Quote
dc42
Screw terminals are nice for anyone who designs and builds a printer from scratch and doesn't want to pay £20 or so for for a crimp tool.
Yes, for a scratch builder the cost of a crimp tool, plus the crimp housings and the pins, can be in excess of £30 (not insignificant for someone building on a budget). However that's a somewhat hidden cost that many people won't consider when comparing the cost of controllers.
A picture is worth a thousand words, this is the RAMPS on my first build, the weight of those cables tends to pull them off the connectors unless the weight is supported with tie wraps, and it's easy to knock them loose when working around there.
[attachment 49878 RAMPS.jpg]
Of course different printers lend themselves to different wiring solutions, and I wouldn't use heavy sheathing like that again if I had to wire to another RAMPS, but the experience has put me off PCB pins for these connectors. In the end every build (and builder) will have slightly different requirements, I think the best solution would allow a degree of flexibility for the builder to choose his preferred connections (if that can be done within the PCB size constraints).