Yeah, gate capacitance is an important but often overlooked characteristic. Everyone "knows" about gate voltage, but applying the right voltage is half the story.
It is perhaps fortunate that we can get away with driving a MOSFET from an AVR at 5V, but it makes it look simpler than it is. When going to 3.3V the drive current on the MCU output pins is also a lot lower.
I've been batting this around for quite a while, and have not found a really cheap and simple solution using discretes. Choosing a gate driver like noobman suggests (I think [uk.rs-online.com] is the sort of thing) adds a little cost but it should provide reliable performance.
It's almost tempting to stick in a small PIC/AVR just to handle 5V I/O. If it had an SPI interface, it could be a way to extend operation to multiple extruders with only a few pins.
It is perhaps fortunate that we can get away with driving a MOSFET from an AVR at 5V, but it makes it look simpler than it is. When going to 3.3V the drive current on the MCU output pins is also a lot lower.
I've been batting this around for quite a while, and have not found a really cheap and simple solution using discretes. Choosing a gate driver like noobman suggests (I think [uk.rs-online.com] is the sort of thing) adds a little cost but it should provide reliable performance.
It's almost tempting to stick in a small PIC/AVR just to handle 5V I/O. If it had an SPI interface, it could be a way to extend operation to multiple extruders with only a few pins.