Creality CR-20 IDEX modification
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As some may remember I was looking for a Duex2/5 expansion card recently, to change my Creality CR-20 to an IDEX setup using the mechanical kit from enderidex.com. Kane from SEN3D was super friendly and sold me the kit without the control board and wiring since I wanted to continue using my Duet board and RepRapFirmware (yes, RRF would run on the SKR Pro board that he sells, but I wanted to continue using the board I had. I had a short moment of considering Klipper but then I decided not to). The kit comes with a replacement 2020 extrusion for the X axis which is a bit longer than the original to allow full print volume with the original print head carriage (a bit less than full for me because of my non-stock partcooling setup).
Anyways, mechanical conversion was painless thanks to the kit -- almost all problems were from me running a dual Z setup (which I was able to switch to independent Z again with the Duex -- I lost a driver a while ago running way too much current through a miswired pancake stepper), and forgetting to ask Kane to include the endstop cable for the U endstop.
The mechanical conversion was a breeze thanks to the detailed documentation. The longest step was printing the Duet/Duex case I am currently using (but I am considering moving the boards into the underbed enclosure again because there is enough space. All I need is to design and print the right kind adapter). Wiring everything up is a bit of a challenge because I don't want to redo all the wires. As such my setup currently looks a bit janky with the case half ajar behind the printer. But there are worse fates (-:
Configuration was also pretty straightforward, except for a couple snags -- most of which I was able to solve by re-reading the IDEX instructions on the wiki. With RRF 2 I can't seem to assign anything other than E0stop as the endstop for U -- not a problem, but a surprise. Fan4 on the Duex didn't want to cooperate, so I switched to Fan8 which works well as a thermostatically controlled heatsink fan.
I've done some initial mechanical tests (homing, axis moves, PID tuning), but no calibration or printing yet. My bed is reasonably flat and the second hotend carriage is height adjustable, so I guess I will be able to continue without a z probe or two (I'd finally give those underbed piezos a whirl if I were to try something on a multi nozzle setup).
Next steps are: redo the wiring so that the cables don't get in the way of printer movements, calibration, upgrading to RRF3, designing and printing those board adapters for the CR20 enclosure, adding a 12864 display.
Photos:
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I hasten to add my thanks to @T3P3Tony who helped me out on the hardware side as well!
