Electronics morning – LCD working for the Sumpod 3D printer/router

Well after a telephone conversation with Richard yesterday I made copious notes regarding the wiring and this morning armed with the additional information I set forth! If you have been following my build you will have seen I had difficulties with the LCD that I put down to my failures as a solderer, when in fact it was the wiring that was not suitable for solder, being meant to be crimped. So its ironic that after two further attempts this morning to solder the crimps on, in the end I crimped them!

Was my soldering at fault? Well yes and no, since the first time I used too much solder to allow the crimps to slide into their plastic covers. So since I have ordered more Hobbystore, I thought I would redo them and try to be much neater. In fact I was pleased with the second attempt and they slid easily into place. It was only then that I found my problem. The solder had run into the main body which needs to fit over the corresponding pins. Some would go, but many had solder blocking them.

I looked at the crimps under a magnifying glass and saw that they had two areas where they would 'crimp' over the wire so I tried it (after tinning the wires) and the first one held firm so I cut off the remaining soldered ends and crimped on the wires.  So In fact I could have used Richards original cable and just crimped them on. Tunnel vision regarding the need to solder! My wiring colours will not follow most others because I got my cable from somewhere else but by following the assembly instructions on the SUMPOD site it went with little trouble (other than my checking, rechecking, rechecking again before finally.........rechecking)

Still, electronics is not my area really but I am keen to learn and this project is certainly doing that. Now the plugs fitted I crossed my fingers and plugged the Arduino USB cable into the computer and up came SUMPOD 0 deg! with a lovely blue light! (see the website heading). I was keen to move on to the next stage and get a stepper motor to work, but of course I have run out of crimps and the postman has yet to arrive I thought though that I could still work on a couple of task Richard told me to do. One, adjust the potentiometers on each of the small stepper motor and secondly, remove the third jumper located under each of the stepper motor boards.

Richard emphasised the need to be gentle and careful with the small potentiometers and firstly turn them to the left until they stop (very carefully!) then turn them to the right a 1/4 of a turn. Perhaps because of the warning ringing in my ears the task was completed without drama. I then removed the stepper motor driver boards one at a time and removing the third blue jumper. I did find one that left its metal insert behind and I could imagine that if I didn't see it in place still it could have led to a 'problem' I would have found difficult to trace.

When I removed the 4th driver I thought that I had broken the board because one sides pins stayed in place! So it looks like I will have to solder them. With these two task done and the postman still not in sight I decided to wire up the power feed in and main sitch for the printer. Again Richard helped when I asked which of the power pins was + so it was I put  one brown(live) wire to the tag that linked to the centre pin (checked using a multimeter) and the neutral (blue) to another. The live then was inserted into the brown wire after checking its length roughly against the drying main frame.

This should now allow me to run the motors when I get a couple of electronic components on order, but not today. Overall it was a successful session even if I didn't get as far as I wanted but anyone who knew what they were doing would have completed it in a fraction of the time. I won't forget the crimping v soldering issue though! Could have had the LCD running days ago!

No related posts.