When I recently had to replace my hot end, I thought, this is cool, they really make this easy. But then I put on my consumer glasses and realized that I’m crazy for thinking that.
You see, in my day job, I regularly work with connector technology that is fine pitch and delicate. Whereas I can’t discuss the exact nature of my work, suffice it to say, if you’ve ever taken apart a cell phone, it’s that level of miniaturization but on a much higher level.
So I looked at the connector that Bambu has on their hotend an the installation instruction videos and it got me to thinking. This industry still has a long way to go before they can call this stuff user-friendly. Here’s what I mean.
I can’t pinpoint the exact manufacturer, but I suspect this connector is likely either a JAE or Hirose style. According to a typical data sheet, this class of connector was never meant for frequent insertions, even though it might handle more than a dozen. It’s intended use was for miniaturization like cell phones where it would be installed once at the factory and left that way for the life of the product. Bambu’s videos show someone manually handling it, which is absurd.
Now if they wanted to improve this, two things have to happen, first, the connector has to have some type of guide holes or dowels to ensure proper seating. Second, it needs a tab on the back that can be grabbed with a small pair of needle nose pliers.
However, in the real world, for a consumer replaceable device, as a rule of thumb, you never want the consumer to be handling a cable, especially a fragile one like this, if you can avoid it.
Given that printhead nozzles are by their nature field replaceable units, if Bambu really wants to up their game, this device should be a cartridge not something that can be easily broken. In other words, if this is going mainstream, this has to be as easy to replace as a toner cartridge is on a laser printer. It definitely should not be exposing the PCB to the consumer.
Thoughts anyone?
