Did anyone make a iDex with dual x gantry bar?

[3D_low]

Did anyone pull that off yet? i havent found one on the net.

I'm talking about a printer that would be similar to the Sigma but with individual X and Y motor for both extruder. One benefit would be the weight saving on each gantry bar. Disadvantage would be the need for another belt and another X axis bar / linear guide. Rest of the printer is pretty much the same and as compact.

Anyone?

[Cata]

You will need another Y belt and motor.

[T3P3Tony]

@3d_low I am curious how you would make the mechanics of this work without collisions?

[dc42]

I am fairly sure that someone has already done this, because I added the Y axis mapping to the M563 command in response to a request to support it.

[deckingman]

I'm using CorerXYUV but that's with the UV axis stacked above the XY axis. In my case the UV carries the extruders and the motors are normally mapped to be 2 off X and 2 off Y but remapped to XYUV for homing only. Not sure if that makes any sense or if it's any help.......

[T3P3Tony]

@deckingman Having them stacked avoids collisions, but having them at the same level is some mechanics I would like to see....

[deckingman]

@t3p3tony said in Did anyone make a iDex with dual x gantry bar?:

@deckingman Having them stacked avoids collisions, but having them at the same level is some mechanics I would like to see....

That sounds like challenge

[dc42]

@t3p3tony said in Did anyone make a iDex with dual x gantry bar?:

@deckingman Having them stacked avoids collisions, but having them at the same level is some mechanics I would like to see....

Avoiding collisions between the two gantries would be the same as avoiding collisions on an IDEX machine, only for the Y axis.

[T3P3Tony]

@dc42 Indeed, however having the two extruders independent could open up the possibility of both of them printing, at the same time, on different parts of the same model.... if they could avoid crashing into each other.. The slicer would need to generate "safe" gcode as well.

[Cata]

I see one on facebook, use duet

[mgrimes1907]

I have an X and a U on two different rails. Haven't put the extruder on the U yet but carriage is there and functional. I have been putting it off because I have to redesign my extruder brackets to allow room for the cooling fan between the carriages.

They are both riding on 40/20 extrusions seperately. I have Two Y motors, an X, motor, a U motor, four Z motors pushing 1000 mm Ball screws, and hopefully soon, two extruders. No empty drivers on Duet or Expansion Board. Heat sinks on all drivers witha 24 volt, 90 mm fan blowing across them.

[T3P3Tony]

@mgrimes1907 Sounds really interesting, I hope you will be able to put some pics/video on the forum?

Btw:

@mgrimes1907 said in Did anyone make a iDex with dual x gantry bar?:

Heat sinks on all drivers witha 24 volt, 90 mm fan blowing across them.

Most of the heat is dissipated from the Duet/Duex drivers through the PCB so the most effective cooling is though blowing the fan across the underside of the board. Very little heat makes it through the top of the driver packages.

[mgrimes1907]

@t3p3tony I know but I have had the "Driver 6, 7, 8. 9 Temperature" Warning several times but not since the heat sinks were installed. All Z motors are on 6, 7, 8, & 9. There are 2.8 amp NEMA 23 as well as the 2 Y Motors. Only X, U, and extruder motors are NEMA 17. They are 2.0 amps each. I have the amperage in the config.g set to 80 % of those ratings. Thinking about playing around with the Z motor amperage as they are growling a bit with mesh bed compensation.

[mgrimes1907]

@t3p3tony BTW , I am not quite sure how to post Pictures on this forum as this is the only forum I subscribe to.

[T3P3Tony]

@mgrimes1907 You can cut and paste them into the chat, or click on the " Picture" icon.

I think they need to be <2Mb

[mgrimes1907]

@t3p3tony !
I hope you can see this. This photo is from the top right corner of the printer looking down you can see the two extrusions with the drive motors on the other end. There is only one extruder on the left gantry rail but you can see the carriage on the right one. As I said before, it is functional. I need to re-engineer my extruder mounts to squeeze the fans in to pass each other.
Thats a print I did last night. It's 205 mm on the X axis, 23 mm on the Y axis, and 300 mm on the Z axis. Its only half the wing. I would print it in one print but it gets a little wobbly with such a small Y axis footprint. 10 1/2 Hrs. print time.

0_1528729507075_b280a8a0-54fd-4153-8f90-5a773f836a94-image.png

[mgrimes1907]

@t3p3tony
One picture didn't show up. Click on the link above the pic to see the overhead shot

[mgrimes1907]

@t3p3tony By the way, I was going for functionality not aesthetics. There are a load of wires to deal with and I really need to mount my Duet down to something, but it works day in and day out.

[mgrimes1907]

@mgrimes1907
The Left side is different from the right side. For weight purposes, they will both be the same as left on final build. Single wall extrusion at 60 mm/sec.
It's not a 3DLabPrint design!

[3D_low]

Here's a sketch of what i'm thinking about.
Extruder move on the X axis like they would normally but each "X-bars" has it's own Y motor making the thing an idex printer. The main advantage of this would be the weight reduction of the x-bars.

It would of course need a DueX5. One could also decide to put in a 3rd bar and use 1-Z, 3-X, 3-Y,3-E motors and take full advantage of the DueX5. It would however need strict rules to prevent crashes