Update: Cables, cables everywhere... and a new PSU

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Today has involved a lot of cable loom making and splicing of existing cabling. My plan is to have each part modular. So, the cabling within the cable chains will have terminations at each end. There will then be link cables from the mainboard case to link at the bottom of the Z axis chain. At the X carriage there will then be separate connectivity for 

  • Heater
  • Thermistor
  • Cooling fan
  • Part cooling fan
  • BL-Touch


The picture shows spliced connections for these.

The exception to this will be the stepper itself which will connect directly to the motor at the carriage end. At the mainboard end, all of the steppers will terminate into a single pair of twenty-way connectors. This will allow a single unplugging of all of the steppers. There will also be an earth point which will connect into the shield on each of the stepper cables to provide shielding of the cables. It will also connect to the body of each motor. to quieten that. 

My aim is to have the entire mainboard case demountable so as to make that another module. 

In other news, my fanless 400W PSU finally arrived today. I have to say that if it works as well as it looks, things should be a lot better  - and a lot quieter. 

It is significantly smaller than the original (that is a nectarine for scale). It is longer (although even then, not by much) but only 55mm wide and 23mm high. It does seem very well made in a mechanical sense, at least. Time will tell in terms of electronically. 

Tomorrow I plan to start on the initial termination of the stepper cables. 



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