I have done some other mods to my S3 so as long as I’m waiting to hear from support I’ll write them up now.
While I don’t think mounting the control board to the back of the X rail is a bad idea, I’m not a huge fan. It makes running the USB and power cables a little problematic and I think the control board could stand to be more shielded from dust and metal shavings.
So I moved it.
This of course means that I need to extend and manage the motor and limit switch wires. I still had some energy chain left and some of the 5 conductor shielded wire I used on my S1 so I went to town. The energy chain I had wasn’t quite large enough for all five cables that would run on the Y axis, but I could use it for the X carrier so I ordered some larger chain for the Y and started planning out the mounting.
The mounting on the X axis is quite simple – I attached the energy chain to the X stepper motor with high-strength double-sided tape and added a cable tie around the motor for extra hold. The other end of the chain is just screwed to the rail using a hole I drilled and tapped.
For the energy chain on the Y axis the V-Wheels, belt bearings and limit switches got in the way, so I 3D printed a couple of mounting shelves and hung the chain off the edge of the rail a bit. The shelves have holes to bolt the chain to and slots for tying the cables down and are attached to the carriage plate using the top motor mount bolts and to the rail using two drilled and tapped holes. (The limit switches are unbolted in the photo so I could more easily square up the machine.)
Each motor gets a cable and all the limit switches use one cable. I also left the ends of the cables about three feet long so I can expand the Y rails and just add more energy cable.
The other mod that I have done was to change to 9mm wide belts and pulleys. This simply consisted of ordering belting and pulleys and swapping them out. The slots in the belt holders at the ends of the rails are plenty wide for 9mm belting.
