ERCF Easy BRD

The ERCF Easy BRD was made open source and designed by Tircown. More information can be found here

The ERCF Easy BRD was originally designed to be used with the ERCF MMU and is compatible with both 12v and 24v systems. The recommended voltage regulator used in our boards is rated up to 24v usage and also includes a protective bumper so it doesn’t get damaged during transport.

You can also use the ERCF Easy BRD to expand boards such as the SKR Mini by adding additional drivers to be used in projects like the Tri Zero or Voron Trident. Easily turn your 4 driver board to 6 drivers with this easy mod.

Features

• 3 end stop connections
• 1 Servo connections
• 2 Stepper driver connections

Includes

• qty 1 ERCF Easy BRD (Drivers are not included)
• qty1 protective bumper for transport

If you are using the ERCF Easy BRD to add additional drivers to your system put the XY motors on the ERCF easy BRD and the Z motors on the main board. Do not split the z motors across separate MCUs.

To install this to be used for the ERCF MMU Steve goes through this process very well on his youtube channel. Click here to watch part 7 where he goes through the ERCF configuration. 

How to add additional drivers to your system for builds like the Tri Zero or Trident

• Terminal into to your Raspberry Pi via Putty
• While you are there run sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade to get everything up to date before you proceed.
• Run these commands and install numpy:
  sudo apt install python3-numpy python3-matplotlib libatlas-base-dev
  ~/klippy-env/bin/pip install -v numpy
• Install RPi Microcontroller. Instructions found here
• Follow instructions on Tircown Github how to install bossac and flash/configure Seeduino XIAO MCU. Instructions found here
• **TIP: To find your port you can unplug ERCF USB to see which port disappears from your list when you run ls /dev/tty* or you can just try the ACM ports that show up in the list. One of those is probably the correct one.

Configuration in printer.cfg file to change if you want to move XY motors to ERCF board.

You can name the ERCF mcu anything you want but you need to reference it in below config as well. I used “mcu ercf” so the XY motor config needs to reference same name “ercf”.

Add below to your printer.cfg file on your printer
[mcu ercf]
serial: /dev/serial/by-id/usb-Klipper_samd21g18a_739FC2E73934555020312E3905100DFF-if00 (replace this with your mcu id)

Change the pins in your printer.cfg file for the XY motors to point to the pins on the ERCF board
[stepper_x]
step_pin: ercf:PA4
dir_pin: ercf:PA10
enable_pin: !ercf:PA2

[tmc2209 stepper_x]
uart_pin: ercf:PA8
uart_address: 0

[stepper_y]
step_pin: ercf:PA9
dir_pin: ercf:PB8
enable_pin: !ercf:PA11

[tmc2209 stepper_y]
uart_pin: ercf:PA8
uart_address: 1

** Be careful not to invert polarity in the screw terminal or it may damage the board and even more.

** Do not use the servo connector as an input or do it at your own risk. Voltage input connected to general I/O pins may cause chip damage if it’ higher than 3.3V.