Railcore II - 5 axis printing possible?
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Hi all!
I just watched a review of the Railcore II (which is an absolutely impressive machine btw) and I was wondering if you could combine its ability to tilt the bed with an experimental non-planar slicer. This is not something I'm going to attempt soon since I don't have this printer (only in my dreams) and I think it would need some hardware changes like ball joints at the bed leadscrews. Furthermore, the non-planar or even 5-axis slicers are experimental at best. The idea of this kind of 3D printing of course also applies to other machines that have three independent leadscrews.
I'm just wondering if the Duet could handle it and if there's even demand for something like this... What are your thoughts?
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the railcore can not tilt the bed on its own.
they just turned the railcore to say it can print on its side.in the duet you can already define additional axis. so if you use those for additional rotational axis and the slicer creates the correct g code for that, then the duet can handle it.
this topic has been discussed multiple times on the forum
e.g
https://forum.duet3d.com/topic/10934/5-axis-3d-printing/27 -
They don't show it in the video but the Railcore II probes the bed and then adjusts the three bed leadscrews to correct for any misalignment of the print surface relative to the XY plane. So yes, it can tilt the bed although its only for leveling, not for real tilting by several degrees (which would need some hardware changes as I mentioned).
The link you posted is indeed something very interesting although the picture and the video show only the 'classic' non-planar printing in XYZ. My idea was that you could expand on this capability by being able to extend the clearance range of the nozzle and the toolhead by tilting the print surface 'out of the way' -
Hi @Eumldeuml!
I missed your post, and I'm wondering if you dug further this idea?
I'm thinking to rebuild a CoreXY machine with 5 axis, and tilting the bed as you describe seems an interesting way...
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@fma Sadly I haven't tried anything of what I mentioned since I don't have the hardware (or the money and the time...).
But I think the problem mostly comes down to software while the hardware isn't nearly as challenging. -
I was thinking that it is not that easy to implement, but someone did it:
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But thats different from 5 axis printing
To level the bed with more than 1z axis is quiet easy. See:
https://duet3d.dozuki.com/Wiki/Bed_levelling_using_multiple_independent_Z_motors -
This design allows large tilt angles of the bed, not just a few 1/10° to level it. It has been designed with 5 axis printing in mind (read comments).
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@fma You are right, that's why I asked the initial question (we closed the loop, so to say :D)
A printer that tilts the bed to tram it is already a 5-axis machine (or more like a 7-axis machine, if you count all the axes of the printer). What's missing is a software, that allows for non-planar printing and is fire-and-forget like a regular slicer. Still a long way to go I guess...
