Micro SD slot destroyed. Trying to hack a replacement

Bambu Lab P1 Series General Discussions
21

As it is now, I’ve used 9 male to male jumper wires for testing.

Surely that will likely work… for a while that is, until the constant vibration of the printer breaks the solder connections.

Definitely. I’m only doing it this way for testing so that I can know for sure which connections to make between the AP board and the SD adapter.

You could provide additional security for the cable and its wires via hot glue

Hot glue has already made me angry today and I’d rather not talk about it lol.

Well since I’m already spending money…

Any suggestions on a soldering station that has fine tips and also a hot air station / automatic solder sucker thing? I know not all of these features aren’t necessary, but go big or go home I guess.

22

Despite the (really facinating) education I’ve gained on soldering, is there still a reason beyone “I did it!” to continue to attempt this?

Genuine curiosity.

23

You’re assumption is correct. The 9th pin is not used for a Micro SD card but it is used in the SD card. What I said before about it being tied to ground is speculation. In the SDcard.org spec, this is the pinout and you can see that signal 9 is not used for micro SD cards.

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The Micro SD card spec only calls out 8 signals. For more on the spec, you can find it here: SD Standard Overview | SD Association

24

My reasoning to try to do this:

90% proving to myself that I can still learn new skills and to be able to exclaim, “I did it!”.

10% pissed that there’s $750 P1S bundle that I just got off of marketplace will be turning into a $800 bundle after purchasing the new board, plus tax, plus shipping.

Earlier you mentioned something about the printer not detecting the card being inserted without the cage attached. Would you happen to know if there’s a way I can trick the board into thinking the cage is still there?

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Solder stations are truly a personal preference and an old dog like me is probably the last guy to ask. I’ve been using this venerable solder station for the last 35 years and they still make it.

But last Christmas, my kids got me this one and I love it.

Shortly thereafter, I purchase this purpose-made solder removing iron and it truly sucks in a beautiful way. :yum:Unfortunately is is hard to find in the US. I got the last one on Amazon. But it is a combo desoldering pump and solder iron that really makes short work of desoldering task. It’s a hell of a lot easier than using a separate pump with two hands or solder wick.

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My previous method was to use these two tools. Boy does a all in one make this seem like stone age.

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26

Yeah, giving up and buying a new board.

I know and get what you trying to do, but there’s a chance this could go south and that a new MC board will be in your future.

Sorry, Olias and others have more optomism, I am being real. If you’re concerned about the $40 but willing to drop the money on supplies, then be honest and say it’s not about the money. He’s given very sound advice while trying to be subtle that you shouldn’t go this route, at least without pracitce.

You can do this. With practice. So do you want to do it right or right away? What Olias has described is not an off the shelf soldering job. I think he’s made that clear. So to venture forth is stubborness and can only lead to failure in some way. What I mean is you may succeed, but what will it cost you?

I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m trying to be sensible with a part that’s easy to replace once you purchase it and you’ll be up and running after they bind the board to your printer.

If you want to learn how to fix it in the future then by all means. Hell, I want to learn how to fix it in the future simply because I read this.

You do you. I can’t offer any more advice.

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27

In a word; NO!!! I have all the tools and know how but to be candid, I’d only do this to a) see if I still have the skills or b) If there was no other way to repair it or if it was going to cost me more than $50. At $40 for the AP replacement board, I’m afraid laziness wins out over frugality and dogged determinism on this occasion. But I would never criticize anyone for taking on this kind of DIY challenge.

Every tinkerer knows that when something breaks or doesn’t work exactly as it should, even though there may be a more cost-effective or time-effective solution… well… sometimes technology trying to get the best of you… well… it gets personal and you just have to do it to show the machine who’s boss. I know, childish, irrational? Maybe, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. :yum:

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no, not childish at all. I’ve McGyver’d tractors in a field, a Jeep in a tree, and many little gadgets I’ve broken. Nearly all of those was a “must do” situation. Except for the Jeep in the tree thing. I won’t tell.

I guess this is one of those FAFO moments. Those, those suck sometimes.

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29

That microSD connector is the reason I bought the P1S, I was using a Creality CR10-V3 which I loved because of the print size. But, that stupid MicroSD card socket broke off the board, leaving me no way to use the Creality Sonic Pad to get the gcode file to the printer. I’m retired now, from 10 years of High End Audio Amplifier mfg. and 20 yrs of telecommunications, and another 30 yrs of IT. Yeah, I’m older than dirt, but I was sure I could replace that MicroSD jack, having all of the SM soldering equipment, and 60 years of Electronics under my belt, but I still managed to screw it all up, and ruin the motherboard - which, BTW is no longer available! Those SM microSD jacks should be banned for all time. I wonder, is that jack even necessary when using the LAN?
Anyway, I too would just get the $40 board, and not use the jack without an extension cable as shown above that could be plugged in one time into the MicroSD jack, and have a female jack on the other end of the wire to plug your microsd chip into.
BBL does have decent prices on most of their repair parts.

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30

an extension cable as shown above that could be plugged in one time into the MicroSD jack, and have a female jack on the other end of the wire to plug your microsd chip into.

That’s a smart idea!

31

The 9th pin is likely to be for card detection. Referring to the photo of the AP board, you can see a spring mechanism above the 9th pin. Usually, it will make contact and ground the detection pin when an sd card is inserted.

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As someone who has done a lot of electronics over the years, a hacked(electrically) product is only a good idea if it produces a better product. Hacking it comes with risks to any piece of equipment connected to it.
Spend the $40. Get a replacement board.
I also noticed with my P1S there was a sticker on the SD card/slot saying it was not hot-swappable. So watch out for that too.

