My first 3D printer, the Tripledoomtopus.

Hi guys!

My name is Bruno Mansur, I’ve been accompanying this forum for some time but never thought I would have something to add, and didn’t want to bother with all the thousands of troubles I had. I pretend to make a blog documenting to a greater extent all this stuff, but I don’t have the time now.

This is going to be a long and image heavy post, so bear with me.
A little background first:

Until about August 2014 I had no idea of how circuitry worked, my CAD skills were close to zero, resistors where “Electric stuff” and capacitors were “Funny towers”. I’m from Brazil and I’ve only heard of Makerspaces here recently, creating stuff isn’t on our culture like in the US.
I had my first contact with 3d printing and electronics during college (I just graduated with a Game Design degree), we had to do a group project to help deaf people using electronics and since I was “the coder and logic guy” of all projects, my team asked me to do the electronic stuff.

Best decision ever.

I had about 3 months to learn enough to go from zero to “enough to make a wearable with Bluetooth” and a 3d printed case. Somehow I succeeded.
With that newly acquired knowledge and a boosted ego, I thought: “Maybe I could make a 3D printer”
And that’s what I tried to achieve every day in the last two years.

Now to the good stuff.

I choose the Mendel90 Sturdy as my starting point, I had a lot of trouble sourcing the vitamins and the access to the college 3d printer was very restricted (by the way, it was a Cliever CL1). I made some friends that would help me print the stuff when nobody was looking, so I had to make it with the least amount of tries possible. I might have committed a major mistake then...
In the next 6 months, I redesigned the entire Mendel90 aiming for easier vitamins.

“Well, I might as well try to make it better.”


The first big unnecessary change was a new way to dual extrude without the motors weighting the carriage (keep in mind that I had only one chance to print this stuff).
Then I made a wooden frame and a lot of cool stuff that I’ve lost the pictures. I went way overboard with it.

It was then that I realized that I would never be able to print that amount of 3d parts without being caught. It was time to change the strategy.
It was time to project another 3d printer so I could print this 3d printer.
I took another 6 months to come with a Rostock variant that I could source (Yes, making a delta printer as first printer is a big mistake, and I’m paying for it.)




Okay, I went overboard again and made another overengineered (wait to see the electronics and you will understand) 3d printer with everything I though was cool on the internet, but this time I had to make it, everyone was thinking it was just another project I would never finish.
All the 3d printed parts were custom designed, but the original idea for each one came from dozens of projects, including the cherry pi 3.
I managed to keep the 3d printed part low, that was important. But the vitamins count grew immensely... It was time to learn woodworking.


It took weeks and a lot of lost material (learned the most with mistakes, everything else with internet tutorials)



Never thought paint was so expensive.



Well, isn’t that gorgeous?



I found a place nearby that could cut some aluminum sheets for just one kidney, so I managed to make the internal frame (the wooden frame is just for the looks.)


Effector and heated bed in place! The bed is a MIC6 aluminum sheet, so it probably won't warp, the mirror is pretty thick too.

It was time to make the electronics, since the dollar was so high at the time I had to DIY the hell out of the circuitry. I had an Arduino mega laying around but I really wanted a Smoothieboard, so…




I designed my own boards trying to make it modular since I don’t have patience to test everything with protoboards, I made 3 hall-o endstops, 2 humidity sensor boards (one for each filament spool), 1 hall-o zprobe, 1 board for the mosfets, 1 board for the stepper drivers, 1 board for the LPC1769, and 1 big board with an Arduino Mega for all the stuff not necessary for the printer, like leds, smoke sensor, cooling for the electronics, extra thermistors, etc…

Once everything was soldered, it was pain and suffering time!


With the brains in place, the long-awaited moment had finally arrived. Did I wire it correctly? Are the PCBs working? Have I messed something up really bad?


Lights on! (Except the led strips, I’ll install it later)



After some days fighting with the config file, it is printing very well!

It still need a lot of tuning, but it’s printing way better than the college one, I can barely see the layers. And it’s the first thing that I made with my own blood (literally, that’s what happen when you put power tools in the wrong hands), so I'm proud of myself.
I still need to figure out how to solve some calibration issues, and there is a lot of features to include yet, but I really needed to show it to someone.

Hope you guys like it, and if Thomas Sanladerer read this, thanks a lot for all your videos, it really made a difference here.

I call it Tripledoomtopus, but it really is Mansur’s Machine.

Amazing story!
You still want to build the mendel90 with the remote stepper? ( first picture )

I don’t know, the idea sounds nice but I believe the stepper torque could twist the square shafts (I was only able to find aluminum ones) leading to some unexpected backlash. Maybe with the IGUS drylin Q square linear guides this could be possible.
Also, maybe this approach to dual extrusion isn’t the best one, a single hotend Prometheus-like system looks simpler to achieve and less prone to problems.

I’m looking into a way to do it with only one stepper (with a servo toggling the filament touching the idler), but it isn’t my priority right now.

This is great! I'm also designing and building a new printer, and have to say you did fantastic work, especially considering your (initially) limited background. The quality of work, considering, is extremely polished. Keep us updated!

I tried the remote extruder with a square carbon rod, but it ended up with too much friction. Don't remember if I was using bearings like you, maybe that would have made all the difference?

With a Prometheus design you are limited to two filaments, but imagine a camshaft on the servo and many filaments side by side you'd get lots of fans for sure

I photoshopped a wade's extruder following this route a while back, but never digged deeper into it.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/02/2016 04:04AM by o_lampe.

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Apsu
This is great! I'm also designing and building a new printer, and have to say you did fantastic work, especially considering your (initially) limited background. The quality of work, considering, is extremely polished. Keep us updated!

Thanks Apsu! What kind of mechanical arrangement have you chosen for your machine?

Quote
o_lampe
I tried the remote extruder with a square carbon rod, but it ended up with too much friction. Don't remember if I was using bearings like you, maybe that would have made all the difference?

With a Prometheus design you are limited to two filaments, but imagine a camshaft on the servo and many filaments side by side you'd get lots of fans for sure

I photoshopped a wade's extruder following this route a while back, but never digged deeper into it.

O_lampe, that’s a really great idea! I don’t know why it isn’t being explored, since it would be way cheaper than 4 steppers and also easier to implement in the most common electronics too. Even the firmware side shouldn’t be so complicated.
I’m looking forward to upgrade my workshop before doing any experimental development. I only had a couple of screwdrivers and pliers before this hahah.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/02/2016 04:25PM by Dotflyer.

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Dotflyer
I only had a couple of screwdrivers and pliers before this hahah

LOL!
Reminds me of my youth when I built my first RC car from scratch. "Drilling" holes with different sized screwdrivers was state of the art back then.

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Dotflyer
Thanks Apsu! What kind of mechanical arrangement have you chosen for your machine?

Well, I was working on an inverted cantilever delta, where the arms are attached to the bottom frame and bend over the bed. I have a thread in this very subforum discussing it in depth.

Unfortunately, I ran into some very difficult to solve problems with respect to motor placement, actuation mechanism and inherent geometric complexities that led me to turn to something new. Right now, I'm designing and building an implementation of the Tripteron mechanism. As far as I can tell, no one has really built an actual modern 3D printer using the mechanism so far, and that seemed like a fun challenge for me I'll make a thread to track the progress and post some pics/videos.