Easier UTM assembly

Hardware
1

When assembling the UTM, we had already read that connecting the 12 wires would b demanding: “You just finished the most tedious and arguably difficult part of building your FarmBot. Take a deep breath, do a stretch, and grab a snack - you deserve it!”.

Difficulties to overcome:

  • reading the small figures (1 thru 11) on the thin wires, yellow/green cable being number 12,
  • crawling on the floor (near to the ground) when you have installed the tubing and cables in the z-axis cable carrier.
  • stiff cables/tube contraption to work with when trying to connect cable ends,
  • connecting screws and (12) cables through the use of the small tie wraps requires at least 3 hands. This ‘solution’ to connect, is not the nicest nor (we think) the most secure…

Having finished the assembly the UTM, we can only recommend others to assemble the UTM prior to the installment of the z-axis cable carrier (step 3). You can do the wiring up sitting at your workbench, with a magnifying glass and other right tools at hand.

After step 6 of the chapter "Wire up the UTM’ and before the Woo hoo ;-), we recommend that you test the 12 connections: does the #1 wire from the one end make a reliable connection with the #1 contact screw (“A”), and so forth… (a multi meter with continuity indication comes in handy).

Have fun.

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Best thing to do is to put larger number tags on the cables once they have been identified. Even better attach solder loops at the UTM wire ends, that gets rid of the annoying cable ties.

Interestingly, WeFarmbots come with UTM wires each of different colour, so no problem identifying which is which - yes, we’ve build both the US Farmbot kit and the WeFarmbot equivalent :slight_smile:

But yes, build as much as possible as sub-assemblies on the work bench and test the motors before attaching to the frame is the best way to do it if possible.

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In v1.3 kits we’ll be using a color-coded UTM cable instead of a numbered one as well.

In future versions we anticipate designing a small PCB with pogo pins and a connector. That way you can simply plug in a pre-made UTM cable instead of having to wire everything yourself.

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4

That would really be an improvement… in the meantime we’ll continue building…