Posts made by zakfarias

@t3p3tony Ah okay just pulled up the BoM spreadsheet for one of my older machines to double check; 2A 84oz and I usually run them around 1.3A and never beyond 1.5A since since I like to cap at 75%

Since the machine is a tool changing machine with 4 Tools; the gantry carriage is designed such that you have to home Z without a tool mounted (all tools in their parking docks)

This is similar to the E3D Tool changer design mechanically since that machine was the original root inspiration when I started this years ago.

Intention is to have machine home XY and then check if a Tool is mounted via the endstops on the docking points (still need to figure out firmware side of this)

If a tool is mounted then park it before homing Z
else if continue to homing Z at the predefined homing location.

This same endstop will also be used for auto leveling/mesh probing the Z-stage (3 independent Z motors control the Z)

After which it can then pick up whatever Tool is needed and do the print job (Tools nozzles hang below the Gantry carriage) Just means I have to get a pretty precise reading for Toolhead offset for Z axis rather than having a probe on each individual Tool.

Just the usual Nema17s that I've always run. Don't remember the specs offhand since I just have a massive box of identical ones but they are on the higher end for torque specs and as such are a bit larger. But not like I am running Nema23s or Servos.

Hello and good day!
I'm popping back in again after yet another long hiatus.

Finishing up the physical build on the latest addition to my workshops stable; which is another 3D printer but this time with a 4 tool changer.

What I am wondering with all the current Duet electronics; is what full array of goodies should I be gunning for to suit my build best? I haven't done a from-scratch build in a couple years due to on-going issues concerning my heart and nervous system and all the machines I have are running Duet Wifi with OLD firmwares [like June of 2018 firmware(if it works it works)]

General gist: Fully enclosed CoreXY 4 Tool changing printer with 400x300x700 print area with a 900x500x1200 footprint before factoring filament spools.
The machine is structurally built entirely from aluminum plates, milled aluminum parts, a couple milled steel parts, and aluminum extrusions. No load "bearing" part is made of plastic. Now miscellaneous stuff like mounting points for Power supplies and all are 3D printed but any structural piece and any part of the motion system is made from aluminum or steel. All the parts are already made so there is little room for flexibility/changes at this stage.

• CoreXY motors (2)

• 3 Z motors

• Endstop mounted to gantry carriage that is used for homing Z and probing Z.

• 1 endstop attached to each Tool Docking location to use for safety check (kind of need help on figuring out the config to have machine do a safety check to see if/what tool is being held so that it can determine if it needs to park a tool before homing/probing/etc) (So, 4 endstops here)

• 4 Extruders (Bondtech BMGs)
  -> 2 driving mosquitos
  -> 1 driving standard E3D V6 for supports/miscellaneous materials
  ->1 driving an E3D Volcano
  -> means 4 more hot end fans as well

• 4 Berd Air setups for nozzle cooling

• Probably sensorless homing on XY but not sure on that. Mounting locations have been pre built though in case i go to physical endstops. (entire machine is built from aluminum plates/milled parts/extrusions so the build is somewhat set in stone now)

• Tool changer motor (its basically using the E3D setup for their backplate/changer with everything forward of the servo plate being rebuilt and modified from ground-up to suit my needs)

• 12V Water cooling pump controlled by a relay triggered by the board for cooling XY stepper motors

• Older PanelDue i5 (think I bought it in 2019 when I first started this project before health went sour)

• Keenovo heatpad 110v (400mm x 300mm)

• Bunch of miscellaneous Fans for cooling electronics and the likes

• Probably missing a few things that are slipping from my thoughts at the moment

I'm a big noob with the newer electronics for one and have been away from the 3D printer game for a long while besides just operating my existing machines for whatever work comes my way. I was looking at Duet 3 since its the latest and greatest and using the Toolboards mounted to the back of each stepper BUT I am not sure if I have the room to mount it without hitting the brackets (if pancake is 25mm body depth or I use spacers to make the Toolboard be at least 25mm away from where the motor mounts to the carrier plate then I am good for clearance but it does mean losing my cooling fins on the the stepper)

Thanks and much appreciation for anyone that chimes in to help! Just don't want to overbuy on electronics and have like a grand worth of Duet electronics tossed together randomly if it is not necessary or is redundant.

