Upgrade Your 3D Printer with the SmartPrintCoreH7x

When your 3D printer is running well, you probably never even think about the control board. And if you’re not into building or modifying your 3D printers, you might not ever think about it. But if something goes wrong or you decide to build your own 3D printer, the control board will suddenly jump to the forefront of your mind. There are a lot of options out there, but there is now a new kid on the block that looks very promising: the SmartPrintCoreH7x created by Boltz R&D.

A 3D printer’s control board is the link between the software and the hardware, including the stepper motors, the hot end, the thermistors, the heated bed, the limit switches, and everything else. It is responsible for taking a simple command like “move -10mm in the X axis” and turning that into actual signals (or direct power) for the various hardware components.

Say, for instance, that you’ve built a Voron 2.4 and it has a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B running Klipper. That Raspberry Pi (and Klipper) isn’t monitoring the limit switches or heated bed thermistor directly. It is receiving communications from the control board that is monitoring them. Suffice it to say that the control board is a big deal.

It seems that Boltz R&D approached the SmartPrintCoreH7x design with robustness in mind. It omits some features (like built-in Wi-Fi connectivity) that other high-end boards have, because the assumption is that users will pair the SmartPrintCoreH7x with a single-board computer (SBC) running Kipper. But it does have everything you are likely to need and is designed to be reliable.

SmartPrintCoreH7x features include 24V and 12V power input compatibility, 5+1 stepper motor ports, 4 servo motor ports, 6 fan port, 3+1 heater ports, and two 5V 10A power outputs. You can use one of the latter to power the SBC. A powerful STM32H723 microcontroller has plenty of horsepower to run everything smoothly. And while these things aren’t typically very exciting, locking connectors help ensure that nothing comes loose, no matter how fast your printer runs and shakes.

But the best feature is the open-source design. Boltz R&D used KiCAD and all of the documents and files are available on GitHub right now. If you want a SmartPrintCoreH7x, you can use those to have a board fabricated. Boltz R&D estimates the cost at about $85 for people that go through JLCPCB and LCSC.