19/02/2026 :: Even More Parts

Not super much done today, most of my time and effort is going to the printer design at the moment.

I've been mainly taking stock and measuremnts of the parts I already have to finalise some aspects of my design (which you'll get to see in the next post) and figure out what I need to buy.

While I was doing that though I decided to check that the heatbed and its thermistor actually work. Since my board is quite underpowered right now with just 5A, and heatbeds typically drawing more than that, I just decided to connect it straight to the power supply (it's adjustable and has an off switch, I'm not *that* reckless). It warmed up so I figured it's working as intended.

I needed to solder some wires to the thermistor to be able to connect it to the board, so that's what I did. It read an acceptable ambient temperature, but when I held it between my fingers it read about 45+ C, which is a little high but still in the ballpark so no real issue in my opinion. I did just grab some random wires that I had on hand, so maybe their resistance isn't what the thermistor's tuned for or something? Could be messing with the reading.

I swapped hotends as well, the old one was an unfamiliar design for me, so I didn't know how to mount it. Plus, it wasn't exactly clean. I swapped to a newer one I had on hand which is a design I've worked with before and it's basically brand new.

I'll need to think of a way to mount the fan though, unlike the old design this one doesn't just have the fan attach to the radiator which is unfortunate.

I also found a mounting plate for that very hotend so that will come in very handy, now I don't need to order or make one.

Lastly I wired two of the steppers in parallel for the z axis.

That's it for today, I should be finishing the design soon!