So, I popped up again a little while ago to reintroduce myself since I have been away from 3D printing for a good while due to health; but I'm back and diving right back into an old tool changer machine design I had been working on to add to the stable. Most the motion system and etc are all plotted out and prepped but I was sitting in my office the other day and had a concerning thought about Tool Parking.

I know the general thought process with Tool Changers is to just follow a pre-start routine and make sure all Tools are parked and none are on the gantry but how much effort would it be to make the Duet check? I tend to run production batches on my machines when I'm open for business and sometimes things can get hectic and someone might forget or neglect to do a pre-start routine.

I am not terribly familiar with macros on Duet (never really had a need for them since most my machines are "set them and leave them")
But as an initial spitball idea:
Machine: CoreXY with 4 Tools that use kinematic coupling and grade AH magnetic holders.

Could one perhaps put an endstop, maybe a modified optical or laser, for each Tool where they are parked to trigger and identify Tools as "parked"
And any Tool that isn't shown as parked could have Duet home machine XY and then park the missing Tool before initiating any other Gcode operations?

I know, for my machine layout, a hard mechanical endstop may be difficult to make reliable because my "Tool Parkers" use a trapping mechanism to help disengage the Tools from the gantry, but, then the Tools hang loosely on the parkers after gantry disengagement (still trapped from falling though until gantry re-engages)

And as usual; sorry if I ramble and go on tangents or hard to read. I tend to just let my thoughts run rampant while I type.

Started reading over some of the stuff you linked, and I'll have to jump on that discord for fun, but man looks like some major evolutions have taken place. Even more exciting to get back into the swing of things with all these advancements! And oh hey I recognize the Jubilee!!! Although back when I first saw it under development it had no name and was just a motion test system.

Well guess I need to start reading over all the Duet documentation for the millionth time in my life to see what all is new and improved.

And then try to scour the forum to glean some ideas from others on how they approached some things.
Still not entirely sold on independent Z leveling either. The idea is great and really does a bang up good job on helping out on some design archetypes, but if you are running 3 Leads synced to one motor with a Mic6 tooling plate bed with thin glass on top you largely will never come out of alignment once you manually level once [and I don't have to worry about the whole IR misreading old print residue/aquanet and messing up first layer performance when I go into production mode (I make small parts in production batches for a few local mom and pop shops still and would like to try and get my hobby business up and going again now that my health is improving)]

But I am open to the idea of building to be able to accommodate both my normal z setup as well as being able to freely convert to independent Z leveling just to give it a try as long as it doesn't prove to be a hassle to use efficiently.

So, due to some health issues regarding my heart and blah blah blah I haven’t been here in a couple years nor have I really been inventive or active with the 3D printing community and my machines.

I’m now getting back to a healthy enough point where I am ready to dive back in and finish hammering out a design that used to bug the hell out of me in the back of my mind. Problem is…I may or may not have totally forgotten some of the finer intricacies of Duet hardware, coding, firmware, setups and etc.

A little bit of background:
By trade I am an injection mold designer and Cam programmer for 2 and 3 axis machines in a decent sized machine shop. I got started in the RepRap movement many a moons ago as can be seen if you walk into my workshop and see the skeletal remains of dozens and dozens of printer and CNC projects that slowly became the byproducts of evolution across the years.

The machine goal: Multi Tool changer CoreXY overbuilt and overengineered to an extent that anyone working in the sales department would say “Who in the bloody hell let the engineers have no restrictions?!?!?”

(I’ve come to realize it isn’t quite as inventive as it used to be since E3D and friends have all started to put out similar products which I totally haven’t stolen some inspiration from now that I am back in the groove; albeit a little bit of a clumsy groove)
The main iteration of this machine is intended to be stupidly overdone. Why? Because even though I have built dozens of machines I largely only use a small handful for their specific “strengths” and I’d like to take all the good stuff and downsize to using a single “all purpose machine of machines” that can focus on high speed production, large formats, high detail, fine detail, blah blah blah the operator’s wetdream scenario kind of deal. After I satisfy this itch to build a machine that can stand above all my others I will of course revisit the Design and BOM and make it an “accessible” design catered to Reprappers with more off the shelf and off the printer parts and pieces.

