Running an ender 5 and while my board technically works fine, the USB socket popped off and despite my best efforts the joint holders are too damaged to solder a new one.
I mean maybe it’s about time, I had lost the original config file anyways. Does anyone have an idea of what’s “good” these days? Not really looking to spend more than $200 if I can help it
Recently I fell in love with RepRap firmware (e.g. Duet3D) due to the simplicity of setting it up and modifying things with macros. RepRap boards include Duet 3 offerings and it’s china clones.
If you want a drop-in replacement the BigTreeTech SKR mini E3 is a great option.
Want to upgrade to klipper? BigTreeTech Manta E3EZ. In addition to the controller/mainboard, a CB1 or any other Raspberry Pi CM4-compatible module is required.
There is also the Makerbase/MKS Skipr but I don’t have first-hand experience with this board. Upside it’s cheaper as it has the Rockchip RK3228 for klipper on board.
You can simply do a USB breakout board and mount anywhere. It is just 4 wires and far less work than wiring a new board. It’s cool if you just want the project. Printed circuit boards are way easier than complex wiring, but for the most part they offer very little advantage over point to point wiring.
If you can hold a hot pencil without touching the tip and glue stuff together with low temp metal just by touching things together, you can solder. Break apart any old switching power supply, break the tiny transformer and unwind it for the thin enameled copper wire. Scrape the enamel off with a razor blade carefully until the whole tip wets with solder. This can attach to any remaining thin traces on the PCB. Scrape the solder mask off the traces until you have bare copper and solder the wires. It is super simple. You can print an extra mount attachment for the breakout board to hold it securely inside, outside, or in a new location entirely.
I do this for all of my routers on my network. I add a USB to serial converter and breakout the UART serial connection so that it is easy for me to flash or monitor the logs from the bootloader through to initialization of the OS. It is not hard to do this.
