Natively, some Wanhao printers (and their clones) have power control or power detection capabilities:
- Wanhao i3 Plus (Mark I): none
- Aldi Balco 3D Printer UK: power control (power off). It means that the printer will power-off itself when idle or when receiving a M81 command.
- Wanhao Duplicator i3 Plus Mark II: power loss detection and recovery. It means that when their is a main power outage and print is ongoing, the firmware saves the current printing state and will recover the print when the main power is back. This works only when printing from a SD card.
ADVi3++ supports those capabilities when available. In addition, you can add those capabilities to printers that do not have them using a cheap module: Bigtreetech Relay 1.2.
For printer that have already some power control capabilities (i.e. Aldi Balco 3D Printer UK and Wanhao Duplicator i3 Plus Mark II), you have three possibilities:
- Use the existing hardware module as it is and enable the corresponding capability in ADVi3++.
- Replace the existing harware module by a Bigtreetech Relay 1.2 and enable all the capabilities in ADVi3++.
- Use the existing hardware module and a Bigtreetech Relay 1.2. However, there is not much room in the printer for both and the wiring is more complicated.
¶ Using a Bigtreetech Relay 1.2
WARNING: Most of the schemas you can find on the Internet (including the official english web site of Bigtreetech) are wrong (bad translation from Mandarin Chineese).
DANGER: This module (like the native ones) involves main power. Do not touch the wires to prevent electric shock. Be sure to always remove the power cable of the printer when disassembling it.
¶ Purshase and Cost
You can purshase a Bigtreetech Relay 1.2 from the official Bigtreetech web store or from various Internet shops such as AliExpress. Bigtreetech has also an official store on AliExpress and the module is in general cheaper their. The cost is around USD 10 including shipping (it will vary depending of your location).
¶ Description
The ports of the Bigtreetech Relay 1.2 are the following:
- The right connectors (J1, protected by a plastic piece) are for the main power input and output.
- The left connector J2 is used to shutdown the printer.
- The left connector J5 is used to send a signal to the firmware when a main power outage is detected.
- There is also a connector (J7) to detect short-circuit. It may have conceptual issues so I recommand to avoid using it.
- The bottom connector J6 is to optionally install a reset switch.
- The bottom connector J4 is used to reprogram the micro-controller of the module.
¶ Enclosure
It is crutial to isolate the module from any metal and, in particular, the metal of the printer. There are different enclosures available from this module and I choose one from Egv33 on Thingiverse.
Instead of drilling the back of the printer, I attached the module and its enclosure using 3M Dual Lock.
¶ Wiring
¶ Printer Power Socket
DANGER: This wiring involves main power. Do not touch the wires to prevent electric shock. Be sure to always remove the power cable of the printer when disassembling it.
The Relay module is wired between the printer main power socket and the power supply:
