3D Printer Nerds Talk
 

Rather than continue shitting on the 3d printed parts feeler thread I figured we should just make a 3d printer thread in the fab forum. Projects, questions, settings, whatever

Heres what I'm working with right now. It was once a folgertech 2020. But now the z axis motors are 0.9° steppers and the z screws are 1mm pitch rods. All the bearings are now misumi, all the belts are legit goodyear, using a china knockoff of the smoothie board. Bondtech qr extruder and e3d v6 hot end. Build plate is a piece of 1/4" thick MIC6 (flat within a thou cast aluminum fixture plate) and the build plate support is a random chinese aluminum one that twice as thick as stock. X axis is a v groove extrusion. And I keep all my filament in a dog food box with desiccant and it feeds through ptfe tubes to the extruder. So its basically a bunch of crap cobbled together that works better than most people's home printers but leaves a lot to be desired to someone who designs real steel fixtures and gauges that go on real machines for a living.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1a2e26201c.jpg
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1aec577da3.jpg

And this is what I've been working on. 40 x 40 extrusion, linear rail, nema23 motors, properly constrained lead screw, large build volume, no plastic parts under load. I havent worked on it in months because I've been busy working on summer projects on the house but I'm kicking at it tonight. It looks like its mechanically done besides the Y axis belt routing. And then I need mounts for the power supply, limit switches, duet board, and cable management.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...9c6d02fa4c.jpg

I hit the easy button. PRUSA MK2 with a few nice upgrades still in a box. PRUSA customer service is amazing and This thing is just dead nuts reliable. I think I've run about 60 kilos through it so far and have only had to replace 1 extruder tip. It just makes me money while I sleep. I developed and prototyped a tool for a local gun shop recently, and he is going to get rich off of it. Mark my words.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1890dc8375.jpg

Is that enclosure a walmart end table?

yep. Lexan side all click in with those little NEO magnets. Printing with PET right now, it doesnt care much about wind or temp. it just works.
A better pic of it all.


https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...e2304d1617.jpg

I had an Invent-a-part Rigidbot Regular from the Kickstarter campaign. A rigid frame design, typical belt driven axis's (apart from leadscrew Z), awful extrduer, heated bed powered through a ribbon cable.
Over the 4 fours (gone as of 2015) i had it I upgraded from belts to leadscrews, swapped out the extruder and hotend for bondtech extruder and E3D chimera which left me with a printer that produced prints better than I've received from companies.
The eagle eyed among you will have thought why did he mention the ribbon cable for the bed. The electrically minded will note a ribbon cable is thin wires and a heated bed has "large" current demand. Many owners suffered melty cable issues because of this stupid design, i didn't. I lost my house. Insured sorted everything. Literally cannot be happier with them but now i had to find a replacement. Whilst I would have bought a Rigidbot again the company went bankrupt after only a year of failing to produce the printer for all the backers and it was asset stripped by the current company still selling the same badly designed heated bed.

I now have (2.5 years and counting) a Lulzbot Taz 6 in standard configuration (but I have the leadscrews, bondtech and E3D ready). Its a very impressive of the shelf kit but it should be for the price. It is why i suggested filament on the 3D printed intake thread (but apparently that was so disliked i had 3 cats stolen :loser: )

I also have a WoW SparkMaker DLP printer (if DLP is also allowed over FDM). It is again a Kickstarter. It was incredibly cheap and aside from tuning settings it is about the most impressive quality you can find even though the print area is not big.

I also have a CNC mill (an ebay 3040 with a 1.5kW VFD spindle), an engineering lathe and a DIY reflow oven.

As you may have guessed I produce mostly home fixing type things when they break :idea:
Although I did print a can cooling spinner for giggles yesterday.

I've also had a RepRap (when they were the only one around because it was made by a university I could visit inside a half hour so could meet the people) and a RapMan.

