You might need more than one transmitter arranged around the perimeter of the bed, so that you are free to put a receiver wherever on the head assembly you prefer without risk of the receiver being pointed away from the transmitter or blocked by part of the system but that would all be static wiring out of the way of moving parts so it would be at much lower risk of strain/repeated flex/etc. Given that (most normal) 3D printers have a strictly defined build area I would be curious if going with good, old-fashioned, IR would be viable: Posted in 3d Printer hacks Tagged 3d printing, BL touch, can-bus Post navigation

If you want to dig into the detail, the project GitHub has the schematics and code ready to go. When you think about it, this is a rather obvious thing to do, and we’re not sure why we’ve not see it much before. has used CAN Bus due its availability with modern microcontrollers and also its designed-in robustness, thanks to its automotive and industrial heritage. Yes, you need another PCB assembly, so it adds cost, but it does also simply the electronics at the control end, so some savings can be made. Now if you push the electronics needed to drive and control the extruder, directly onto the moving body itself, and hook-up to the main printer electronics with CAN Bus, you can do the whole moving interconnect thing with a measly four wires. If the hot end thermistor connection goes open circuit, usually no damage occurs but the temperature control goes out the window and your print will fail. Worse, they’re all moving around with the axis, and if failures occur at either end due to poor strain relief, or the conductors themselves break, then all manner of interesting failures can occur. You’ve got connections for powering the heater, fan power, four wires for the extruder motor, thermistor sensor wires. There are a lot of wires going to the extruder assembly, and with most designs this thing is flying around at quite some speed. Had an interesting idea when looking at all the wiring of a typical 3D printer Use CAN Bus.

Simplify 3d port config