BL Touch question

[Ender5r]

If I wanted to order a genuine BL Touch from Aliexpress, what do I need for my Ender 5 besides the sensor itself. I do realize I will need a long cable to connect the sensor to the control board, and a bracket to connect it to the hotend plus, of course, some bolts to fasten it all.

I found a bracket on thingiverse.com that looks really good.

So, I'm looking for advice on which BL Touch to get, which long cable to buy, and if there is anything else I will need. BTW, I did look for an official Creality Ender 5 kit on Aliexpress, but couldn't find one. I found Ender 3 kits, but I'm not sure if it would fit (although I suspect it would). So that's another question: are the Ender 3 & 5 hotends essentially the same?

[Larry]

This is the one i bought. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 of course i have the Ender 3 V2 but i also needed a long cable and used a bracket off of thingiverse to mount it. I cut off the dupont female connectors off the cable and crimped my own 5 pins and put them into a 5 pin JST female connector which is what the Ender 3 V2's BL touch connector is. This made for a lot more reliable connection to the main board. The 2 meter extension cable comes pre-terminated with the BL touch connector already made.

[Ender5r]

I bought a JST connector kit, but I think I got the wrong one: I think the pins are too large. Anyway, it turned out that crimping these connectors was a lot harder than I expected, and I'm used to doing these sorts of things.

UPDATE: Actually, what I meant to say is the housings are too big for my stepper motors or control board.

[Larry]

yea it took me a while to get the hang of it found you have to put the female connector back and middle in the tool but not the front part of the connector. That was my first time to do it and i think i missed up about 15 connectors before i got the hang of it. This is the kit i bought https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 doesn't come with any instructions. Watched a few videos but seems there is a lot of different types of tools and they work somewhat differently from each other.

[Geit]

Yeah, I bought a similar set, it even came with a nice pouch for storage.

[Ender5r]

Have you checked to see if the 6-pin connectors fit you NEMA-17 stepper connectors? I ask because the link you posted is for an XH connector kit.

[Geit]

Yeah, you need to train a little to get used to the clamping and the tiny connectors.

When I got to build my GeitPrinter I had the same issue. The connectors on the board where different than the ones I used on the ramps board. I had the choice to recrimp the total perfect cables or do this:







These little adaptors are life savers.

[Ender5r]

Do they adapt from larger JST to smaller?

[Geit]

Yeah, people tend to stick the separated pins into their printer boards and use hot glue to fixate them as the diameter is bigger.

You can see the sticking out pins a little bend outwards a little as the raster of them is a little bigger than the one of the white connector, too.

This way I was able to keep the old black connectors on my cables and the connection is tight and secure.

[Ender5r]

Ah, so it's a Dupont-to-JST adapter.... nice.

[Geit]

A little tricky to build, but it will not get loose.

[Ender5r]

So you made these yourself?

[Geit]

Yeah, I placed the rectangular pins into the crimp area and used pliers to close them. Then soldered them with a very little amount of lead together and pushed the entire construct into the white connector using some force. The bulky soldering acts as the clamp on the inside, so you can push the white connector into the board, without having the thing apart.

Took a while and several connectors to find all the trickery to get it fit properly and insert the stuff into the connector without breaking it, but in the end it worked fine.

The main trick is so keep the pins on the feeder strip and mount/solder the three or four connector pins on. I also used ordinary jumpers on the other side to avoid the pins moving and have something to rest the tool to squeeze them in. That way several jumpers died a horrible death, but the pins stayed straight.

[Ender5r]

This is such an obvious need I'm amazed no company is making such adapters "properly", if you know what I mean.

[Ender5r]

Can anyone tell me which JST connectors are used on Creality printers: XH, PH, ZH, GH, or SH? If I'm going to order more connectors, I want to get ones that will fit the stepper motors and control board.

UPDATE: as best I can judge, I got JST XH connectors when I should have gotten JST PH. In my defence, the vast majority of kits on Amazon seem to be XH connectors, and many of the PH kits I did find don't have 6 pin connectors. So, at some point in the near future I will have to shell out for some PH.

[Larry]

The Ender 3 V2 uses a 5 pin JST-XH. That's what i got and was exactly what i needed. Don't know if the Ender 5 is a different format. Maybe so as you are saying it's a 6 pin connector. That's interesting as the BL Touch is a 5 pin device

[Ender5r]

Are the stepper motors 5-pin too?