MakerGear Forum

so my printer must be getting to the age in it's life when stuff starts to wear out. It's a shame because if I had printed the wire support from Thingiverse this might not have happened. One of the red power wires broke near the HBP and it seems wasteful to replace the whole thing but that's all that is available on the Makergear site. Does anyone refurbish these? I'd like to get this one repaired or send it to a good home if possible.

Thanks,
Shawn

spmahoney78 wrote:Does anyone refurbish these?

Although I've built / rebuilt the platform cables on my (2013 = vintage) M2, the cost of parts + labor + round-trip shipping would add up to about what you'd pay for a whole new platform.

If you're up for a learning experience, get a few feet of red + black fine-strand 14 AWG silicone wire, harvest the connectors from the old cable, fire up your soldering iron, and see what happens.

Good wire runs a bit over a buck a foot from Amazon, at least from reputable sellers. You want fine-strand copper with silicone insulation for increased flexibility. Whether the actual wire will have fine strands is, of course, unknowable, even with Prime shipping weeding out many of the low-end scammers.

ednisley wrote: If you're up for a learning experience, get a few feet of red + black fine-strand 14 AWG silicone wire, harvest the connectors from the old cable, fire up your soldering iron, and see what happens.

Good wire runs a bit over a buck a foot from Amazon, at least from reputable sellers. You want fine-strand copper with silicone insulation for increased flexibility. Whether the actual wire will have fine strands is, of course, unknowable, even with Prime shipping weeding out many of the low-end scammers.

I'm always trying to learn I already got my soldering Iron out and couldn't get the copper wire to accept the solder. it's possible it's just not clean enough since it's old and probably got corrosion, or maybe my iron wasn't hot enough. I'm going to try again and I've been looking for tips on soldering with copper wire to see if I need a different solder.

Thanks for your response and the encouragement that I'm on the right path.

Shawn

spmahoney78 wrote:maybe my iron wasn't hot enough

Soldering heavy wire requires a high-power iron (or a "soldering gun"), good rosin flux (not acid plumbing flux!), and the conviction you're doing it right. A piddly iron suited for electronic components can't dump enough heat into the wire to raise the temperature fast enough, so you'll cook the insulation and get a cold-solder joint.

Cut off an inch or so on each side of the break to get rid of fretted wire & crumbled insulation. The other wire will be nearly wrecked at that spot, too, so shorten them both. You must see clean shiny copper and no crumbles before you start soldering.

However, rather than solder the old wires, I'd use butt-splice connectors (*) sized for the conductors:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss ... nector+kit

Again, trim back to good copper, then anchor the connectors to the Y-axis stage so the wires don't flex around them.

I soldered half an inch of 12 AWG wire onto a hotrod platform for my M2, with crimped Anderson Powerpoles on the cable:
https://softsolder.com/2013/09/05/impro ... rst-light/



That was a "first light" lashup to make sure the platform worked, which it did. Three years later, it's still going strong.

(*) Yeah, that's what they're called. Depending on your "search safety" settings, you may get some NSFW items in the results…