Making Connections

Amongst the many helpful ideas I've received from my hackerspace colleagues, was the suggestion that I use polarised connectors on my printer's wiring rather than just soldering everything together. The idea is to give me more options for the configuration of the wires.  I can either keep them long and thread them through the gaps in the Makerslide rails so they're mostly invisible, or (more likely) I can easily crop and re-connect the wires at a later time so they fit neatly around the back of the frame.

I couldn't find any step-by-step instructions online for fitting the connectors, so instead I asked for an in-person tutorial. This was probably a better option for me anyway because one of the ways I learn is by asking questions. Annoying, maybe, but super-effective. I rarely end up asking the same questions twice.

Thanks to my patient instructor, I can now present the official Robot Lady Beginners Guide to Polarised Connectors. You will need these components:

• The wires in question
• Male connector, a.k.a. header
• Female connector, a.k.a. housing
• Crimp pins
• Heat shrink
• Solder

And these tools:

• Soldering iron
• Pliers and/or crimping tool
• Heat gun
• Helping hand

Step 1:  Cut small pieces of heat shrink and slide one onto each of the wires coming out of the machine. Then spread a tiny amount of solder on each of the header pins (the bent ends), and the exposed end each of the wires. This is called tinning, and will help with the next bit.

Step 2:  Use the helping hand to clamp your header in place. Hold the soldering iron against each pin to melt the solder and secure each wire to a pin:

Yay, I did that!

Try not to burn the crap out of your header casing like I did though:

In my defence, the last time I did any soldering
was about a year ago, and I was a beginner.

Step 3:  Push the heat shrink up until it covers the exposed wires and pins, and use the heat gun to make it shrink into place:

If anyone gives you crap about how girlie girls and electronics
don't mix, remind them that their manly "heat gun" is really just
a glorified hairdryer.

And there you have it - a finished header piece.

Woohoo!

Step 4:  Now for the housing, which fits onto the wires not yet connected to the machine. Put a piece of heat shrink around each wire, then place each wire in turn into a crimp pin like so:

So tiny...

Using needle nosed pliers or a crimping tool, very carefully fold down the tabs one at the time so they secure the wire in place. You can apply a tiny bit of solder to secure the wire further if you like.

Step 5:  Cut the crimp pins apart and remove the excess tabs of metal at the bottom. Slide each pin one at the time into the housing until it clicks into place. Be careful to put them in the right order so that when you connect the header, the same coloured wires all line up. Then push up the heatshrink until the ends jam into the holes in the housing, and shrink them into place.  Housing done!

Et voila.

You can now connect the two sides of your connector!

So now the Y-axis and one of the Z-axis stepper motors are connected to my RAMPS board, which I had previously mounted onto the printer.  The wires are unfeasibly long at the moment:

Good thing I came up with an innovative storage solution...

But that's a good thing while I get everything working. Later on I can just crop the wires coming out of the RAMPS board and fit new housings.