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Nick
Experienced Roboteer
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Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 11802
Location: Sydney, NSW
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Nick's 3D printer build
My 3D scratch-built 3D printer shenanigans:
After using the Cocoon printer for several months, I am completely hooked - when it was down for repairs for a few weeks, I had 3D withdrawal symptoms . The Cocoon is a great printer for the money but I want something better, so a custom printer is being designed. There are many impressive mid & top-end printers out there but none of them have everything I want - at any price point. After watching many, many reviews I have a long wish list; let's see what is actually achievable:
Wish: Open source everything:
If it's not hackable, its just not interesting! Many of the best printers are completely closed systems, which is great for schools & business but not if learning and experimenting is high on the agenda.
Reality
100% achievable using Simplify 3D for slicing and the Azteeg X5 controller with Smoothie firmware. The Azteeg board doesn't get much press but it has impressive specs and the firmware is open and well supported.
Wish: Larger print volume
The cocoon's 200 x 200 x 180 is getting restrictive; I haven't come close to the 180mm Z hight but the build platform is getting too small and something larger is needed.
Reality
Material for a 300 x 300 platform is easily available and I compromised a bit on the hight with 220mm.
Wish: Print all the things with all the filaments
Printers that just print PLA and ABS, or have proprietary filaments are just not acceptable any more! Most printers will do an acceptable job with mainstream filament but I am aiming to use virtually ANY filament, including ones not even invented yet
Reality
About 90% achievable; there are many different things that are required to print
every
filament, here is what I am going with:
* Heated enclosure: Stratasys may hold the patents but as a non-commercial builder, I am sticking it right up them! Having the enclosure heated to around 70 degrees C with make warp-free (or at least warp-minimised) prints with high temperature plastics like ABS, nylon and polycarbonate possible. Many ideas I saw on-line were really daft or dangerous, so some experimenting is in order.
* Dual feed extruder: having two feed rollers and a tight filament path makes printing flexible filament easy, There are few dual feed extruders on the market and the best looking one is from Bondtech. It also has a planetary gearbox for loads of torque to force stiff filament into the hot-end at high rates.
* All metal hot-end: an absolute must for high temperature plastic. I am going with the E3D V6 with the volcano heater block. This will heat virtually every plastic and extrude it a high rates.
* Hardened steel nozzles: abrasive filament like carbon fibre will wear out brass nozzles after just one roll. Getting hardened nozzles will allow all the metal and fibre filled filaments to print without wear & tear.
* Heated bed and buildtak surface: Pretty standard stuff nowadays, buildtak seems to be the closed thing to a universal print surface. The heater has a 300W power rating and I am backing it up with insulation to reduce the warm-up time.
Wish: auto-levelling platform
The inductive sensor costs under $4 and plenty of firmwares support levelling so I don't understand why it isn't a standard feature on all new printers.
Reality
100% achievable with a cheap sensor and the Smoothie firmware. To make it more reliable, I am using a 1/4" thick MIC-6 aluminium build plate; it has a milled flat top so once the bed is levelled at the corners, its levelled everywhere (unlike the warped bed on the Cocoon, which is a constant annoyance!)
Wish: fast printing
The Cocoon does 60mm / sec well and can be pushed higher, but the print quality starts to suffer. At higher speeds the extruder and hot-end can't feed filament fast enough.
Reality
About 80% achievable. The new printer is designed to be extra rigid and the fast-moving parts like the head & Y axis are being kept relatively light. The heavy extruder is remotely mounted and feeds filament via a Bowden tube. The Bondtech extruder has enough torque to feed filament quickly and the volcano end can melt filament at higher feed rates. As a bonus, the hot-end comes with up to 1.2mm nozzles to really rip through prototypes and larger prints.
The controller has a 32 bit ARM CPU, which can keep the motors moving fast without dropping steps. Most controllers still use the 8 bit Atmega chips, which barely have enough processing power for high speed movement.
Here are the parts that have arrived so far:
There is also a pile of aluminium sheet and extrusions for the frame. Before the smaller parts are machined, they are being prototyped in PLA. The finished printer will have virtually no printed parts, important when using a heated enclosure. _________________ Australian 2015 Featherweight champion
UK 2016 Gladiator champion
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Fri Jul 01, 2016 12:21 am |
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