I've built several 3d printers and upgraded more. I hate the wiring to the print head. I want to replace it with a USB-C cable, I know that just putting the signals over the wires is not necessarily safe and the pinouts wouldn't work as is, so I'm looking at possibly designing a USB-C PD microcontroller with breakouts to hookup to printhead.
I've done a little bit of research and I have designed enough boards to believe I can do it. The idea would be to first design a board that is small, will operate at '20' volts within USB standard, drive PWM to the print head, read the thermistor, have a socket (to start) for stepper motor, drive a bl-touch, see about getting that working and then design a second board to read everything from the motherboard and send the commands over USB-c data link.
I am busy and think it will take me months if I don't get any side projects so I'm wondering if anyone else is already doing it.
I would be doing everything opensource / github and be happy to have other contributors.
Oh and my user name is ecobra because I built and raced an electric cobra Daytona like car from 2006 and have been doing electric vehicle consulting ever since.