Raspberry Pi mount for Ender 5 electronics enclosure

Last crawled date: 4 years, 3 months ago

ENDER 5 electronics mounting plate for Raspberry Pi
This mounting plate is designed to be placed inside the electronics case of an Creality Ender 5.
It should hook under the power switch on the left side of the case and has holes to be screwed onto the side of the Landy-PSU using M4 Screws.
It's main use is holding a Raspberry Pi with Octoprint.
It can hold a LM2596 Board like this. I extended it with multiple terminal blocks and 2.54mm pins for easier cable management.
The LM2596 is set to output 5.1V with an input of 24V. This can power the Raspberry Pi by connecting to the 5V and GND pins on the Pi.
It can also hold a SRD-05VDC-SL-C Relay board to be used with Octoprint PSU Control. You can deliver 5V to it directly from the LM2596 and control it with any BCM-Pin from the Raspberry Pi. I used BCM-17.
I had this laying around and don't remember where I got the board from. The mounting holes are 21mm and 28mm away from each other. You can easily tweak the distances in the FreeCAD File I included.
Everything can be screwed in using M3 Screws, besides the PSU mount, which needs M4.
The screws will cut their own threads into the plastic. I tested this using 8mm M3 Screws which hold everything perfectly.
There are loops for cable ties to allow a clean cable management. If you don't like them, don't use them.
Known Problems:
This is my first 3D modelling project. Criticism and help welcome.
Initially I modelled the PSU-connecting M4-holes 1 mm to close to each other. I fixed this in the model, but haven't printed and tested the new version yet. I simply used some double sided tape to stick the mounting plate into the electronics container. This is why you don't see the M4 screws in my photos.
If you print and try this, I would really appreciate some pictures and feedback if everything fits.
I realised the Raspberry Pi doesn't use M3 but something like M2.5 Screws. Because I had planned to use M3 screws and wanted to use the same screws for all parts, I simply forced them into the Raspberry Pi PCB. The screws easily cut their thread in the PCB and after a few extra rotations everything fitted easily. You could also use a 3mm drill bit to widen the hole carefully. Feel free to remix my FreeCAD file to hold M2.5 Screws instead.
My Raspberry Pi has no cooling at all and there are no holes in the case to allow airflow over the Pi. I'm thinking about mounting the Pi further to the left so that the CPU is over the holes further to the left. But this would mess up my cable management. I'm also thinking about drilling some extra holes and mounting a fan to the lid like the fan further right, that is cooling the Printer control board.
For now, I didn't have a problem with thermals yet, but I will add at least a heatsink soon.
My rather old Raspberry Pi 3B had a broken Wifi chip since I bought it. I added a USB extension cord to it and mounted a cheap RT2571 stick at the outside of the printer.
I assume that the build-in Wifi of the Pi will significantly decrease when it is isolated by the metal box. I recommend feeding an extension cord to the outside and sticking something cheap like MT7601, RT3572, RT3070 or AR9271 to the frame of your printer. All of them should work out of the box.
Of cause you can always wire a LAN-Cable through the cable hole and connect your Raspberry Pi through that.
I wanted to connect the Raspberry Pi to the printer board using just 3 wires and get a serial connection through that so that I don't have to the USB port on the outside. It didn't work for me. Maybe I need some other Marlin configuration or the SPI port on the Creality 1.1.5 Port just isn't made for that. Maybe I will upgrade to a SKR E3, SKR v1.4 or something else.
If you know something I could do, please let me know.
For now, I simply wired a mini-USB-Cable out through the LCD connector hole and connected it externally to the Printer board.