Cheap multi cable connector

Hey guys,

I have designed and built my own delta robot, and I am currently trying to pretty it up. I have a lot of unnecessary components (since this is a thesis project) such as 3 rotary encoders, an arduino along with a smoothieboard, a household light switch to turn it off/on, a lot of extra stuff. Anyway I am building a control box of sorts that holds all of my electronics that will not be attached to the printer. I would like to have a single cable (or very few cables) that connect the electronics box to the printer itself so that I can connect/disconnect with ease and hide all of the ugly wires.

There will have to be quite a few pins, 16 pins for the stepper motors, 15 pins for the encoders, the hot end, the end stops, and an inductive prox sensor on the end effector. Anyway I am wondering if any of you know a good solution for this that isn't going to break the bank. Something that can safely handle the high current requirements. I looked at VGA cable but from the brief search I did the current rating for each pin is very low.

Thanks!

I'd feel safe putting ~4A through a regular D-Sub connector. Gecko does it on their stepper drivers and their products are very reliable: [www.geckodrive.com]

Beyond that, you can get circular connectors on ebay with some pretty ridiculous pin counts and current capacity: [www.ebay.com]

The power variants of d-sub are pretty nifty as well, but are kinda expensive and hard to find: [www.google.com]

Separate the high current lines and encoders/sensors. Could do a DB25 for power (Stepper+hotend) and DB15 for encoders/sensors. You will want to make your own cable with higher gauge wire.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/06/2015 10:56AM by 691175002.

Thanks!

Those d-sub connectors are perfect! I saw those and thought that they were just vga connectors and assumed they had the same current ratings, which were in the milliamps from what I was reading. The military grade multi-pin connectors are also very promising. I looked those up as well but of course the only ones that popped up were 50+ dollars a piece.

I'm looking at doing the same but dont mind 2 seperate plugs one for power, the other for sensors and other little extra's,
in addition I could really do with a 3x6 dupont type so the endstops could be plugged all at once, as these seperate pins seem to work loose and if its the middle pin you might not notice till its too late, one plug would fit better and probably stay in place, could only find 3x2's. Something a little better looking than a 24pin ATX connector is needed.

This is a Beast, cheap enough, bity its not black, no spec
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Klippon-Block-37-Way-D-type-to-Screw-Terminals-/171951864278?hash=item28092139d6

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/06/2015 09:31PM by MechaBits.