A reprap

Mine;

[www.youtube.com]

-a

Very Nice.

Fantastic!

Very nice design Alan, a good layout and wiring has been done well.

Bruce

Thank you gents.

Big thanks and much kudos to all who have gone before me, especially you Bruce, with your handsome machine.

-a

Awesome machine

Yes, very nice!

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New browser from the creator of Opera: [vivaldi.com]

Thanks again!

Have squirted a few kilo of goo out since the vid. and still going strong.

Few mods;

Have just upgraded the business end to an E3Dv6 (Chinese knock-off, sorry Sanjay!) with a genuine 0.6mm nozzle.
The other (knock-off v5, I think) had some snags internally that caught on the end of filament.

And fitted a fan duct and a LED print light
Have reluctantly taken the ptfe tube out of the cable chain. It did work ok but I always had a nagging doubt about it whenever anything went wrong.

First draft print of half an electrical box cover.


Still to do;


Have some astrosyn type motor dampers to install one of these days. (It's a bit noisy. It doesn't just look like a bass bin.)
Replace the worlds cheapest bearings with something better.
Try 1/32 stepping again. Had some issues last time which might have been a Marlin thing that has now been fixed. May revert to A4988s over the DRV8825's
Replace heating resistors with a silicon pad to speed warm up time
Want to get into 'Octogoat box' and relocate it into the garage. All the peripherals are taking over the dining room.

Otherwise, I'm satisfied for a first attempt.

I say first attempt - Its seen a lot of CAD time and iterations

Starting from a Mendelmax2 based printer

Then, whilst looking for alternatives to Mendelmaxs Igus linear slides I came across 'V' slot
Funny how the Mendelmax 3 now uses 'v'slot. I started this in the '2' days before the 3 came out.

Then turned sideways.

Then thought; Maybe an enclosure would be a good idea

Then thought may as well make it from the enclosure. A trip to the TCT show last September showed that the big firms all use XY at the top and a lifting Z

There were a few iterations. . .



. . . but it all just looked a bit ugly and missing a certain Je ne sais quoi as we say in England.

Then I came across Cfeniaks printer on openbuilds, I think he wrote something about;"... ability to run 2 belts in the slots of v slot channel made it ideal for CoreXY with offset belt paths..." which got me thinking . . .
Curse you, Carl! (joke) Your phrase cost me many lost hours of CAD time

An iteration or 10 later . . .


and a little je ne sais quios added!

The construction is a little limited in that I didn't have access to a 3D printer or any machining facilities.
Everything was constructed with hand tools (Ok a pillar drill and angle grinder became a 2-axis machining centre)

I have another printer project on the go now.

I don't really know why, but I bought a lasercut aluminium frame for an 'Air2' printer.
An ebay bargain. (That's going to cost me time and money for a printer I don't really need)



Well, I've a few left over 'v'slot wheels and a working 3D printer now so I'm looking at tweaking the original a little;



But that's another story.

Seeyer.

-a

Fascinating detailed account of your CAD development work, thanks a bunch, Alan! And good luck with your custom Air 2 project.

Hi Alan,

I also just fitted a fan duct and a LED print light to my Openbeam CoreXY. Good to see the print clearly when printing at night. great minds think alike.....

I have also added a extra cooling fan for cooling the heat bed down quickly, don't always use it with the Gcode at the end of the print. But have added an Icon in Ponterface which allows me to turn it on or off. Also have a firmware Menu to allow this.
Had to add a driver PCB to allow the Ramps digital output signal to control the 12volts to the fan.

Also using a E3Dv6 (Chinese knock-off) printhead (0.3mm nozzle) . I had a bad jam once and the filament not only jammed at the nozzle but also below the hose connector, on mine there appears to be wide area before the filament goes down the heat fin assembly to the stainless tube. Ended up fitting a small length of tube below the tube connector fitting and no more of these jams. I have done a lot of printing and have just had to remove the nozzle and give it a good clean out, At times I just use a 0.3 drill and give the tip a quick clean when hot, however it needed a bit more of a clean this time around.

Been printing a product that I designed and selling them to fishing shops, a product for the trout and salmon fishermen. Not a money making thing, but great to test the market, have them in 12 shops around New Zealand.

Cheers Bruce..

It's been a strange journey Andrew.
I think that I did it all the wrong way round. The Air would have been an easier one to start with.
I want to pick your brains about the Octogoat box in the near future.

