Comments on: Relocating the MakerBot CupCake Extruder Controller

By: john c

john c — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:50:04 +0000

I was cruising down the front page and had to stop in as your lacing caught my eye! Your wiring looks great! Its nice to see attention to details such as lacing and twisting! Keep up the good work!

NASA-STD-8739.4 Chapter 9 is a excellent resource for those interested in lacing.

Cheers!
-john c.

By: Dave M.

Dave M. — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 14:45:44 +0000

By the way, thanks for working out the calculation on the patch cord. I’ve been meaning to look into that and never got around to it, and now I can just be happy with whatever is already there!

By: Dave M.

Dave M. — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:08:19 +0000

Keith, your new layout looks amazing. I definitely want to steal your ideas! Regarding the cable lacing, I think it looks extremely cool, and I hadn’t ever seen something like that before. I typically get expandable sleeving from Fry’s Electronics and use that to cover all of the wires. It works well, but doesn’t look as cool as cable lacing, for sure.

By: Keith Neufeld

Keith Neufeld — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:58:58 +0000

Jay, I’m not done with my cabling (you can see one ribbon cable clip in the pictures and I need to print more and lace some other cables), but I’m working toward a vision I have for overall cable tidiness. Your rotated MB is fantastic for making the SD card accessible, but aesthetically I like having the jacks for both ends of the MB-extruder cable facing the same direction (toward the front of the CupCake). It’s a fine point and it’s completely fine to say I’m being anal-retentive, but that’s why I’ve oriented things the way I have.

The best of both worlds would be to have the SD card socket face the left side of the MB. Having said that, I’m actually tempted to make a carrier PCB that fits snugly between the MB and the SD card and routes traces in such a way as to rotate the SD card 90°.

I like having the heater and thermistor wires under the PCB, too; although if I’m lacing cable (not a given that I’m going to leave it laced), I believe the traditional thing to do would be to route them around and between boards rather than under. In any case, I’ve seen no evidence of harmful RFI.

For what it’s worth, even though I twisted each cable pair individually, I would think they’d still be more prone to crosstalk along the 1.5′ parallel wiring path than in the 3″ underneath the board. Also, the thermistor wires go straight to the thermistor connector; only the motor wires go near the motor driver ICs; and only the heater wires go near the MOSFET blocks.

By: MakerBlock

MakerBlock — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:23:01 +0000

If you rotate the motherboard 90 degrees counter clockwise, you’ll get the best of both worlds – relocated extruder board and access to the SD slot. I also rotated the extruder board 90 degrees for easier wiring. I like how you ran the extruder wires under the board. Does this cause any RFI?
http://makerblock.com/2010/02/alternate-alternate-extruder-controller-mounting/
http://makerblock.com/2010/02/remounted-extruder-controller-board/