The first iteration though will be all off the shelf parts or machined parts utilizing my Sphinx or at work CNCs/Bridgeports/and Lathe to produce the parts.

The CoreXY motion system will be inspired by the E3D design but using things such as precision shoulder bolts and less cantilever aspects blah blah blah not tooooo worried about that stuff.

The main things that concern me is the Duet, wiring, setup, and actual usage.
Build Volume: 400mm x 300mm x 500mm
-Aluminum Extrusion Skeleton
-Enclosed
-24V oversize PSU feeding a junction block that breaks off to converters to 12v and 5v to run accessories like the excessive amount of water cooling.
-Aluminum plates to hold the XY system to be “singular”
-A bunch of other small QOL like painless belt tensioning and leveling (I don’t really want to use the 3 independent Z-leveling unless I have to), fire detection, thermal circuit breakers for the bed, water cooled stepper motors
-Z-axis: 3 linear guides driven by single Z or 1 maybe 3 linear guides driven by a single Z motor synced to 3 leads
-Mains powered Silicone heatbed (considering using 2 smaller ones to have independent "zones" for when I don't need the whole thing heated but not sure if it is really worth the hassle and what setup is needed both on firmware and slicing side)
-Berd air for part cooling because huge fan of it on my other machines I built before health issues.
-4 tool changer:

The plan is for the machine to have 4 kinematic coupled tools (design in progress)
*2 tools using E3D-V6 hotends with a water cooled cold side that will be lathe built. Extruders being Bondtech BMGs since I’ve always been a Bondtech fan sponsor me please. Intention is for these nozzles to usually be 0.4mm and used for multi color/multi material/ or just multi-roll jobs.
*1 tool will be E3D Volcano being driven again by a Bondtech BMG. Will probably use the same Water cooling setup for this one too as the E3D-V6. This will be the structural work horse and when a job needs to be fast build time and doesn’t have or require fine details

*The final tool will be a support material or unique material slave such as TPU. It will probably follow the same format and be Bondtech BMG driving a water cooled E3D V6. Or maybe I’ll be lazy and slap the Titan Aqua I have lying around on it.

So all in all I think the only fans in the entire printer will be PSU, Duet, and Exhaust since all motors and hotends will be water cooled. which should help tremendously with maintaining a controlled printer environment.

How is firmware and setup pain going to be here?
Plan is for Z axis to home to the Z-plate and not the bed with a mechanical Endstop. Reason for this, as I have painfully learned on some of my other machines, is that if I am running a large number of parts in succession I don’t clean the bed in between each one. Since I mostly work in PETG, once I lay down some Aquanet I can run about a dozen rounds of a part before I need to clean and reapply…or just spray another coat down and worry about cleaning later. The issue with this though is on my machines that use IR sensor homing and leveling I get misreadings on the Z as the Aquanet layer and print residue builds up which hurts first layer performance. So I was thinking of just sticking with manual leveling the Z and utilizing the mechanical endstop of the Build Plate. And just leave options in the design to convert to IR sensors on each Tool. Or do more fancy and elegant solutions exist now?

So if anyone has any, "hey look out for this or you are going to need to do this" or "Why don't you just do this" advice I am ready to absorb all of it and get back into the swing of things! especially in regards to firmware and slicing with the new generation toys since I'm a wee bit rusty now.

Also looking for ideas on what to use for Enclosure panels. Originally I was going to go with melamine and perhaps hydro dip it carbon fiber, But alas in the states melamine is near impossible to source, especially in thinner sheets. Could go HDPE but not sure how it will hold up with the printer's chamber? and I can't hydro dip it as nicely so stuck with that base HDPE look. Plan is whatever material I can source that can hold up to the temperature abuse and look nice I'll toss on the Sphinx and cut it out.

Also just as for fun:
What all else is new, fun, and exciting with the additive world and Duet hardware?
I haven’t been around for a long while and last I recall Duet community was transferring from 1.17 -> 1.18 I think. So no idea what kind of hidden gems have popped up. I did periodically lurk to peek at the Railcore design every once in a blue moon though.

Apologies for the blurb and most likely horrible sentence flow with abstract random ideas interjected. I am kind of just letting my thoughts ramble as I type bad habit of mine

Wow, so it looks A LOT different around here nowadays (haven't been here since the updates)

Short and to the point, I have a piece of absolute garbage known as a Sigmax from BCN3D.
I also have an absolute marvelous piece of technology lying around from one of my retired machines, mhm, yup, a DUET WiFi; and it needs a new home.

I believe most of my issues with the Sigmax, asides from the grinding, locked up, misaligned Z-axis is firmware issues.
I would like to do a clean install of a Duet into this thing, however, I am curious about how to maintain a few features. Being that it is IDEX, it uses microswitches on each head to calibrate the heights of the nozzles as well as home z. Furthermore, the built in UI has a pretty nifty system for calibrating the X-axis alignments, z axis offsets per hotend, and Y-axis alignments in regards to each hotend. Also want to be able to maintain the duplication mode printing (most important detail). It also uses 2 x axis endstops (one for each hotend)

Anyone familiar with this? As the machine currently is in its stock form...it is useless.
All prints lean the first 5mm, no matter what adjustments are made.
It's loud
It's noisy
Did i Mention it is loud?
Amongst other issues, it is also the only non Duet machine I own. Oh besides that stupid Delta thing gathering dust in the closet.

Sorry if I rambled at times, I kind of type as it comes into my head.

Hopefully DC chimes in here again, I am wondering if the main use gantry (call it Tool #1) can be true CoreXY and then have a second smaller carriage (Tool #2) ride along with it that has a small Nema motor to drive it in the "x" axis? Kind of a hybrid coreXY and cartesian. It would use the same XY axis but the second carriage is driven in the "X" independently. I don't know if I am making sense right now.

From a molding/tooling background; when I say shoulder bolt I mean a precision shaft with a smaller thread at one end. Say a 5mm shaft with a socket head cap screw head and m4 threads at the other end. Amazing how many things have the same/similar reference. Just what we have always called them around the shop, i think we are supposed to call them stripper bolts.

Anywho, I agree on the diamond findings (I've followed your blog for a while now) which is why I have always been leery of going to a mixing hotend. Not sure if I have the same level of virtuous patience to handle those headaches as you.

@bikingviking
: No problems with the hijack, it is all very relevant to my issues. I am hoping for higher quality performance over the railcore(which is in the list of top 10 favorite designs). A lot of what I am doing with the sandwiched tool holding plates and using shoulder bolts instead of regular bolts for pulley guides makes up for its longevity issues.

@all

Looking at diamond, I could run a 3:1 but its air cooled and I would basically run a gantry system stacked similar to @deckingman. However, I noticed reprap.me has a 5:1 that is watercooled…a little too many inputs (weight on secondary gantry) in my opinion but it is water cooled...Running a monomaterial would be great but multi-material is limited. Not a bad thing but at this point the design has so much $, time, and CNC work done on it that you may as well go for over the top performance.

I could run cartesian IDEX and just reconfigure my frame accordingly, however, with my minimum build volume requirements it would be a massive megaton of weight to sling around 2 AQUAs on a heavy duty large gantry.

Dual coreXY seems to be all fun and games, of course the machine footprint becomes massive to maintain build area with 2 dual rail gantries. Hmmm, belt routing with the current setup might become even more conflicting though, plus would need a helping hand on the firmware config.

Using the filament monitor and having it pause/resume/even notify when there's a runout would be nice and simple. However, what happens if the new roll of filament has a different diameter say 1st roll is perfect 1.75mm and the second is 1.73 or 1.72?

@DC42 I would definitely be interested in a few of the monitors, even if they don't make it into this build I would definitely use them on something.

Side note; I use S3D for all slicing mostly because of how many machines I manage and easy UI. Wanting to reference this since it does effect some of the optional routes to go.

Okay so back on the topic of the belt system,

I have hit a minor/major problem. Minor problem with a major fix. The machine has gotten a little ambitious with build volume for certain parts on the agenda. As in,I am going to run out of filament long before I run out of build volume on some prints, especially if I were to run volcano at times. That and when running any kind of need for support material I would be forced to run the same material as support, creating a lot of cleanup and waste.
So…
1.)convert to cartesian IDEX
2.)Try to butcher together a CoreXYU IDEX and probably fail miserably
3.)Dual extruder on the main hotend (blahhhhhhhh)
4.)diamond...unfamiliar to me and would require setup like @deckingman or bowden (and I reallllllyyyyy suck at tuning a bowden since my previous bowden builds have all required 600mm+ bowden tubes)
5.) Run the titan aqua as the "main hotend on the plate and come up with some sort of system to raise and lower a secondary bowden style or nimble based hotend that runs support material only. Mayhaps a servo driven e3d-v6 mounted on the same gantry plate as the AQUA?

I really would like to run IDEX but the motion system starts to become a headache for me if wanting to maintain coreXY

In US I see CNC INC on Amazon has some 800mm long 1mm lead, assuming single start. I already have the 0.9 degree motors. Those would put me at 6400 steps/mm though. Probably should plan to buy more 1.8 degree steppers instead.

Maybe use 0.9 degree for XY on one of the lighter C-BOT variants.

Still musing over how to mount an Aqua if I go that route. It doesn't look user friendly for someone mounting to aluminum plates/my current revision of the gantry. I'll have to post the newest version here later tonight for musing.

I've looked at the aqua. If I had a plate spaced below the top gantry plate then I could use it,(so that nozzle sits below gantry rails.) However, mounting it has me a bit concerned.

On the lead screws, I find it hard to source reliable screws which is why I have always settle with using openbuilds. ( that and I have several of their machines) However, their screws steps/5mm are always something like 1 percent off on all builds. Which would mean if need to calculate that into gearing. Hmm, may be better off trying to source some 2 start 1mm leads.

On gearing. Haha duh blonde moment here on me!

Planning weight on gantry (including x rails and braces) is stretching into 3-4kg territory.

Well I redrew everything as was discussed above, and I am starting to fall in love with the layout

In order to fit the pulleys into the design with a gantry plate bolted to the top of two hiwin rails with 4 cars on "X", I did have to switch back to 6mm belts. Oh well.

For fun I am going to try the e3d threaded heatsink mounted to a small triangular aluminum plate which is then bolted to the gantry plate with spacers. This should allow quick swaps between the v6 and volcano as well as moderate adjustments on heatsink height by swapping spacers.

However, a new problem arises as I lay everything out back into my frame (roughly). The heatsink is kind of split, 2/3 of it below the gantry plate (3/16 thick 6061) and the other third is above the plate. It looks pretty but cooling is looking to be a bit of a pain since the machine is enclosed(hot) with there being a chance of active heating (currently planning for passive heated chamber). I could make a light duty enclosure box to mount to top of gantry plate (pretty and allows a fan to force air over everything) but still only contacting a third of the heatsink. Pretty sure that won't be enough

Instead I could also drop the heatsink lower and have the cooling set up under the gantry plate and between the linear guides. However, I dont like the swaying down there or the risk of cooling the nozzle. Water cooling would be great, but out of all of our machines at work our lathe (due to age and wear) is more of a lathe like object and can't be trusted with tight tolerances.

One thing I really do like about this design (dual rails with belts on center) and how it is wedged into the frame is that I should be able to easily run drag chains now (light duty). This allows me to enclose the top of the machine far easier than I was anticipating otherwise.

@DC42

Quick side note: The Z stage is currently 3 12mm rods for guidance with 3 four start 2mm leadscrews (openbuilds) Since it seems the true auto leveling has evolved tremendously, I will run all three screws independently with 40t on the motors (.9 degree) and 20t on the leads. This should give me the proper gearing for 0.01mm resolution, I believe? I would run straight 4:1 ratio with 1.8 degree motors but I can't get a clamping style pulley(which is also GT3) for the leadscrews smaller than 20t and an equivalent GT3 style motor pulley maxes at 60. Say worst case scenario, the bed is 10-12kg and the motors are setup as so…is it enough? Motors are 17HM19-2004S.

Just had an idea while eating breakfast at the diner. I wonder how bad acceleration, jerk, and overall speed would be affected going to two "cars" on the y axis and two hiwin rails on the "x" I mean in reality I don't need high print speed since I primarily print PETG, Polycarb, and ABS; I just like maintaining the capability.

If I did that I could actually clamp belts on center very similiar to your machine (which is top 3 favorite builds just saying) Currently My setup has the "X" rail bolted to a 1/4" thick 6061 plate that is bolted to the "y" rails. I work in a tool room as a mold designer/CNC programmer so the plan is to cut 2 parallel 1/16" deep groove on the backside of the aluminum along the entire X-axis and PUK weld in 3/16" rods to act as gusset ribs. With my current setup it would be a classic single rail with the hotend hanging off the front (e3d v6 driven by a nimble with a quick swap option to volcano) With the gussets added I figured that would make the gantry stiff enough but now I am wondering about dual rails instead with the hotend mounted on a plate in between like yours (except linear guides instead of v-slot.) I would still have the 1/4" plate with gussets underneath, just going to two rails instead of 1 as well as two cars on the "Y" to spread the load on the aluminum "x" gantry. Side thought this would also allow me to swap back and forth between the bondtech bmg and nimble as well.

End goal of this machine is to replace a highly frankensteined and worn out D-bot that acts as my main large format machine while all my other printerss are smaller scale for small productions. (small hobbyish business) That being said, high surface finish and accuracy is the ultimate goal. Speed is an afterthought since my speed is limited by filament anyways.

@dragonn Well a lot of the design was based around the e3d tool change design. The main difference being that the pulleys are sandwiched between two plates rather than being cantilevered. Toother and smooth idlers. And the stepper motors are separated from main drivetrain.

@deckingman Awesome to see you chime in here! With the way my carriage is attached to the X-rail the belts below the hiwin rail are actually center to the carriage. (Y-rails are upside down while the x rail is right side up) The belts marked in red are going from a secondary pulley to the motor so that the motor is separated from the main belt runs, allowing higher tension without loading the stepper motor radially(probably overkill but wanted to be sure I could achieve proper tensions with the large build area and 9mm belts)
I haven't redrawn the carriage but it is 1/8" aluminum plate on either side with 30mm spacing in between. So, in my current layout the belts attach to the outside of the carriage on either side. Hmmm, I wonder how much effort it would take to re-align the pulleys to be center of the rail? I've just always used the pulleys to the front and back since my first machines were all C-BOT variants. I am just concerned with how the belts would attached to the carriage plates like that.

To mount it, I would have to increase the offset between the pulleys in the "x" direction so as to allow room for the aluminum spacers between the pulleys and aluminum plates.

Oh, also not shown is that the two pulleys in the very front are mounted in a slide track with a forward tension bolt that allows them to be precisely tuned for tension by threading the bolt in/out (rather than the C-BOT method of grabbing the belt on the carriage and pulling it tight with pliers/etc)

So, I have been working on designing a new machine for a while now. I had already modeled the frame/ enclosures/ wire paths/motion and etc. BUT then e3d released that sneak peak at their tool change design! Now although the tool change is fascinating I found myself liking their idea with the belt routing and hiwin attachment (except the cantileved pulleys of course) I took a look at my frame design based around "L" misumi extrusions and realized I could very easily use twin aluminum plates to make solid pulley mounts similar to e3d.

The reason for this venture is that all my parts are machined aluminum for this design, My original concept used no fewer than a dozen cnc'd brackets that would need careful tramming. I can do this easily enough but it is a lot of machine setups on the cnc to address all the needs. However, using two plates with pulleys/spacers sandwiched between allows everything to be done in 2 machine setups.

I started laying things out and came across one problem with the coreXY mechanics and wanted an opinion on if the belts on the carriage can be aligned the way I have them. It is a stacked belt design using 9mm gt2 belt. The issue/concerning area is that the front smooth idlers on the Gantry bar are 13.75mm closer to the center of the machine in the "x" direction compared to the toothed idlers on the backside. All other pulleys line up parallel as well as perpendicular. The axis are driven by motors indirectly (for higher belt tension since this machine should be about 400mmx400mmx650mm build area. )

Another note, all the pulleys are below all the hiwin rails!
I rough drew the belt path freehand in paint real quick

I am trying to tie up some design aspects on a new 350x350x550 coreXY build I've been working on when I realized I hadn't considered adding a chamber heater.
What ideas are some of you running with? Safety is the #1 priority of course followed by a clean and professional look.