Anet A8 Plus customisation

I'm a little busy with family things at the moment, but have managed to find some time to move forward, nonetheless. I am still working on cable tidying and routing for the cable chains. I have added additional cable fixings to the carriage end of the chain mount. This will allow me to better hold the flying leads at the carriage end more securely. Similarly to this, I have also created a modified fan cover for the new Noctua cooling fan on the extruder. This includes a pair of cable clips to securely route the cable up to the chain mount.  I have also now completed the shielded stepper cable for the X-axis motor, to add to the extruder motor cable which I installed a little while ago.  It installs to the motor as normal, with a flying earth lead (currently not connected as can be seen).  At the other end, it joins the extruder cable in the 20-way connector So, things are slowly coming together and just need reconnecting. I only need to make one more cable to go into the ...

I have now completed the cabling to the extruder carriage (except, see below) and have tested each part successfully. This has included a 5V feed for the Noctua fan which I have now installed. All of the parts seem to be working well. This includes the new shielded stepper cable which is now in place for the extruder motor. The other end of the cable goes into four positions in a 20-way socket and plug. This seems to work well and I can now create a similar cable for the X axis motor which will be the final element to connect through the new cable chains. All of the steppers will then terminate in this connector, allowing all to be removed if needed and for the shielding to be earthed at this common point. I am now left with a lot of cables and connectors on the carriage for which I am having to create mounts. For example, my BL-Touch mount has been modified to create built-in ribbon cable slots, to hold the cables more flushly than with the original cable tie base which was a little p...

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  demoun...

I have now been running my combined X and Z axis cable chains for a while in testing, without any cables installed. This has been successful, so I wanted to start on creating the cable looms to replace the old (and very poor) umbilical.  One thing with the cable chains which was a little irritating was that there was a slight sag to the X axis chain due to its length and weight. While this wasn't really a problem, it was a itch which needed scratching. To create a simple resolution, I modified the design of the carriage mount an introduce a ten degree tilt to it, to offset the sag. This was a very simple solution and it seems to have worked.  By tilting the chain ever so slightly against the direction of sag, it has straightened it at the lowest point.  The next exercise was to create the cable looms. My ideal is to have each component on the carriage removable. I did toy with using a single connector for this, but the mix of currents and types made me decide against it. ...

Despite having changed it already, I was still not altogether happy with the mount for my Y axis cable chain where it meets the bed. I had lowered it to accommodate the BL-Touch, but I then also replaced the glass bed with with a thinner magnetic PEI-coated flexy bed . This made the bed a millimetre or so lower which made me wince every time the BL-Touch headed in the direction of the connector.  So, I went back to the drawing board and completely redesigned the fixing, changing it from a single horizontal screw above the mount to a pair of shorter vertical screws and a thin clamp bar. I also tweaked the fitting by a millimetre to bring the mounting just a little nearer to the bed, now that the glass top is no longer there.  I moved from this To this new version Which now sits very flush, as can be seen here. Another change I made to it was to remove one small support bar at the rear. Although this provided some theoretical extra support across the mount, it  did mean th...