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,…
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
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 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, sensorless/endstop homing, thermistor and fan ports, parallel, serial and TFT display connectors, bed and heater outputs and USB-C/SD Card printing, all in a small 80x90mm form factor with support for Marlin and Klipper! Because it's smaller and cheaper than a typical motherboard, you can use it for smaller/more affordable printers, and other people can also reference the journal if they're making their own board! If I were to make a V2, I would probably clean up the traces/layout of the PCB, pay more attention to trace size, stitching and fills, BOM optimize even further, and add another motor driver or two to the board. I also should've payed a bit more attention to how much current I would be drawing, and also the voltage ratings, because some of the parts are under-rated for the power. I'm still actively refining it and fixing up some of the mistakes, but I plan on using this board to make a tiny foldup 3D printer I can bring to hackathons and 3D print on the go! The project is fully open source, and journaled, so if you'd like to check it out it's on GitHub (https://github.com/KaiPereira/Cheetah-MX4-Mini)! I absolutely loved making this project and I'd love to hear what you guys would want to see in a V2!
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