I have been making some slow progress on my Laser cutter/engraver build and I have the frame assembled with the X/Y motion working. In wanting to keep the wiring as neat as possible I have decided to use a ribbon cable to connect everything back to the Smoothieboard and this is what I have come up with…
The 26 way ribbon will feed to a PCB mounted behind the X motor, this has the connectors for the X motor, x/y limit switches, a spare 12v connector and then a 16 way connector to feed to another PCB mounter behind the gantry. The Smoothieboard will be mounted above the frame, so that the only movement on the 26 way ribbon cable will be in the y direction. Here is the x connector PCB…
The Laser connector PCB has the connectors for the laser, z motor and z limit switches…
I am going to tape the 16 way ribbon cable on the back of the x axis extrusion, in a similar fashion to my Artillery X1 3d printer.
I also plan to add some z axis movement, which will give me more options on what I can do with the machine and in trying to keep the weight down I would like to use a 12V 24BYJ48 motor for the Z axis. Because the motor is geared I am thinking that I will need to run at full steps but the microstepping is fixed on the Smoothieboard so I have decided to add an external A4988 driver board as well.
Here is a 3d model of the shield in place on the Smoothieboard…
and here is the schematic/pcb layout
I have passed through a bunch of pins for me to use for switches, plus the serial connection as I plan to add some form of control panel in the future.
So can anyone see any glaring errors or have any suggestions/feedback. I am not an expert in PCB design or electronics, and as we all know sometimes a little knowledge is dangerous
Aside from that can the thermistor pins & unused motor pins be used for input for the switch module?.
Regards,
Les