Anyone have any idea why Zortrax replacement parts costs have gone so high? I purchased a replacement extruder ribbon cable a couple of months ago for $35.00 and just called to order another, due to this one has now failed, and the price has more than doubled! They're charging $79.00 each! What happened? They trying to copy the epipen company??? I called my sales rep and he said spare parts have gone up across the board. I googled some of the parts and it appears he's correct. Wow... I can understand a price increase due to material costs and market etc but double+? What out our failed cables? Anyone doing refurbs on these? Need to find a way to manage costs for parts that fail more frequently.
diY! Buy a good quality ribbon cable (3M for ex.) and jacks. That way you could produce one for 5 bucks.
Mine is running for months now. Be careful not to twist the jacks, but you can measure the pins and compare.
Excellent idea! I'd love to be able to do that. I make other cables without issue but have never tried a ribbon cable. Could you be so kind as post links to the parts needed? It's not like I don't have spares to disassemble to practice with and investigate the pin-outs. LOL Thanks for the idea Countdigit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1yZKT3Yock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1yZKT3Yock
I think you should sell these cables, Julia.
Excellent! Thanks Julia!
This are the wrong parts!
Julia of course knows this, the video just shows how to do it without expensive tools (I do it the same way).
I will post about parts and some serious caveats later.
I think you should sell these cables, Julia.
For me to make any money making and selling these cables, the price would end up the same as Zortrax's :)
For the cable you need 2 AWP 20 sockets. This ones have 2 rows of 10 pins with a pin distance of 2.54mm and a nose in the middle of one side of the socket.
They are well known and can be easily sourced everywhere. Better buy a 10-pack of them.
For the cable I used 3M 80610377329 cable, any good quality 20 wire, 1.25mm pin distance ribbon cable of good quality will do (the 3M has 0.08 square wire diameter).
Zortrax has changed cabling and socket locations over the hardware revisions, means if you use / create the wrong cable you could damage your printer because of twisted pins.
Best if you measure your old cable from the pins of the sockets at the controller (printer powered off) to the pins of the socket on the other end of the cable (the 2x2 left/right outer pins are enough) and write that down together with the position of the nose at the socket. By measuring your new cable the same way you can avoid to create a wrong cable that would damage your printer.
If I recall it right the cable was about 140cm length, actually I divided it into two. The cable brakes or gets loose at the socket between the last mounting point on the printers back and the socket that is plugged into the extruder. That means, just about 50 cm is moved around while printing and not all of the 140cm. I inserted another socket at that point and would have only to replace that smaller cable without even opening the printer. Actually it never again broke since I did that. :-)
Julias video shows how to do it (the video shows a 14 wire cable and according sockets).
Just broke out the multimeter and checked the pinouts etc. That really helps! Thanks!
Sub’d