Busy weekend

Last weekend was a very busy weekend printer wise.

I know I have been bad at updating and taking pictures.

I picked up a Raspberry Pi last payday and I installed OctoPrint on it, I can now monitor, control, print etc. from anywhere I have a network connection.

A 3D printer is basically just a serial controlled robotic device, I know that is a mouthful but what it means is that it is brainless... now it has a brain but only for where to move, when, when to extrude plastic, what to extrude etc. but if I gave it a model to print it would not know what to do with it so you have to basically send the model sliced up one command at a time from a computer or save the sliced up model to an sd card and then plug the sd card into the printer and then it can print, so basically if you don't use an sd card you have to have a computer hooked up to the printer at all times tying up your computer and so if windows reboots for an update in the middle of the print you just wasted the print.

Enter the OctoPrint and Raspberry PI, it is a mini computer that costs around $28 and it now can play go between, now I can just send my file to it over the net, completely control the printer manually moving the head and bed around, changing the temperature, monitor the print via webcam, send custom commands etc. from anywhere I have a network connection whether it be my phone or a pc at work.

I printed a case for the Raspberry PI.

I printed some fan brackets to mount a fan to cool off the main control board.

I printed some spool holders that I created, I will toss up some pictures of them later.

YODA!!!!!!

I finally am getting things dialed in.

I printed him in white ABS, .3mm nozzle, .1 layer height, he is 30mm tall.

I took some pictures before his acetone fum sauna, and after.

Timelapse Video:

Pre-acetone sauna:

  

Here are the after the acetone sauna pics, he spent just a wee too long in the sauna.

Getting the hang of this a little more each day.

Why?????

I keep getting asked "Why build it, why not just buy one?" Several reasons:

1. I modeled mine off of the Ultimaker printer which is a $2200 dollar printer and most of my parts are identical to that one so I can get as good if not better prints for $600 that I was able to get a part here and a part there instead of coming up with all at once, and which I could have brought down by making it smaller, getting all chinese parts etc but I wanted it to be a rock solid tank when done.

2. I will in the end have a built a printer with a bigger build platform and height than most desktop printers without to huge of a bigger footprint, it is about 1.5 times bigger wide and deep and 2x taller than the Ultimaker.

3. It was built my way, the way I thought it should be with the latest design in the XY carriage (corexy) and anything that went not right since I was designing it could easily be modified.

4. One of the biggest reasons is the learning experience, if I bought one I would be just trying to figure out how to get the best print out of what I have, instead I was able to think more of "How can I physically get the best prints that I possibly can?" and once that was done then I could push it even further by then sitting down and pushing the envelope by tweaking all the settings and software to get it above and beyond what I already managed physically.

    Not to toot my own horn but Chris and I were both amazed at how my out of the box, not tuned, no parts replaced so just my wire ties and hot glue was turning out better prints than a lot of things we were seeing on Thingiverse, we both are excited to see what it can do decked/tweaked out.

5. Goes with the above reason, I am not trying to figure out how something works that I bought, I have learned by creating it, I know every screw, bolt, rivet, belt, pulley, gear, etc. on my printer, I now know what it does, how I could make it better, how it interacts, I know the software settings in and out (especially after doing the auto bed leveling and wasting seven hours to fix in a tweak that others said was nothing and didn't work... it worked, changed that tweak and fixed in seconds what I spent seven hours trying to tweak/configure to get it to work.) I know the sounds, clicks, clunks it makes and know just by listening when something is not right because I was the one that did it, not someone else.

6. And the MOST IMPORTANT reason, the one reason to rule them all....... 

BECAUSE I CAN!!!!!!!

Last Paydays Modification... Light it up!

There are modifications of course to be made, the printer is by no means at the end specs that I want.
The first and cheapest modification was lighting it up to make it easier to see and work with, I purchased some LED flexible strips, I bought the double density 600 LEDs per meter, unfortunately I can't run them at full 100% brightness because as the bed heater that draws 15 amps kicks on and off very rapidly to make the bed stay at temp it drops the 12v ATX power supply down from 12 volts to 11.5ish which causes the lights to strobe extremely annoyingly so I went to radio shack and bought a variable voltage regulator for a buck and a half and adjusted it to just below the lowest voltage drop and now they are on solid, it didn't dim them too much just a bit.
(For those in the know, no a capacitor wouldn't work, maybe a cap and a diode but the cap would have to be very large.)

Here is the light strip that I bought, you can cut them to length anywhere there are copper pads.
  XKTTSUEERCRR 3014 SMD 16.4Ft 5Meter 600LEDs 120Leds/M Cool White

I put them along the front sides and top of the build area, this is what it looks like now.

 I can't put the front on until I make a new ribbon cable for the display, that is as far as it reaches right now, it came with a very short cable.
Here is what the entire thing looks like so far.

Time to replace the bed.

My bed was made out of aluminum angle iron, I thought it would work so well, well I was so wrong, it was very flimsy even with extra bracing and rivets, my friend Chris came to the rescue AGAIN and slapped me together a new bed out of maple, it is very strong and very stable.

Here are the parts that are being replaced.

Here are the replacement parts when they finished printing, four shaft holders and a anti-backlash nut, it is not the one I actually used, the one I used was the same model but I redesigned it just a bit making the bottom nut not locked into place but able to float up and down so that the spring could actually push it against the threads making it an actual anti-backlash setup instead of a "Sort of" one.

 And as normal I suck at taking "As you go" pictures (sorry) so here are pictures of everything in place, I purchased last payday the two bearings that I had originally wanted but they were out of stock so I had to use something else until I got them.

Next up will be auto bed leveling (I did the lighting last week just forgot to post about it).

Quick video of it printing

The title says it all.

Feeder gone wrong!!!

This is my feeder that I made out of some nylon plastic sheet:

I printed a new replacement part but it didn't turn out to good, I put it in place and used it to print another one to replace the not so good one, I woke up all excited for my new parts to replace my feeder etc. um.... yeah..... no.....
I woke up to this:

And this is all the plastic I woke up to on the floor instead of turned into my part:

It popped apart, I had to hold it together with clamps to be able to print another one.

I have had nothing but issues printing a new feeder, the old one would chew the plastic to the point it no longer could grip the plastic to feed it through and would stop printing, it would jame and break the filament, it would spew the plastic filament out the side, it was a nightmare, took me several days and like 12 prints to get it to turn out a complete feeder.