Ulti_printer 200×300

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

Busy making 12 E3D hotends for these two printers I just made. Lucky me I have a lathe and a mill.
To give an idea of the prices : Heatbreaks are made out of SS bolts M6. One box 50psc cost about 12€. Buying just 1(!) heatbreak from E3D would cost me 11.50£
Same story with the heatsinck, heaterblock, nozzles.
Now I have to wait to assemble and finish these hotends because the PT100 thermistors are out of stock..

Making these hotends myself saves me 32.4€x12 = 389€

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited By Chris Baetens on 02/07/2017 21:47:08

[Nick HulmeParticipant @nickhulme30114]

Hey Chris, they're nearly perfect!

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

Nick,

….. nearly…?…

[MKParticipant @mk72051]

Good work on those! I had to make my own as well, but fitted a PTFE tubing inside of the heatbreak.

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

In my case the PTFE tubing also goes into the heatbreak, but only 5mm deep.
that's why the 4mm drill at the upper side of the heatbreak.

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

A few of my selfmade fast removable hotends…

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Very neat – bowden tube ones, I assume?

Neil

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

No Neil, no Bowden at all. This printer has a direct drive system on board.
The PTFE tubing is just to guide the filament to the top of the printer. What I did was install the reel of filament at the bottem of the printer(The reel is installed flat and is supported with ball bearings of course.). I did this because I do not print very often very high things. So most of the time there's lots of unused space at the bottom, logic not, to use that empty space..?. Only if I want to print a large(high) part I remove the reel and hang it at the side( front) of the printer.
I hope it's clear…

Chris

[Nick HulmeParticipant @nickhulme30114]

Posted by Chris Baetens on 17/07/2017 20:44:48:

No Neil, no Bowden at all. This printer has a direct drive system on board.

So there is either a drive in the head which we can't and haven't seen or each hot end has it's own drive?

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

It indeed looks like having a Bowden system on board, but the PTFE tubing has a completely other reason of existence. I wanted to install the filament reel into the printer housing itself. Most of the time I print stuff about 4" to 5" high. There's lots of unused space in that printed. So my reels are (inside)at the bottom of the printer, horizontally(takes less space) supported by ball bearings of course. To guide the filament near the top of the printer I use that PTFE tube you're mistaken for a Bowden. Works really nicely btw. So the filament is pulled by the direct drive all the way up, no problem there.
Like I told before I have a set of 6 interchangeable hotends with different nozzles. The direct drive itself stays fixed in the XY-carriage. Only the E3D(clone) is swapped. Together with the E3D-clone goes the fan, PT100, and heater cartrige. My pall Guy made me a few very tiny PCB to make that connection between hotend and XY-carriage. So while inserting another hotend into the XY-carriage, contact is made immediately and automatically. Only two little screws to fasten the hotend..done..!
The few times I want to print a large(high) part I remove the reel, hang it in front of the printer and I can print as high as 230mm.(almost 10&quot.

[Nick HulmeParticipant @nickhulme30114]

But the reason everyone makes the same assumption is that you don't show your drive or it's position or function and leave it open to speculation based on your vague description.

[Ian PParticipant @ianp]

I suppose I should Google it as I have no idea what 'hotends' or 'heatbreaks' are. I think I can sort of imagine that the hotend is the actual printing nozzle but why would you need so many of them?

As to the hotends, why cut up perfectly good M6 bolts when it appears that quite a large quantity could be made from a 1m length of M6 threaded rod.

Ian P

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

Nick,

Huuu…? I think it's all but a vague discription. I think the first pictures in this thread explained it all. Or am I missing something here…?

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

Ian,

A hotend is the complete assembly, that heats up the filament in the lower region of that hotend and at the same time cool it in the upper part, to keep it from jamming. This pictures shows 3 hotends with different nozzles. The hotend with the smallest nozzle(0.4mm) is for very small prints or prints with a very smooth perimeter, say accurate work. The thickest nozzle(0.7) is for printing very large parts, very fast, or in case perimeters does not have to be very smooth. I'm busy making hotends for even faster printing, I'm thinking of 1.2mm nozzle and even bigger..

The heatbreak is the specific part in the hotend (in a E3D that is) that separates the hot from the cold zone. It is made of stainless steel because SS has the least heat-transfer conductivity of (almost) all metals. The recess in the the threaded part is very narrow and also very thin. That's why there's almost no heattransfer(in combination with the fan of coarse)

I used these bolts because I had no further use of them, but also because these bolts have a partly smooth part. I needed these smooth parts to secure it in the lathe without destroying the threads.

[Nick HulmeParticipant @nickhulme30114]

Posted by Chris Baetens on 05/08/2017 23:11:18:

Nick,

Huuu…? I think it's all but a vague discription. I think the first pictures in this thread explained it all. Or am I missing something here…?

Filament drive mechanism?

Not evident, photos don't enlarge when clicked so I can't zoom in either.

I know you can see it but put yourself in the position of the engineer who built the machine and wrote the manual, you obviously can't see past your own assumed level of knowledge

– Nick

[Nick HulmeParticipant @nickhulme30114]

Posted by Chris Baetens on 05/08/2017 23:39:26: I needed these smooth parts to secure it in the lathe without destroying the threads.

I used an ER40 Collet Chuck to machine my throats from Stainless threaded bar, you can safely hold the OD of threads without damage using a good ER40 Collet Chuck

– Nick

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

Nick,

What's a ER40 Collet chuck..?

Indeed in the pictures I posted so far there's no specific and detailed picture of the drive mechanism itself. I'll post some more detailed pictures later on.

Chris

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

Here are a few pictures about that drive mechanism. I hope it's all clear now.
Most of the parts are printed with my old printers(Prusa i2), only a few are done with my (first) Ulti-Printer. So most of the parts are not high quality parts, sorry for that…

This is my 200×300 Ulti-Printer loaded with a 300mm(1&#39 PLA reel

The filament is entering the PTFE tubing

PTFE tubing supported by a bracket

..PTFE + PLA going up…

In a curved path entering the XY-carriage

To have a free running PTFE tubing without any friction at all I added 2 small ball bearings in the upper green part of the XY-carriage. The PTFE tubing is almost touching the hobbed pulley and the ball bearing. That hobbed pulley is also selfmade, so I could make it's diameter as small as possible(5.5mm!!) The steppers axis diameter is 5mm.

Detailed view

Don't let it confuse you, this is a view looking down on the XY-carriage from my second printer,(completely printed in black), sorry for that…. You can see(barely) one of the ball bearings(guiding the PTFE) in the circular part.

About that interchangeable hotend system, these are the two electronics parts I needed to solder on the little PCB my pal Guy made for me.

One of these little PCB's are mounted in the XY-carriage itself. At right cabling leaving the carriage

The second PCB is mounted onto the hotend. To be on the save side Guy drew a dual lead for the heater on the PCB. Better save than sorrow.

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

Update on this one(been away for a while).
Started using bigger nozzles. I use a (selfmade) fast interchangeable hotend system. First I tested a 0.7mm nozzle which gave me rather good prints. But I got stuck at that size. Problem was not enough heat to allow smooth passage of the filament through the heaterblock and nozzle fast enough.
My goal is to print with nozzle diameters 1.0mm up to 2.0mm and at the same time go fast.
Solution to this problem is generating more heat, so I made myself a Volcano(isch) heaterblock. Advantage of that system is that the heatercartrige is place vertically instead of horizontal(like in the E3D-V6 heaterblocks.
So the filament is heated over a longer distance in the heaterblock of that Volcano.

First test done with a 1.0mm nozzle and it worked very nicely. I'm not 100% satisfied with the result. I had to reduce printspeed and raise temperature to 240°C(for PLA) to have perfect perimeters.
Started to make me a 1.2mm and also a 1.5mm hotend/nozzle.
I also had to replace the 30mm axial fan on the heatsink by a 50mm radial fan. The duct supporting the fan is also replaced to match the radial fan. Cooling of the heatsink is far better now.

First test with the 1.0mm nozzle printing PLA.
**LINK**

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

Another test with that 1.0mm nozzle.
And before you shoot me on this one…
I know, this little guy is not intended to print with a bazooka-like nozzle. I just wanted to test it anyway, see what happens…

First one is printed with 1mm nozzle, 0.8mm layer, temp 240° speed:55mm/s Time : 16min
second is printed with 0.4mm nozzle 0.2mm layer, temp 225° speed:80mm/s Time : 1h52mi
Both PLA

0.4mm and 1.5mm nozzle side by side…
Time to make me a hotend with that large larger nozzle and print that little boat again.

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

And this is how it looks like in my printer.

Duct for the heatsink cooler

Apparently rules of the forum not to post long posts..
So I had to split this post in a few separate posts, sorry about that.

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

First test with a 1.5 mm nozzle this time.
Perimeter looks very good in fact almost perfect. Except that the 'Z' axis does not move in a continuous motion like it always does like in all my previous 'Spiral Vase' tests. Very strange.
This behavior result in a rather strange regular pattern at the corners of this testobject.
Very first test is done at 55mm/s but that did not went well. So I had to lower speed to 35mm/s. Some extra tests are needed here to find out how to raise that printing-speed again.

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

Forgot to mention : Layer height a whopping 1.2mm..!

[Chris BaetensParticipant @chrisbaetens16442]

Why that strange pattern at the corners..?

The lift at the 'corners' of that testcube in the movie is a normal phenomenon. The reason I discovered it only now is because my pal Guy was intrigued too and performed a simulation with a regular nozzle, say 0.35 or 0.4mm. The result is exactly the same only on a smaller scale, hardly visible.

To perform a Spiral Vase test I always quickly draw a real cube. This time I drew a cube with rather large fillets at the corners. When printing a 'real' cube the lift occurs exactly at each corner and will pass unnoticed. But in my case the lift is spread over the entire fillet, resulting in that strange pattern at the corners.
I discovered also that the lift is continuous over the perimeter of the entire cube indeed, but lift during straight walls is very small, almost negligible. Most of the 'Z' lift do occur at the corners. Very strange behaviour. That path is only visible while zooming in(on screen) during simulation.
If I had chosen a cylindrical shape for my 'Spiral Vase' test I would not have noticed that fenomenon at all, neither would I have seen it with a regular cube, with 'real' corners.

What I discovered also is that this strange pattern in these 'corners' make these cubes lots stronger, very stiff.
​​​​​​​And what's more I think that pattern looks rather good too..

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