Ultimaker Evolved
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Here is my heavily upgraded Ultimaker Original.
My recent upgrade to Duet Maestro control really brought it into the modern era.
Essentially every non-metal/wood part is my own design, and I actually have the whole thing built as a CAD assembly for ease of designing new parts in assembly context.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCCw3QC3H-k
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She's got a face only a mother could love! Only joking, looks fantastic and superb effort. Best thing is all the fun replacing and improving all the bits. I made a clip on head that would give a direct drive option whenever I needed with a bit of custom firmware to drive a second feeder. Great thing with Duet is not needing to do this using new firmware. I really do like your feeder arrangement though.
I've just replaced the board on my UM2 with a Duet 3 after the mainboard blew with that common 5v reg issue. I have a 5v reg to fix it but this was the perfect chance to give it an upgrade. Will post it up soon.
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Looks very impressive, neat, and unique. I like the rotating extruder mount, it solves a real problem with the bowden bending. A few questions if you don't mind.
- Did you design the extruder? It looks different.
- The Bowden looks fat. Is it 3mm filament?
- The two Mad Max steppers stick out. What is the design idea here, compare to the original?
- How does the Ultimaker mechanics compare with a typical CoreXY? (speed, backlash, accuracy, etc).
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@zapta said in Ultimaker Evolved:
Looks very impressive, neat, and unique. I like the rotating extruder mount, it solves a real problem with the bowden bending. A few questions if you don't mind.
- Did you design the extruder? It looks different.
- The Bowden looks fat. Is it 3mm filament?
- The two Mad Max steppers stick out. What is the design idea here, compare to the original?
- How does the Ultimaker mechanics compare with a typical CoreXY? (speed, backlash, accuracy, etc).
Good questions.
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Yes, I designed both the extruder drive and the print head. The extruder drive now has Bondtech dual drive gears and uses a planetary geared stepper motor for extra torque. I have tried a lot of iterations of extruder drive position, including hanging above from a cord, with the idea of reducing bowden length, friction, and force exerted on the print head. This latest design, mounted high-central on the back inside a printed bearing to allow rotation is the best yet. It allows the bowden to take the curvature of least resistance and it is relatively short.
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Yes, 2.85mm filament. Trying out this Capricorn tube material.
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The steppers are sticking out the side and back, because they are now direct driving the shafts. In the original configuration, the motors are mounted inside the frame and attached to those shafts with another set of belts. Those additional belts just cause more friction and drive lash. Plus the motors won't cool as well. I also changed the original MXL belts/pulleys to GT2, which is a better design for motion control.
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I'm not too sure about comparison to CoreXY. Ultimaker, with this standard cartesian control, has been long known for its high speed and great accuracy.
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@CCS86 I was also looking in ways to shorten the bowden tube and also came up with the idea of hanging the extruder on top of the printer. But your design also looks very interesting! Do you mind sharing the stl files for the extruder mount?
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@Komet said in Ultimaker Evolved:
@CCS86 I was also looking in ways to shorten the bowden tube and also came up with the idea of hanging the extruder on top of the printer. But your design also looks very interesting! Do you mind sharing the stl files for the extruder mount?
No problem.
BearingStepperMount.rar.txt
(just remove the .txt extension and extract)I played with hanging the extruder, from the ceiling to start, and then from a frame mounted tripod. I found it hard to control the extruder drive from flopping around during certain print motions, and filament changes were a pain. This solution is much more liveable for me. I only run a 2.5mm retraction, which I think is pretty good for a bowden setup.