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33

The contacts on an SD Adaptor are not in the same sequence as the Micro SD card either. You can’t just lay-down a ribbon cable and make the connections in order. You’ll have to cris-cross a few. And pin 9 is not a ground.

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34

That’s why one needs a purpose-built adapter cable mentioned earlier in this thread. Here is another one. The cable runs to a small PCB which contains the cable pin translation. But I would caution folks that when I tested one with my P1 that worked perfectly fine in my Raspberry PI, I found that the longer cable produced unreliable results. So I purchase a shorter one, I believe it was under 5" and that worked OK.

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35

I tried one of those on an old printer.
Worked, but you had to pop it out and back in on reboot. I didn’t trust that printer enough to leave it on.

I wish printer companies would leave the TF card in the dust.

36

Why not just buy the matching original connector and replace like for like?

Adding extension wires and cross overs etc. onto the SD card connector can lead to errors in reading/writing as it is now further away from the IC that is used to access it.

I too am IPC certified (or am I just certifiable?) and would also not use a butane torch soldering iron on SMT pads, the iron temperatures are uncontrollable and your likely to just remove the pads.

Well done on thinking like you did but here’s another “spend the $40 on a new board”. :slight_smile:

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37

Yep, the extra pin is for triggering SD card insert event.

This one has only 8 pins

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There is another different one with 10 pins

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My advice is to replace with the same uSD card socket, assuming the pads are still good. If missing one or more pads, just buy new board as you will spend much more (time+money) trying to fix missing pad(s) for that matter. These TF/uSD card sockets are readily available, not worth to tinkering with jumper wires and all.

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For SMD job like this, hot-air rework station is a lot better than soldering iron. Refer to youtube videos of Louis Rossmann for how to replace SMD parts. After that you can decide for yourself if it is viable for you to fix that board or just buy new board.

PS: after replacement, you might want to put some expoxy glue for more mechanical strength.

38

Yep, TF card and SD card are the worst to transfer gcode for each print.

Just a thought popped in my head right now, have you guys tried wifi sd card with 3d printer?

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They are not cheap, but still cheaper than rpi + octoprint for wireless gcode tranferring

39

This sounds interesting but a photo without a link isn’t much help.

I’d love to get my hands on something like this that actually lives up to its label.

Have you used this yourself? I ask because this tech has been largely discredited for broad use and has only found its way into very limited applications with very specific cameras. In short, it does not work reliably.

This kind of tech has been in my crosshairs for the last 10 years. The last time something like this crossed my path was for a legacy digital camera I had. I could not find one that was compatible.

Here’s a search on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Zyyini-Adapter-Support-Settings-Android/
https://www.amazon.com/wifi-sd-card/s?k=wifi+sd+card
https://www.amazon.com/Canon-1716C001-Wi-Fi-Adapter-W-E1/

You’ll note that of the three vendors that popped up using that search, the only credible vendor Canon, has this caveat.

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The other two vendors imply that this supports android and iPhones which is not exactly a ringing endorsement as this implies an app is necessary to make this work which is far from plug and play.

I found only one extended discussion on this topic in Reddit which only supports my distrust of this tech.
https://www.reddit.com/r/photography/comments/12ocr4u/the_wifi_sd_card_market_in_2023_is_bad/

Even this review site that was less than two years old indicates links that are now defunct. This gives further indication that the technology was removed from Amazon, likely because of high returns.

40

Sorry, no link since I just copy the image from aliexpress. I assume aliexpress won’t sue me for stealing their picture. And if you insist, here it is https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33004124553.html

First of all, I’ve never tried this, but I know its existence for years. It just never clicked in my head before until a few hours ago.

I have no problem of poping out the 32GB SD card from my Nikon DSLR and put it in the USB3.0 card reader for copying the RAW file. The gimmick of having access the file on your camera without need of sd card reader is very tempting. There was a time I played much with photo shooting, I was considering buy one but it was too expensive, like 32GB SD card for $40 but 8GB wifi SD card for ~$200. It was 10-15 years ago, I don’t remember. I rather bought 4x 32GB SD card instead of buying 1x 8GB SD card w/ wifi. I believe at the time those wifi SD card was 802.11b, on par with USB1.1 or so. I knew it was so slow to be usable so that’s that. I had no problem carring an extra card reader that can pop in the phone for quick preview, but the tiny screen on DSLR usually did the job just fine. Something very similar to this

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I am not sure how this wifi sd card work but what I can imagine it is kind of smaller sdcard + wifi module as the middle man. The wifi module would probably expose as an access point which you use your phone connect to and probably use web brower to open the SD card ip address and it just popped out a web page with list of files on the SD card, probably similar to this

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Again, I just steal a picture randomly from the internet. I am a bad thief.

I probably could write firmware for ESP32 and make a PCB that has similar functionality to this to this wifi SD card. It’s just similar to the concept of USB Rubber Ducky acting as middle man of usb thumb drive and can actually do more than just a thumb drive, but in this case it is SPI interface instead

I never heard of canon or nikon would make such a thing. I do know Canon/Nikon make entry level DSLR with wifi built-in. Bought my D7K ages ago and not tempting to buy a better one.

Edit:
While searching for the link on Aliexpress again, I stumble upon this

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Link for you https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001095717223.html

BTW, while derailing the topic

@Olias wait until you try this cheap desolder tool

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Link https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007634781572.html

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