'Great minds' Bruce! The light is a really useful addition. Its wired into the hotend fan.
I had the same issue with the filament path. The Bowden tube stopped at the fitting and there was a wider area before the heatsink hole that the filament would catch on. It meant that I had to take the tube fitting out to change filament.
I've since drilled out the fitting and the tube can pass right through it now. I'll use it on the other printer maybe with a direct extruder.
What do you use for a bowden extruder, may I ask?
I'm always looking for upgrade ideas.
What's the product that you make? It's good to hear of functional stuff being printed.
Fishing/ angling is a good market 'niche' Those guys are always buying new gizmos to improve their catch.
Regards
-a

Hi Alan,

I built my own Bowden extruder feed assy, milled it out of a piece of Aluminium ex-hard disk drive actuator ( Once they made large disk drives with 18" platters.... which I repaired. -Stuff I did 30 years ago .. I am a bit of a junk collector for aluminium bits).
Have a attached a picture of my design.

I used a 6mm dia feed gear, however I am not totally happy with it, just ordered - 1.75mm filament Extruder for 3D Printer Kossel Mini Delta Bowden RepRap NEMA17- from ebay. which has a larger feed gear.
I used a 6mm dia gear thinking it would give less feed per stepper motor pulse, but now thinking that the filament really needs more contact with the feed gear and a larger diameter is properly the better way to go.... time will tell.

Can't say too much about the fishing product, as I have a company looking at mass production.. Been an interesting task of coming up with a product, designing it, and using my printer to make them. Have been testing the market. It will never be a real money maker as a stand alone product, it is more of an add-on to an existing product to enhance sales.

Another thing that happened over the weekend, after a lot of printing over several months I ran into a problem that the filament would stop extruding. Found the extruder was slipping and not feeding. Appears I had a filament jam in the hot end, just removing the filament from the hot end and starting again it would work for a short time and jam again, took the hot end nozzle tip apart (0.3mm nozzle) and cleaned it out (used a 2mm and 0.3mm drills) but the problem still occurred. Ended up drilling out the nozzle tip top 3/4 with a 2.5mm drill.. seems to be working again. Thinking that there might be a slight corrosive build up causing the ASB filament to become restrictive. ...... This was part of the reason I have ordered a new extruder and a some different nozzles, some Teflon lined stainless screw threads to use in my all metal hot end.. Plan to play around with these to see if there is an overall improvement.

Cheers Bruce.

Hey Bruce.

Good to hear your doings and glad to hear you found a use for that Ali plate you kept for 30 years!

I'm always on the lookout for new ideas. This Airptripper is not bad generally, but it could be easier to reload/ switch filament.
I use it with a mk.8 type gear;

drive gear

Usually good but occasionally something will jam and shred filament or skip a step.
I've got a slightly beefier stepper motor on the way (5.5 kg/cm over the 4.5 kg/cm) an ebay bargain so I will probably swap the extruder motor. Was considering a geared type extruder. Wades type of printed gears.

I'm just trying out a bigger nozzle at 0.6mm. Some good results but having to relearn some of the slicing sweet spots for it.

There's always something to go at . . .

Take care mate.

Tra'

-a

Thanks for the info Alan,

I am currently using a 5.3kg.cm extruder motor which seems to have plenty of grunt on my Openbeam CoreXY printer..
Sticking with the 0.3mm nozzle as I already have a printer that uses a 0.4mm nozzle that I designed and built a few years ago. - check is one...... [reprap.org]
This has been a very reliable printer, used a makerbot hotend. Have done a lot of printing with no real issues, no hotend jams.
I do like direct drives, my old printer used a large stepper motor ex NCR ATM money machine one...it's the motor that feeds to money to you. Only issue is a large mass that has to move about.

Do like the finer filament when printing some parts with the Openbeam printer.

One thing I have printed with my old printer is a lot of stencils for making of signs at my local golf course.
Also designed and made an animal RFID tag reader for reading tags for cattle. Used the 3D printer to make the plastic bits to fit every thing into a holder tube.
A golf ball printer (Eggbot)

When you have a 3D printer you keep coming up with ideas.


Cheers

to me looks more like a RepStrap, a reprap has printed parts too.

edit:spelling

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/11/2015 07:43AM by Kalle.