Placement of Arduino/Ramps in a corexy printer

I am building a corexy printer that contains 2020 aluminium extrusion frame. Now that all the mechanical stuff is finished I have to start wiring electronics. It seems that almost everyone puts Arduino/Ramps board and a LCD at the bottom of the printer under the printbed. I was trying to fallow this approach but it is giving me an headache as the wires are on the short side and it seems that doing a maintenace would be frustrating.

Why not put boards on the top of the printer? Most of the electronics are up there (except for Z motors) so it makes sense for me do it this way.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/08/2015 11:54AM by Edvardas.

There is no correct place to put your ramps, simply put where you think is correct. You any have to worry about protecting the board from human touch or possible object that can fallow over it.

About the wire, most solution consite in solder and increase the length of the wires.

There is no right or wrong way of doing this. I put mine at the bottom just to get it out of the way. The wiring was not an issue for me due to the fact that I ran my motors, fans, hot end and home switches over cat 5 cable. I put a jack near each motor and the ramps board where I wanted it and used a patch cable to connect between the 2. I have also connected my lcd and power switch the same way. When I am 100% complete, I will print the cat5e plug boxes to mount to the 2020 aluminium.

Since warm air rises, it is probably best to put the electronics under the bed. However, as you have discovered, wiring can be a PITA, so if you put the controller in the top of the printer, add an insulating layer of some sort to prevent overheating the electronics.

Most printer designs out there just throw the electronics in as an after thought. They also don't plan for enclosing the printer which allows printing ABS without delamination. CoreXY machines are usually pretty easy to enclose by attaching rectangular panels to the frame, but planning for the electronics to be outside the enclosed space from the beginning makes life easier.

I put the electronics for my printer in a drawer in the base of the machine. It is insulated for the warm build chamber and is easy to access for repair/maintenance. I ultimately decided to leave the control panel inside the drawer so that when the machine is being demoed in public places, curious fingers would have to open the drawer to muck around with control panel. You can see the design by clicking the link in my sig, below.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

I am going to enclose the printer for the sake of smell free printing. But I am not going to use a heated bed so I am a little unsure if heat is really an isue (although motors can get hot and I am planning to use 3 nozzles) especially considering that the volume of the enclosed printer is going to be at around 44cm x 44 cm x 100 cm (thats a lot of volume to warm up without a heatbed).

In that case, you can probably put the electronics anywhere.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Hi guys,

In my core, many things was important to me :
- controler far away from the heat, to don't be overheated by heating components
- controler ventilated, so I did not want to cool heating components
- wire management (hidden cables as possible)
- and less possible cable lenghts
- easy access for check-up or maintenance

So I installed the board and the PSU on a side (left) near the back. Controler above the PSU
The bowden feeder and filament spool on the same side, near the front.
The Filament spool below so I can access easily to the feeder.
Wires to the printhead and filament are grouped at the same point, then comes to the head together from the left side.
The three motors are fixed on the left side, so I can use short cables and I can manage them in the same frame.
So do the heatbed wires.

I hope this will help.

++JM

How do you enclose a CoreXY that has a bowden tube sticking out vertically?.. My printer is pretty big (420x420mm) and bowden tube is about 500mm. To avoid sharp angles do I have to build a huge "roof" over this tube?..

Yes.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

"bowden tube is about 500mm"
Big tube.. you do not have retraction problems?

It webs a bit, but apart from that everything else is fine. Oh, I used to have a non-geared extruder some time ago and that thing gave me a lot of headache. Changed it to a geared extruder + hobbed bolt and printing at 100mm no problem.

Quote
Edvardas
I am going to enclose the printer for the sake of smell free printing. But I am not going to use a heated bed so I am a little unsure if heat is really an isue (although motors can get hot and I am planning to use 3 nozzles) especially considering that the volume of the enclosed printer is going to be at around 44cm x 44 cm x 100 cm (thats a lot of volume to warm up without a heatbed).

Maybe take a queue from the linked video. The Electronics could be attached to the extrusion slot at the back, just like the power source is in this video, on the opposite side of the Z rods. If you have a double wall at the back, a couple of fans, all the wires will go up a pretty short distance to the motors/endstops/extruder, even riding along the bowden if you put the filament roll also at the back of the second panel:


COREXY 3D printer platform

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RepRap Lander concept on Concept Forge
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