I spent most of my day installing open-source hardware in my 3D printer. Have I achieved Peak Nerd?
Anyway, here’s some information about connecting the RAMPS board to the ribbon cable that goes to the hotend of a Wanhao i3+ aka Cocoon Create, also known as the printer that Aldi was selling a few weeks ago.I managed to burn out the FET that drives the extruder heater, so I thought I’d use that as an opportunity to dump the Melzi board and install RAMPS.
I started with this page, but I wasn’t sure about all the info there, some of it didn’t make sense.
So I took off the little board on the x-carriage and tested for continuity with the pins in the socket. Here’s the result
So then I went back to the docs about the RAMPS board to work out the connections at that end. Some things can be simplified, such as the connection to the print cooler fan (PWM fan). The negative side is controlled by the PWM speed controller, but the positive side is connected straight to the +VCC, as is the heater element. Also the x-min, thermistor and extruder fan all share the same pin, pin 16, which goes to the logic ground on the RAMPS. I’m not sure if this means you could omit one of the leads from the cable to either SW0 or T0, I didn’t in the end.
Here’s the connection diagram:
