3D Printing for great justice. Now with a shoddy video!

[waffles]

Ive seen people using these things on YouTube to make the plastic parts for other printers. It looks pretty complicated and fiddly getting everything lined up properly, how soon do you think you will be able to start printing?
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Theory test - 19/8/09, CBT - 11/10/09, MOD 1 - 16/8/10, MOD 2 - 27/10/10
Past rides Yamaha XT125X, Triumph TT600, Honda XR250
Current rides Suzuki GSXR 600, Honda MSX125

[nowhere.elysium]

[waffles]

Well whenever it gets done I am looking forward to seeing it working! I don't blame you for being fairly vague with the completion estimate as anything could happen!
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Theory test - 19/8/09, CBT - 11/10/09, MOD 1 - 16/8/10, MOD 2 - 27/10/10
Past rides Yamaha XT125X, Triumph TT600, Honda XR250
Current rides Suzuki GSXR 600, Honda MSX125

[nowhere.elysium]

I'm leaving it at this point for tonight; the next stage requires me to solder things, and I'm a little stoned, and I've had a pint of Adnams BroadSide, which is guaranteed to kill any competence whatsoever with a soldering iron.

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8020/7657810856_62792d66ba_z.jpg
I've got the stepper motors on and the Z-Axis screw drive is balanced up as best I could do. I'll be going over everything again tomorrow, but since I've got to drive my parents and sister to the airport, it'll be from around lunchtime onwards, I think.
Once I've gotten everything properly lined up, straightened out, balanced and torqued, then I'll make a start on the heated print bed.
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'10 SV650SF, '83 GS650GT (it lives!), Questionable DIY dash project, 3D Printer project, Lasercutter project

[beast rider]

I want one, I have no use for it or any idea how to get it to work but I want one.

[Kaneda]

[nowhere.elysium]

Moar progress!

I'm now approaching the end of the mechanical aspect of the build - only got the hot end to work on, and then it's all electronics afterwards.
So, picking up form yesterday - got the headers soldered on to the PCB heater. Notice the tiny jumper in front of the three-way screw terminal. I nearly missed it, which would've been a massive pain in the arse.

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8288/7662295470_fc53261ba6_z.jpg
The heated bed itself was in a pretty shocking state when i got it - I'm guessing that water had gotten to it in storage, or something; it was coated in crap on one side. Here's the comparison between the pre and post-scrub condition. As you can see on the upper right, there's a ton of weird smearing and watermarks.

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8007/7662313892_44b1d5e22e_z.jpg
Fully scrubbed up and screwed to the PCB heater and the heatshield (on the far side).

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8432/7662312638_a152a19254_z.jpg
And mounted to the chassis.

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8423/7662297858_f7c8e29afd_z.jpg
Extruder head stage one.

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8153/7662310498_f7dd33ba8f_z.jpg
Ah. The extruder feed line. This was a complete bastard to get right - you have to compress and screw a 4mm tubular section of ptfe into a threaded steel end. Not a problem in of itself, but reaming out the tube so it can then accommodate the PLA filament was a lengthy job, to say the least.

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8009/7662299500_6d6fb8d25a_z.jpg
Got through the worst of that, and mounted up the sprung bearing carrier, which keeps the filament properly aligned and lightly compressed against the feeder mechanism.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7274/7662301412_5d6484be7b_z.jpg
All mounted up.

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8163/7662308782_bbd921c414_z.jpg
Really visually confusing profile shot

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8006/7662306266_8833065cdf_z.jpg
And an overhead, just for the sake of completion.

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8164/7662303734_71b9a26ebb_z.jpg
Yes, I know my workspace is messy as hell. No, I don't care. It's not a problem for me.

I may have a crack at doing the hot end build today, but after having to do the East London to Stansted run twice today, I'm pretty tired out at the moment. I dropped my folks off at the airport in the car, and then my sister realised that she'd left her glasses behind, thus requiring me to get back to their place, and then return to the airport on the bike within an alarmingly short period of time. Much fun.
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'10 SV650SF, '83 GS650GT (it lives!), Questionable DIY dash project, 3D Printer project, Lasercutter project

[nowhere.elysium]

Just finished doing the initial assembly on the business end of the printer:

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7257/7664074952_8bb558a0b3_z.jpg
The larger hole in the lower photo is for the heat-generating resistor, and the smaller one is for the thermistor. Quite an elegant design, in my opinion.

https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8008/7664077206_fbef9809b3_z.jpg
Not much other progress to report. I'm debating using CAT5 cable, instead of the supplied ribbon cable, largely because it's a bit more robust, and I've got a lot more of it, so I can experiment with different routing options.
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'10 SV650SF, '83 GS650GT (it lives!), Questionable DIY dash project, 3D Printer project, Lasercutter project

[Aff]

.35 or .5 nozzle?
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Current Bikes:Honda 929RR Fireblade, Honda CD200 Benly (Project), Stomp Z2 140
Electric Bike Project

[nowhere.elysium]

[Aff]

If it turns out to be 0.35 or less you need to be really careful about keeping the filament clean, I've lost 3 hot ends due to the .35 nozzles getting blocked by dust then imploding.
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Current Bikes:Honda 929RR Fireblade, Honda CD200 Benly (Project), Stomp Z2 140
Electric Bike Project

[Aff]

[nowhere.elysium]

[Aff]

A short melt chamber wont affect deformation or build up too much, deformation is normally caused by a poor thermal barrier between the hot end and cold end. Build up is normally caused by blockages and/or crystallised (overheated) PLA/ABS in the nozzle.

The main reason for different length melt chambers is so that you can customise the extruder to your needs.

e.g. A long melt chamber will give a greatly increased print speed. However the drawback is a greatly increased ooze rate, which you cant really stop.

A short melt chamber gives much higher accuracy and allows you to do much thinner layers in comparison to the nozzle diameter, it also has a very low ooze rate. You pay for this with greatly sacrificed print speed.


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Current Bikes:Honda 929RR Fireblade, Honda CD200 Benly (Project), Stomp Z2 140
Electric Bike Project

[nowhere.elysium]

[Aff]

It wasn't a criticism. Just sharing my experience. And I've learnt the hard way to keep the filament clean

I had the same thoughts as you when I made my first. But its very situational, high accuracy is brilliant when you need a good finish or are doing difficult prints. But it soon gets boring watching it infill at 30mm/s. That's why I changed to an all-rounder so I can't print at 120mm/s but still get a relativity good quality. In an ideal world it would be nice to have easily interchangeable hot ends.

Anyways I'll shutup now and stop overtaking your thread.
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Current Bikes:Honda 929RR Fireblade, Honda CD200 Benly (Project), Stomp Z2 140
Electric Bike Project

[nowhere.elysium]

I didn't take it as such, mate. I definitely agree on the whole 'slow printing = boring printing' thing, but as I say, quality is the important thing to me. Given the size of the objects that I'm going to be working with, I require precision - I'm also interested printing functional mechanisms. I've already got a few designs sketched out, which will make use of precision gearing at the very least.
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'10 SV650SF, '83 GS650GT (it lives!), Questionable DIY dash project, 3D Printer project, Lasercutter project

[Shaft]

I'm curious about this thing.

Does it use plastic that would be robust enough to replicate a fairly fine thread?
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Things get better with age; I'm close to being magnificent........
20 RE Interceptor, 83 Z1100A3, 83 GS650 Katana
WooHoo, I'm a Man Point Millionaire! https://www.bikechatforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=234035

[Noxious89123]

Cool project, will be watching this!

What are you thinking of using it for? Something for your dash?
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'06 Honda CBR125RW-6 ~ '00 Honda CBR600F-Y ~ '07 Honda CBR600RR-7 ~ Bikeless
'53 Ford Ka 1.3 ~ '03 Vauxhall Astra SRi 1.8 ~ '52 Vauxhall Astra SRi 2.2 ~ '53 Vauxhall Astra GSi

[nowhere.elysium]

[Shaft]

I was thinking of low volume reproduction of plastic car parts (eg gear lever knobs) that are long since NLA.

If it could be done, there's a semi lucrative market out there, that could be tapped.
____________________
Things get better with age; I'm close to being magnificent........
20 RE Interceptor, 83 Z1100A3, 83 GS650 Katana
WooHoo, I'm a Man Point Millionaire! https://www.bikechatforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=234035

[nowhere.elysium]

[Shaft]

[nowhere.elysium]

[Aff]

The problem is that you would have to coat it in something to make it look original, you will always have visible layers otherwise.

About threads - An M10 is printable but not very strong, the main problem is that you will have a single layer on the tip of the thread with a very small contact layer with the layer below it. This means that the threads will break down under any sort of usable pressure.

However you can be very successful with internal threads if planned properly. If printed with the "grain" of the print (hole printed from base to surface), screws will self tap in-between the layers and create a fairly strong thread. If you print the hole against the "grain" (hole printed as a side profile), you can run a tap down the hole, if done at the correct speed you will melt a perfect thread into the hole and this can be very strong.
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Current Bikes:Honda 929RR Fireblade, Honda CD200 Benly (Project), Stomp Z2 140
Electric Bike Project