Wanhao i3 Control Box Rear Panel for Modular Connections by emertonom

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

I wanted to be able to disconnect the control box of my Wanhao Duplicator i3 v2.1 from the printer, largely because this makes it much easier to mount the printer inside an enclosure (to let ABS print in a warm environment) while the control box is outside for ease of access and good cooling for the motor drivers and hotbed mosfet.
This print makes it easier to do that.
It's still a lot of work, though. You'll need:
2 complete xt60 connectors (male and female sides)
1 female d-sub 37 pin connector
1 male d-sub 37 pin connector
1 d-sub 37 pin connector cable housing
lots of heat shrink tubing, ideally in various colors, and at least two sizes (one small enough for individual cables from a ribbon cable [maybe 1/8" or 3mm before shrinking], and one large enough to cover xt60 cups [maybe 1/4" or 6mm before shrinking])
16-gauge or coarser wire to extend the hotend and heatbed connections
ribbon cable to extend the other connectors
Soldering iron, solder, heat gun
Some way of making opaque marks on black wire casing (I used a yellow Permapaque marker, but nail polish or whiteout would work just as well)
Small zip ties for cable management
Drill
New spacers for the power supply (I used 1/4" nuts)
Bolts & nuts to hold the power connector, fan, and d-sub connector (I used m3's)
The fact that this design requires you to move the power supply towards the front of the control box is rather a design flaw, but since I was able to make it work for me, I'm not particularly inclined to try to fix that flaw at this point. So if you want to use the same design I did, you'll probably need to move your power supply forward too. This isn't too hard; you just unscrew the power supply, drill four new holes further toward the front, and add some kind of spacer to the bolts. The spacer is required because the existing holes had sort of raised pillars around them, so you need the power supply to clear those pillars. I used 1/4" nuts, because I had them lying around. This step wasn't particularly hard, but I'm not thrilled that it's required.
Be VERY CAREFUL to mark the orientation of wires before you cut them. The motor connectors in particular tend to be hooked up with unmarked black ribbon cable, so if you cut those without first making a mark along one edge of the ribbon cable, you won't know which way is which. It doesn't particularly matter what convention you use, but for the record, I marked the edge that is leftmost if you are looking down at the mainboard, such that the edge with all the connectors on it is at the top. I hooked the wire from this edge to the lower-numbered pin in each group.
This isn't as critical for the endstops and thermistors, as these parts don't require a specific orientation, but I kept it up anyway, as it seemed like a good habit.
My connection schema on the d-subs was this:
Pins 1-4: x motor
Pins 5-8: y motor
Pins 9-12: first z motor
Pins 13-16: second z motor
Pins 17-18: extruder fan. Note that this connection runs to the power supply, not the motherboard.
Pin 19: Not Connected
Pins 20-23: Extruder motor
Pins 24-25: Not Connected. I initially had the hotend on here, and if you d-sub has a high enough amperage rating (4A or higher) you could do this, but it's safer to use a second xt60.
Pins 26-27: Part Cooling Fan
Pins 28-29: X endstop
Pins 30-31: Y endstop
Pins 32-33: Z endstop
Pins 34-35: Bed Thermistor
Pins 36-37: Extruder Thermistor
First XT60 connector: Heated Bed (~10A draw)
Second XT60 connector: Hotend (~3A draw)
Because you'll likely need to make the connections longer on most of the control-box-side connections, you'll be soldering about 68 d-sub tin cups, 8 xt60 cups, and around 34 additional wire splices. It's not for the faint of heart.
Note that the pin ordering on the male connector is the mirror of that on the female connector--the male has pin 1 on the far right on the side you solder, whereas the female has pin 1 on the far left on the side you solder. This makes sense if you think about the way these things plug together, but it's kind of a "gotcha" the first time you work with d-subs. And again, remember to mark the orientation of the cables before you cut them. It's way easier to get this stuff right the first time than to debug it later.