3D Printer with Servo and screws
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Hi,
I recently published and article on LinkedIn about a printer I am building with an DuetWifi as controller. The machine uses servos instead of steppers and ground ball screws instead of belts and is made from sheet metal. This will allow for high accelerations and speeds.You can read the article here and I will write some more articles as work progresses:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6380746839829942274/Urban
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hmm..would really read it BUT you have to be member if linkedin.com to read it…BIG NO-GO...better host it anywhere else..or at least make it open for puplic...
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Interesting project… I'm currently undertaking a very similar project and the sheet metal has become more complicated then initially thought.
For example, the large radius bends on the corner of your machine are difficult to get manufactured. Most benders do not have the tooling to do larger radiuses and will charge extra for tooling. Most benders will also not handle the metal well, and you'll have extra costs for clean up and finishing.
If you want to go down the sheet metal route and still keep costs low then I highly suggest getting different extruders, hotends and nozzles as this will take up a sizeable chunk of your budget. Many printer manufacturers make their own proprietary systems for this exact reason (as well as creating a market for spare parts).
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Barracuda72: The membership is free but controlled by linkedIn. Eventually I will host it myself, but you get a lot of contacts on linkedIn.
GeckoBox3D: I will do the big radius bends with step bending, 4 deg each step. This is not perfekt, but hopefully good enough for a demonstrator. The powder painting will be structured, so this will hide some of it.I will stick to the standard extruders etc for now because it is to much work designing and testing them for now. The big cost is the servos and screws. Then it depends on if you want to compare to a Prusa or a Stratasys, 1000€ or 50 000€.
I used fusion360 for sheetmetal, and it has worked better than expected. Do you have any pictures of your design?
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Hi Urban
Can you post the information into this thread for those who are less keen on social media logins?
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Barracuda72: The membership is free but controlled by linkedIn. Eventually I will host it myself, but you get a lot of contacts on linkedIn.
GeckoBox3D: I will do the big radius bends with step bending, 4 deg each step. This is not perfekt, but hopefully good enough for a demonstrator. The powder painting will be structured, so this will hide some of it.I will stick to the standard extruders etc for now because it is to much work designing and testing them for now. The big cost is the servos and screws. Then it depends on if you want to compare to a Prusa or a Stratasys, 1000€ or 50 000€.
I used fusion360 for sheetmetal, and it has worked better than expected. Do you have any pictures of your design?
You're quite right about the budget, but anything over £3000 has to be quite spectacular in my opinion. The Ultimaker 3, Robo R2, BCN3D sigma or Raise3D N2 are all around the £3'000 mark and are very capable printers. If you want to go more expensive then this, then you need a novel approach or high reliability, or more likely both. Your servos and ball screws will only give incremental improvements to reliability where as a heated chamber and well set printing profiles will go much further.
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I published the article on my own website as well. The link is here:
http://blackghost3dp.com/articles/
GeckoBox3D: My goal with the project is to make a really good printer and see what it will cost. A limited heater chamber is included, but not hot enough for ULTEM and other high temperature materials.
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I'd echo the comment in the linkedin article that what you are building is a high cost, high performance printer. There is nothing wrong with that, but apart from lowering cost by using sheet metal everything else is high spec. A low cost printer is around the $300-500 price point. But I am sure it will be a good machine given its specifications.