Leafy, if you are custom designing a printer why are you keeping the largest design flaw of your current printer; the 'T' style frame? Build a cube, more better.

I have a flying bear P902 and its solid. I can roll it down the stairs and just plug it in and print without re-tramming. But the real benefit is I can print 150mm/s with almost no loss in quality. I just pick up a slight edge ring that could probably be fixed with real good year belts, not these stretchy china POSs. Besides moving the table in any axis but Z is cancer for a number of reasons.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...3921cd939c.jpg


Also having a 2020 perimeter makes it laughably easy to enclose. You just slot your choice of board(currently cardboard curtesy of ikea) into the 2020 slots.

Not to trash up the thread, but here is a link to the video of the tool me and my partner designed. we printed 25 prototypes and they were gone before he set up his booth. I did not make the video, just the plastic parts.

It's going to be squared in with 2020 to enclose it and for more stiffness. I don't like the z bed designs because they normally require it to be naturally flexible to not bind. The way e3d designed theirs with the big single linear rail and screw and cantilevered bed seems good but I wasn't confident I could make the cantilever square enough with my manufacturing capability. And I'm not ready to design a core xy.

Using a Lulzbot Taz 5 in a custom box.

It was purchased by work for work and has a lot of hours on it. I recently (months) got it running on Octo Print on a Pi so I can control it without getting up. It's been incredibly reliable. My biggest gripe with it is the z axis sag in the middle of the horizontal rods. I compensated for this by clamping the build plate in the center to mimic the curve. It's a teeny bit less accurate, but much more consistent when building the same thing in different areas of the build plate.

It's mostly unmodded except for putting a Noctua fan in the power supply to replace the harrier jet engine that came in it.

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...bdcd4a07fd.png

It is pretty awesome to have the build volume this thing does. I've just about maxed it out already.


https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.mia...1c9f639cb4.png


This thing has more than paid for itself in equivalent cost of prototypes and waiting time.

Ummm... No. It requires you assemble it properly with mechanical skills and knowledge, and not by an engineering desk jockey.

You could also just make it a dual Z if it bothered you that much.

You gotta read dual z makes the issue of binding worse. My current printer is only dual z because the x axis isn't rigid enough. the new printer is, rigid and if I put dual z lead screws on it it would bind unless the unit was dead on balls prefect, which nothing that exists in the real world is.

:facepalm:

Ive been seriously considering buying the Folger Tech FT-5 R2
https://folgertech.com/collections/3...3d-printer-kit

I played around with a makerbot clone a couple years ago and Ive really been wanting to mess with one again. If I could make a little bit of money with it, that would be cool too.

I have been looking at that one for over a year now, its what I suggested asmasm get when he bought his. He did more research and found this, which seems better in many ways and is cheaper:

https://us.gearbest.com/3d-printers-...pp_701645.html

Im still torn between the 2 but one of them will be my next printer if I dont DIY.

more info on his blog
http://www.wrenchgame.com/2018/07/12...now-available/

The folgertech looks slightly better They both come with knock off ramps boards, that and the China belts are going to be the two most likely things to limit print speed. Neither of them really have a good bed mounting solution but most printers don't so you get to have fun with binder clips. That's one of the reasons I went with a thick aluminum build plate, so I could have no protrusions into the build area

That does look like a good option.

When you click US warehouse it has a pre-sale price of $290. If Im understanding correctly thats $60 savings just to have to wait a few extra weeks?! Thats very tempting.

I just posted the first google link that came up. They are charging almost $80 shipping, and Ive seen a few others charging nothing or like $10. You may want to shop around.

@asmasm ?

If you get the tronxy the new version (x5sa) is supposed to fix most of the major issues with the x5s. There was a while where walmart was the best deal on them in the USA but it doesn't look like they have the newer version.

All this talk about buying and upgrading this and that...I just plopped down 700 for the Prusa and dont mess with anything. Bsides the optimum speed of just 100mm sec., Am I missing something?