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The Anatomy of a 3D Printer: Controller Boards

The brain within your 3D printer has to do and keep track of a lot of things. Read on
to see what it takes to control and run our favorite little machines.

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Posted on October 8, 2018 by Alec Richter

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While some parts of 3D printers are pretty standardized, like motors, belt sizes, or even the motion
system, there is a huge variety in what actually does all the work: the controller board.

Some printers have really big boards with room to expand for more features in the future, while
others have just enough to fulfill all the functions that the printer was designed for. Some have
integrated stepper drivers while others have separate stepper drivers - the parts that dictate to the
stepper motors how to move, and to learn about those, we’ll have a link to that. Let’s take a look at
what makes a controller board work, what you might find on it, and what features are fairly standard.

What does it do?

Sometimes called the motherboard, the controller board takes the inputs (G-code) and outputs to
the rest of the printer’s mechatronics what to do with it (movements). "M109 S60" means nothing,
but the controller board knows that "M109"
means “heat up and wait for the bed to reach a temperature” and "S60" means “Set to 60 degrees
C.” We’ll get to the specifics of how it translates those inputs another day, because that translation is
done by the “firmware” installed in the controller board.

Processors
No matter what controller board you’re looking at, there will be a chip on it that does all the
computing. Some of them are 8-bit, like the ATmega2560, and others are 32-bit like ARM
processors. If you’re at all familiar with computers or video games, then you might be thinking “these
can’t mean the same thing.” Yes, a huge number of 3D printers are running on processors that have
nearly the same capabilities as the processor in a Nintendo Entertainment System, and in many
cases, just at the threshold of having enough processing power to compute the movements
f 3D i t
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necessary for a 3D printer.

Delta 3D printers need to do a lot of calculations to figure out how to move their three motors at the
same time, and that can choke up the processor. Think about it this way: the board needs to both
calculate how to move and dictate to the motors to move in a specific direction and acceleration,
which is a lot of information to compute. When it’s stuck calculating things, the rest of the system
doesn’t know what to do until it’s finished computing the next line, creating a stutter at best or a
pause at worst in your print. 32-bit boards solve these sort of problems twofold: by having more
power to do these calculations and having the room to look further ahead with movements to, for the
most part, stay ahead of the curve not have those stutters.

Features

Connectors
In terms of features, every board will have either screw terminals, where you tighten down a screw
over a wire connect it to the board, or dupont connectors, which are pins that have a standardized
spacing between them, which can either be found as pins sticking out of the board, pins sticking out
of the board with a notched socket so things can only be plugged in one way (polarized), or sockets
for the pins of something else to plug into. There’s pros and cons to either setup, like screw
terminals would allow you to reorder the wires of a stepper motor if it’s not moving correctly, but you
have to make sure you have just that the screw is tightened down over it and it’ll stay really secure.

Capabilities
Depending on if the board you are looking at was designed specifically for one machine, like the
boards in hobby level printers like Creality printers or even Ultimakers, or if they are standalone
boards like Azteegs, RAMBos, or RAMPS, that you can find in a couple different brands of printers.
The specific boards will usually have just enough connections for the hardware of the 3D printer, like
if it doesn’t come with a heated bed, then there probably won’t be terminals for you to upgrade to a
heated bed later. The standalone boards can come with 4 thermistor ports to measure temperature,
6 endstops, two hotend ports, 6 stepper plugs, and so on. They’re designed to have as many
features as possible to suit the needs of as many people as they can.

Stepper Drivers
Like I previously discussed with stepper drivers, some controller boards have the stepper drivers
integrated into the board, while others have them as separate boards that plug in. Stepper drivers
integrated with the board have better thermal dissipation because it can use the whole board as a
heatsink, but if for some reason a stepper motor stops moving and the driver is to blame, you either
need to replace the entire controller board, or very carefully perform a little surgery and swap out the
dead stepper driver. If the stepper driver plugs in, just remove the dead driver and plop in a new
one.

Communication
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For communication, the most common connector for boards USB Type A, but I have seen others
that have USB micro or USB mini. Some use Ethernet to join the 3D printer to a home or work
network to be able to print from a different room, and even further some have Wifi capabilities (with
password protection so not just anyone can access it). There's nothing inherently better with one
over another, but one thing to consider is that if you are printer over USB, make sure the computer
connected to it isn't busy doing other tasks. Watching videos, screen capturing, 3D modeling, AND
3D printing, all at the same time can cause a stutter in the print because your computer just has too
many tasks running at once.

If you're printing over Wifi or Ethernet you will want to see if your printer can upload all of the gcode
onto the board rather than streaming it to the printer. Because just like with Netflix, if you're trying to
use Wifi at peak hours, you're going to need to buffer. That's why printers like the Ultimaker 3,
Ultimaker S5, or Makergear M3 all have the complete Gcode uploaded to prevent that from
happening.

That about covers the hardware of controller boards for 3D printers, but keep your eyes peeled for
an article in the future about what goes on behind the scenes: the firmware. This is what actually
does the translating, calculating, and dictating. So that’s it! There’s a lot of different controller boards
out there, so I’d love to hear in the comments down below which one is your favorite, because mine
has definitely become the Duet Wifi. The features it has, the interface over Wifi, how smooth and
quiet a printer will run all elevate it in my rankings.

Happy printing!

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