Ender 3/ 3 Pro Chain Z holder and Cable Connects. by Myk1

Last crawled date: 3 years, 2 months ago

When replacing fans you have to either cut the wires or pull everything out of the harness and disconnect from the main board which is always time consuming and risky if you're not into playing around with wiring.
I decided to make a bracket that would hold 3, 2pin JST Connectors and a Terminal strip so that it would make it easier to unplug the wiring and remove the hot end for repairs, cleaning etc. All the connections are protected with heat shrink and covered with a cover.
Since the new metal extruders don't come with a place to secure the cable I incorporated the complete bracket to the Z axis chain mount to make it easier to access.
required:-
3 x male and female JST connectors
1 x 10/20Amp terminal strip ( only need 2 terminals removed from plastic casing)
1 x M3 screw
3 x 1cm strips of 3mm heat shrink for the connections on the female JST plug.
3 x 2 /3 mm cable ties to secure the cables.
The wires on the hot end, 2 fans and the Thermistor should be cut no longer than 445mm (17-1/4") when measured from the top of the fan cover.
The rest of the wires should be long enough to reach from the control board to the new connectors, be careful when preparing the end of the wires for the JST's not to remove too much insulation, 3mm is more than enough.
The wires are soldered to the pins on the female JST's and then slide the heat shrink over the connections to protect the open wires. The Male JST's are fitted as normal to the fans and the Thermistors, keeping the color coding the same.
I used the old protective sheath to keep all the wires together and cut it to suit.
The female JST's go in the new holder in any order but I preferred the thermistor to go on
the top followed by the fans and then finally the heater wires for the hot end just go into the terminals and are properly tightened.
The JST's are a snug fit into the holder and may need a bit of gentle persuasion to get them to go into the holder , I designed the holder so that the JST's cant be pulled out or pushed back when inserting or removing the other end of the plug.
The screw hole to secure the cover is made for a M3 screw but is not threaded and you should be able to screw in a screw the first time or use a M3 tap to cut the threads.