The RepRap GE Pololu Shield RAMPS-FD control board is compatible with the Arduino Due and was designed to surpass the limitations of the RAMPS1.4, which is not compatible with this microcontroller.

The Atmel SAM3X8E ARM Cortex-M3 used in the Arduino Due operates at 3.3V. Applying 5V to the inputs of the Due may cause damage to the chip.

The improvements of the RAMPS-FD compared to the RAMPS1.4 include:

• Other hardware protections, through the capability of controlling the motor driver IC with a jumper cap.
• RAMPS-FD supports many more PWM channels compared to RAMPS1.4.
• Higher power driver compared to RAMPS1.4.
• It features two power supply options: 12V and 24V.

The choice of RAMPS-FD over the Arduino Mega offers the following advantages:

• The CPU operates at 3.3V.
• High current IO pins can support 15 mA source and 9 mA sink.
• Low current IO pins support 3 mA source and 6 mA sink.
• The CPU's maximum capacity is 130mA.
• The Due features 1 dedicated SPI port and 4 multifunctional USART/SPI ports.
• There is no EEPROM in the Due.
• The Due has lower consumption, computes faster, and features more flash memory and SRAM than the Mega2560.