reprapdiscount LCD display

I saw somewhere someone used twisted wires instead of the flat ribbon cables. I think some company sold those cables for >$20 each. It may be cheaper to do it yourself.

 

The standard length is 18" but you can order your custom length. 3 feet is $20.63. It's quite expensive to get two cables.

http://www.usdigital.com/products/cables-connectors/cables/10-pin/ca-c10-tf-c10

 

Nice Paul! I wouldn't go more than 2' however

 

For the flat ribbon cable, going more than 2 feet will degrade the signal.

I think the guy who extended more than 2 feet used twisted wires or shielded wires like that. Even if those twisted cables can work beyond 3 feet, it's way too expensive for our purpose.

Best alternative is buy some cheap shielded cables and 10 pin IDC connectors and make it yourself. It may not look nice but it will get the job done.

 

I need AT least 3 feet of cable ha ha

 

You certainly run the risk of things not working at that length. Better solution would be to move the ramps board itself. Maybe print an enclosure for it.

 

Now that is something i don't wanna do, id have to extend all the wires

 

Well the decision is yours then. Buy or make a 3' cable and hope it works. Or move the ramps board and know your LCD will work.

 

here is my enclosure and I need it in this orientation so i can get at the ext-ruder bolts it would be nice to have a controller on top of the enclosure but ... its starting to sound unrealistic

 

I agree with Mike. Those cables are not tested so it may not work well for your application.

 

Honestly if your ramps board is also enclosed it runs the risk of overheating. You really need to get cool air on it, especially for very long prints.

I would strongly advise you consider an external ramps.

 

I was thinking of getting some IDC connectors from Fry's and using some old ethernet cables I have. Ethernet cable has 4 twisted pairs so need additional pair to make it 10 wires. This may be a cheaper route and if it does not work well, at least it's not that expensive.

 

dont worry mike ive got myself a big 10 cm fan pointed right at it drawing air from out side the encloser mounted on the bottom.

 

Paul,
That twisted pair cable shown will not help and could make things worse. For cables this long the two main signal integrity problems are inductance and cross talk. The main intention of a twisted pair cable is to reduce each signal's loop inductance and to cancel EMI. This means that each signal needs to be twisted with a ground wire not another signal wire. Unfortunately the Reprap LCD connectors are not designed for that at all. In fact I think there is only one ground signal for the two connectors which is kind of strange. If you use those cables they will twist together pairs of adjacent signals which will have either no effect or make coupling between the signals worse. Also there is no proper termination of the drivers at all. It works at the current length because the data rates are so slow. If you want to extend the signals you should concentrate on SD card. You could probably redo the connector with some work to fix these problems. It's no big deal if the LCD connector gets glitched now and then but you don't want to mess with the gcode being transferred, right?

Then again you can just try extending it with a regular ribbon cable and see if it works. I avoided doing this because I was worried about glitching the gcode somewhere in the middle of an 8 hour print. I just velcroed the XXL LCD to the side and was careful about routing the existing cable length like this below. Also attached is the only schematic I could find.

 

Shielding will not solve the main problem which is how crappy the signal will look like when it gets to the other side. This is why minimized loop inductance and proper termination is needed.

 

Thanks SteveC for explaining that way better than I could. I knew it was something along those lines, but not to that level of detail.

 

That sounds fishy was it just poorly designed, it just makes me think of all the network cables tightly bound like so




whats the difference between this and what we have with the xxl .

 

Steve, thanks for the valuable feedback.

 

I'm wondering what actual cables did the guy whom used longer than 2 feet cables for his LCD display? It seemed to solve the signal integrity issue and worked on his LCD.

Anyone finds that thread, please provide a link here. Thanks!

 

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I Just ordered my xxl on faith that we'd be able to figure it out hahaha