Hi, I just got a Taz 6 that has a bad motherboard so I bought the bigtreetech skr mini e3 and heard I’d have to repin the wires and I’ve never worked with printers before so I’m not sure how to do that. Anyone able to help with informing me what to do? Ty
You can extend with simple DuPont style to JST-XH extensions. You can get a crimper/harness and wire kit, or splice your own together if you’re handy with soldering.
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@Pingus I agree with what @Wrathernaut said --but there is a saying “time is money”. To buy all of the crimping tools and the wire and to learn and understand about making the connections to the right places, etc… Have you though about just buying a new board?
Even on Amazon or AliExpress you are probably going to spend (at least) $150 on crimpers and connectors and tools, etc. Why not just buy the correct replacement board, make it easy, and be printing in a few days?
I went through this with a bunch of taz5 machines. We have 8x printing and running. In my case I don’t have a choice: We print parts for people that have strict requirements so we couldn’t put BTT boards in the printers. But we looked into it. Your choice is to nuke and gut your taz6, and completely re-wire it, or there is enough room inside the control board enclosure (or outside) that you could make adapters and plug Chinese stuff into Lulzbot stuff… And you can 3d print an adapter plate that will allow you to screw a BTT board to the (roughly same place) inside of the taz6 case…
But that’s going to be a pain in the rear-end. Why not just buy a new control board, hook up the same wires to the same connectors and be done with it?
EDIT:
I’ve only used BTT Octo, Pico and SKR3-ez boards. I have no clue about the mini-e3 boards but the SKR3-ez boards are awesome, you can push them a lot and they don’t let the smoke out. I wouldn’t do it. My wife and I bought a lot/bunch of TAZ 5 printers from a school and we planned on putting BTT boards in them. It wasn’t worth it. From someone who has been there --just spend the money on the replacement board. It’ll save you SO MANY headaches.
When I added bed leveling to my Taz6 and tried to do 10x10 probing grid, I was running into memory limits with the RAMBo, plus having replaceable stepper drivers is a huge plus. It was definitely worth it to me, and if I had a half dozen identical machines so all the time building custom firmware would be amortized across them, I’d consider it even more worth the effort.
I understand if there’s a requirement for US-made everything in the machine as a reason though.
The US-made thing is easy: I have a bunch of USA made clicky things (endstops). I can design the parts, etc. Just looking for a cheat-sheet or was hoping that someone else had done it so I don’t have to be the first guy.
Memory issues: My wife and I have recently picked up a few Mini 2 printers to swap those boards over to the taz5 printers. As far as we have gotten, we haven’t had any issues with taz 5 with mini 2 boards, and mini 2 stock. Just trying to figure out clicky probes on them and not use BTT parts or non-usa parts.
Honestly, there is enough movement in the toolheads you could probably mount a microswitch to the plate that is directly attached to the rails and gets tripped when the toolhead contacts the bed and tilts back.