Breakout PCB - Ultimaker 2 PG35L Direct Drive Extruder for 1.75mm E3D v6 Hotend

thingiverse

After quite some time of using Jasonatepaint's extruder design from Thingiverse (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1102900), I felt compelled to add on to it in order to tidy up the wiring. The zip tie that I had wrapped around the extruder motor to keep the wires bundled kept slipping back and pushing the heatsink off the motor. Seeing Jasonatepaint's design was a major inspiration for me, as it made me want to consolidate all of the print head wires into a single ribbon cable with a quick disconnect. This also allows for easy swapping of the print head so that you can keep your high temperature and low temperature materials in their own dedicated hotends. I carefully planned out exactly how many wires I would need and began sourcing parts on Digikey (http://www.digikey.com/short/j1cm8j). I downloaded Jasonatepaint's source models from his design and used the Push-to-Fusion360 feature in Eagle to fit-check my design before ordering the boards on OshPark. The design is a 4-layer board, which means it will be a bit more expensive. I chose to use four layers instead of two so that I could utilize the inner two layers completely for the heater connection and reserve the outer two layers for the fan, motor, and PT100 traces. I used an Anderson Powerpole as the connector for my heater cartridge, but in hindsight, it may have been too large for the design. Feel free to make any changes you want, but keep the current consumption in mind when choosing a connector. For the temperature sensor, I am using a PT100 sensor from E3D so that is why I chose to use that particular connector on the PCB. For the motor and fan connections, I simply soldered the wires directly to the board (from the back, in order to hide the wires). Please pay close attention when soldering the blower motors to the board and wire them in series. It had been too long since I first put this extruder together and I had forgotten this requirement. I quickly burned out the blowers and blew up the transistor on my control board and had to replace it (the transistor, not the control board). A modified version of this PCB could separate the two blower connections and connect them in series internally. I used some #2 screws to secure the PCB to the print head with some aluminum standoffs that I purchased from McMaster-Carr. The sizing of the standoffs isn't really critical. This was just to give a little bit of clearance for the wires behind the PCB. I did have to drill some pilot holes, but perhaps a rework of the extruder design could include these holes. When assembling the cable, I used the convention that the red wire (wire #1) was Heater+ and wire #2 was Heater-. I believe I followed the +/- convention all the way through. For the motor wires, I just kept the same order as the original design. It is merely a pass-through.