you really want to get rid of your soldering iron, donate it to your local hackerspace instead!)