I designed my own 3D printer motherboard
3D printing is such a fascinating field of technology, so a couple months ago, I decided to take a deep dive and learn how they actually work! This took me to one of my very first PCB projects, a small, cheap, 3D printer motherboard. While it's not the most cutting edge board, I learned a lot and I fully documented my process designing it (https://github.com/KaiPereira/Cheetah-MX4-Mini/blob/master/J...), so other people can learn from my mistakes! It runs off of an STM32H743 MCU, has 4 TMC stepsticks with UART/SPI configurations,…
I designed my own 3D printer motherboard launched on December 6, 2025 with 127 votes, #230 of 11,628 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.
In plain words
This is a custom-designed 3D printer motherboard built around an STM32H743 microcontroller in a compact 80x90mm form factor. It features four stepper motor drivers with UART/SPI configuration, thermistor and fan ports, bed heater output, and multiple display connectivity options, supporting both Marlin and Klipper firmware. The creator has fully documented the design process on GitHub to help others learn PCB design, making it a resource for makers interested in understanding 3D printer electronics and building smaller, budget-friendly printer projects.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
A powerful yet compact 3D printer motherboard that supports TMC stepsticks, fans, heaters, screens and thermistors - KaiPereira/Cheetah-MX4-Mini
The Cheetah MX4 Mini is a fully open source, powerful, yet affordable 3D printer motherboard! At just 80x90mm wide, it's an extremely compact motherboard with many cool features! This is one of the first PCB's I've ever created, so it might have some flaws. The Cheetah MX4 Mini is a 4 layer PCB with dedicated power and ground inner layers. Don't mind the messy PCB/schematic, it was one of my first boards ;) It's built off the STM32H series MCU to support every function you need for a printer. It's got many protection circuits, good decoupling, and is designed around high current inputs. To power it, you can supply either USB-C for development, or a 12/24V PSU to drive the motors and all the…from github.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
3D printing is such a fascinating field of technology, so a couple months ago, I decided to take a deep dive and learn how they actually work! This took me to one of my very first PCB projects, a small, cheap, 3D printer motherboard. While it's not the most cutting edge board, I learned a lot and I fully documented…
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