24
votes
Accepted
What is the benefit of using an ARM based electronics?
3D printer controllers have to do a lot of stuff very, very fast. Performing kinematics and dynamics calculations while sending many thousands of precisely-synchronized step pulses per second is ...
- 6,446
14
votes
Accepted
Do stepper motors require any maintenance?
The stepper motor itself does not. You may want to inspect the motors for debris or dust.
Depending on your configuration you may want to check on parts of your printer that connect to your stepper ...
- 470
13
votes
Accepted
Real life stepper speed
The four main motor speed limits in a 3d printer are:
Firmware step generation frequency limits
Firmware motion planner effects
Loss of torque and precision due to motor coil inductance and back-EMF ...
- 6,446
11
votes
What is the benefit of using an ARM based electronics?
Generally, AVR is in fact less powerful than many ARM cores used today. Most printers with AVRs don't have floating-point coprocessors, although a lot of the step and movement control can be done in ...
- 832
10
votes
Do stepper motors require any maintenance?
No, stepper motors do not require maintenance. They are a brushless kind of motor, so they do not have brushes that need to be replaced.
- 14.5k
10
votes
Accepted
Can an extruder rated for 24 V work with 12 V ATX power supply?
Electrical engineering can be quite complex, but in this case you can save yourself with same simple equations/relations. Using the following formulae:
Voltage ($\ U$) equals current ($I$) multiplied ...
- 30.6k
8
votes
Accepted
Is this fuse a good choice for my Prusa i3's power supply and RAMPS 1.4?
No, do not use this fuse. The current rating is too high to be reasonable for your printer. It will "work" in the sense that your printer will get power, but it won't provide anywhere near as much ...
- 6,446
8
votes
Using CAT6 cables for 3D printer motor / sensors / fans
The ampacity question is not completely answerable because CAT6 does not specify wire gauge, so the current limit will depend on the specific gauge you get. CAT6 can be anywhere from 22 AWG to 24 AWG, ...
- 14.5k
8
votes
Accepted
Why would one choose 12 V from 24 V, from a safety standpoint?
The most important "safety" advantage when using 24V (compared to 12V) is that to get the same power, you only need half the current. A 192W heated bed would need 16A at 12V, but only 8A at 24V.
...
- 14.5k
8
votes
Accepted
MOSFET as a safety feature
In the world of (cheap) printers, "MOSFET" has taken on a meaning of its own.
For a long time, 3D printers have had MOSFETs on board of their motherboards to switch the heated bed. In the past two ...
- 14.5k
8
votes
Electric shock from ender 3 printer PSU
The "shock" is likely from noise filtering circuitry at the power supply's input. For filtering, every power supply has a small capacitor that connects the live input wire to ground (a so-called "...
- 14.5k
7
votes
Using CAT6 cables for 3D printer motor / sensors / fans
I did this for some of the wiring on my printer, and it's working fine so far. The two cautions are:
At @tom pointed out, the heater is the high current item, so be careful of the wire gauge, and ...
- 3,181
7
votes
Accepted
What type of plug is this?
As 0scar noted, this looks suspiciously like a JST connector, but the left one is not a JST RCY connector and it is neither one of the common JST PH nor JST XH, JST manufacturer pages show. In fact, ...
- 19.4k
6
votes
What is the benefit of the Arduino shield based electronics?
Many 3d printer motherboards are based on Arduino/Atmega microcontroller and just add some stepper motor drivers, MOSFETs and such in a single board. That explains why you use the Arduino IDE to ...
- 934
6
votes
Accepted
Power Supply Safety
I suggest looking at the maximum amperage draw for all components that could be on at one time, and then find a power supply that can supply at least 20% more current. You would never want to get a ...
6
votes
Can a heatbed PCB (Prusa Mk2) be straightened out?
Electrical engineer here. There is nothing odd about putting a PCB in an oven. Any surface mount PCB is assembled using a reflow oven which heats all the components, as well as the PCB itself, ...
- 281
6
votes
Accepted
Is Arduino Due a worth buy as controller electronics for deltabots?
An 8bit Atmega can provide bare-bones delta performance with Marlin (eg 40mm/s print speed) or pretty good performance with Repetier (due to more optimized algorithms). For a small and simple delta ...
- 6,446
6
votes
It is worthwhile to protect electronics with a 3D printed PLA case?
As pointed out by Ryan Carlyle, not all 3D printing filament is flammable (such as PET and PETG), and the question therefore rather becomes:
Can 3D printing be used to make proper electronic cases?
...
- 3,947
6
votes
Accepted
Identify temperature sensor
It is quite likely not a thermocouple, but a thermistor:
A thermocouple would look like a small blob of metal. The tip of your temperature sensor appears to be a glass bead, which is a commonly used ...
- 14.5k
6
votes
Accepted
What is this stepper motor connector called?
Short answer: It's probably 6 pin JST PH
Long answer:
Without seeing the socket, it's hard to say for sure, however most Nema 17 stepper motors use 6 pin JST PH connectors with 2.0mm pitch on the ...
- 365
5
votes
Accepted
It is worthwhile to protect electronics with a 3D printed PLA case?
It depends.
Protecting your electronics from being touched by random bits of conductive material which would short and fry them is always a good idea.
If it's something that will be visible, then a ...
- 166
5
votes
RAMPS 1.4, 1.5 or 1.6?
The biggest issue with RAMPS 1.4 (and 1.5) is the power connector is prone to melting/burning, this appears to be fixed on 1.6 with the use of screw terminal blocks. I've used RAMPS 1.4 with both 12v ...
- 2,090
5
votes
RAMPS 1.4, 1.5 or 1.6?
The drawback of RAMPS 1.5 and 1.6 are that they use SMD polyfuses which are a little more difficult to replace (for some people) than the large fuses from the RAMPS 1.4. However, the fuses of the ...
- 30.6k
5
votes
Accepted
What are the specifications of the dual voltage controller of the Ender 3/CR-10?
I own the Ender 3, and it runs on 24V, as this photo of the power supply shows:
From power supply to the board, it uses a 2-wire line connected with a XT60 plug/jack that is common on RC cars:
The ...
- 19.4k
5
votes
Accepted
Electric shock from ender 3 printer PSU
You need to take particular care when using plug adaptors - they are not always made to a high standard, and it is possible that the earth connection is not present. If you suspect that the earth ...
- 3,662
4
votes
Issue with weird heated bed temperature fluctuations
It really looks like either a bad thermistor or bad electrical joints. Are the connections to the thermistor itself crimped, or soldered? Are there connectors near the thermistor that can get heated ...
- 1,803
4
votes
Accepted
What does it mean for step and dir "to be on their own ports"?
A "port" for the AVR microcontroller is a set of eight IO pins that are controlled together at a hardware level. The underlying machine code can write an entire byte to set the status of all 8 pins at ...
- 6,446
4
votes
Using an Arduino Mega with burnt voltage regulator
Take a look at Ryan's answer to my question. I believe the MightBoard is based on the Mega 2560, so it is possible that some of the other components could have been damaged. If you look at the ...
- 6,214
4
votes
Accepted
What is the influence of a lower BAUDrate?
Baud rate is the rate at which information is transferred in a communication channel, given as a number of bits per second (bps). So a baud rate of 250000 is capable of transferring a maximum of ...
- 3,947
4
votes
Accepted
Heater cartridge connector for Original Prusa i3 MK2S
This is referred to as a Terminal Block Connector. More specifically this is a 2-position pluggable terminal block connector commonly manufactured by Phoenix Contact and others.
Newark.com Sale ...
- 56
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible