Thought some might get a kick out of this. In 2015 I was lucky enough to start 3dp with a Printrbot Simple Metal like this, one of the earlier consumer 3d printers of note but built in the spirit of openness, you could download the source for the software on it, and Brook Drumm was always around on twitter to help with his product. All he really wanted was for everyone to start tinkering with 3dp. Early on I wrecked my extruder nozzle experimenting with printing in strimmer line (the glass fibre reinforcement damaged it) and he offered to post me a new hotend free from the states even though I was really clear it wasnt a product fault but operator mad tinkering. :
In 2016, it had grown to having a oversize non standard heated bed in mic-5 alloy, and a xbox360 psu with ssr to run the bed and a octoprint print server, the ubis hotend had given way to a e3d with a custom spacer adaptor I made on the lathe and noga fans and a few other tweaks. But of late the print quality has been getting bad, and I've gotten frustrated with a still fairly small build volume and a single extruder and its always been exciting to print flexible filament.
I love my little printrbot, so decided to try and address the issues (and maybe pick up a Ender-5 plus to core-xy convert...), and thought it was time for a bit of a refresh again.
This is where things have started to go a bit amiss with the usual feature creep. And maybe its going to need to be renamed a Printrbot Simple Heavy Metal 3dp
I have a 380mm z height build volume now, one of the things the printrbot simple has suffered with is a bit of Z axis instability with printed z axis stabilizer designs being passed around, so as making it taller will only make this worse I've added a 3rd vertical rail to brace it in 3d, and the top of the axis stabilized with a plate & the Z axis leadscrew captured in a bearing, in this shot its wearing one lasered out from ply to test the measurements but the final one will be milled from 10mm thick 6082 after a few design iterations to accomodate 2 extra extruder mounts etc. The heated bed has a magnetic pei surface plate and I have 3 extruders, two bowden and one direct drive. The Y I've attached more solidly with extra fasteners, and during strip down I discovered the reason for my print quality problems, the Z axis springy coupler was too springy, and the Y axis stepper pulley was loose on the shaft.
For the Z axis leadscrew, the original is imperial being a american printer, but I've gone with a close to original metric pitch screw but larger diameter. On the printrbot the Z axis nut is machined into a square delrin block that mounts the Y stepper to the uprights, so I made a new delrin block, drilled it slightly smaller than the minor diameter of the screw, and ground the end of the screw into a taper on my surface grinder, and hand ground flutes into it using a dremel with cut off wheel to make a rough tap. It worked great, so great it was a bit tight so I polished it to size with some solvol autosol, then cut off the modified excess of the leadscrew. I needed to relieve the stepper front face to miss the screw as it was fatter as I discovered assembling it when I went to put the Y stepper back in, the original design being super optimized in ways I didnt realize it seems... If I was doing it again, I'd make a larger delrin block and space the stepper away instead but I got away with my bodge.
To run the 2nd and 3rd extruders, I've added a extrudrboard daughter board from the original repprap project and laser cut a case for it to mount in front of the Z brace.
Ive added filament break sensors connected to the octoprint server, which will pause the print if a filament breaks so it can print unattended and I need to adapt the design for the roller fairlead I made for the top to now accomodate 3 filaments not 1.
I'm waiting for alloy raw stock and wiring/fans for the extra extruders to appear to finish, and I need to make a brace to replace the G clamp as I measured the Y and the original stepper mount is sagged badly without, but I'm happy with how the conversion is progressing so far. I'll post up when I finish the next stage and do some test prints.
Worth doing? probably not, but I like tinkering, and its a bit like hot rodding, you take a older dated thing that you really like, and improve it.
In 2016, it had grown to having a oversize non standard heated bed in mic-5 alloy, and a xbox360 psu with ssr to run the bed and a octoprint print server, the ubis hotend had given way to a e3d with a custom spacer adaptor I made on the lathe and noga fans and a few other tweaks. But of late the print quality has been getting bad, and I've gotten frustrated with a still fairly small build volume and a single extruder and its always been exciting to print flexible filament.
I love my little printrbot, so decided to try and address the issues (and maybe pick up a Ender-5 plus to core-xy convert...), and thought it was time for a bit of a refresh again.
This is where things have started to go a bit amiss with the usual feature creep. And maybe its going to need to be renamed a Printrbot Simple Heavy Metal 3dp
I have a 380mm z height build volume now, one of the things the printrbot simple has suffered with is a bit of Z axis instability with printed z axis stabilizer designs being passed around, so as making it taller will only make this worse I've added a 3rd vertical rail to brace it in 3d, and the top of the axis stabilized with a plate & the Z axis leadscrew captured in a bearing, in this shot its wearing one lasered out from ply to test the measurements but the final one will be milled from 10mm thick 6082 after a few design iterations to accomodate 2 extra extruder mounts etc. The heated bed has a magnetic pei surface plate and I have 3 extruders, two bowden and one direct drive. The Y I've attached more solidly with extra fasteners, and during strip down I discovered the reason for my print quality problems, the Z axis springy coupler was too springy, and the Y axis stepper pulley was loose on the shaft.
For the Z axis leadscrew, the original is imperial being a american printer, but I've gone with a close to original metric pitch screw but larger diameter. On the printrbot the Z axis nut is machined into a square delrin block that mounts the Y stepper to the uprights, so I made a new delrin block, drilled it slightly smaller than the minor diameter of the screw, and ground the end of the screw into a taper on my surface grinder, and hand ground flutes into it using a dremel with cut off wheel to make a rough tap. It worked great, so great it was a bit tight so I polished it to size with some solvol autosol, then cut off the modified excess of the leadscrew. I needed to relieve the stepper front face to miss the screw as it was fatter as I discovered assembling it when I went to put the Y stepper back in, the original design being super optimized in ways I didnt realize it seems... If I was doing it again, I'd make a larger delrin block and space the stepper away instead but I got away with my bodge.
To run the 2nd and 3rd extruders, I've added a extrudrboard daughter board from the original repprap project and laser cut a case for it to mount in front of the Z brace.
Ive added filament break sensors connected to the octoprint server, which will pause the print if a filament breaks so it can print unattended and I need to adapt the design for the roller fairlead I made for the top to now accomodate 3 filaments not 1.
I'm waiting for alloy raw stock and wiring/fans for the extra extruders to appear to finish, and I need to make a brace to replace the G clamp as I measured the Y and the original stepper mount is sagged badly without, but I'm happy with how the conversion is progressing so far. I'll post up when I finish the next stage and do some test prints.
Worth doing? probably not, but I like tinkering, and its a bit like hot rodding, you take a older dated thing that you really like, and improve it.
