CubePRO DuetWifi + Chimera hot end
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I started this project about 2 months ago and finally got it running well. I had the DuetWifi on an FT-5 before giving up on it after a bunch of hardware failures. It was my 4th printer and just too unreliable. I decided to go a different route. I found this 3D systems CubePRO single online for a reduced cost because it had broken electronics. That was fine with me, I wanted something open source and figured this was a good place to start.
I peeled the stock controller, hot end, and extruder out of it and replaced it with a DuetWifi, Duex5, custom headed bed, 2 Bondtech BMGs, Capricorn tubing, and a Chimera hot end.
It is running at 24 volts with a mains powered heated bed and chamber heater. It has 1880 watts of total heating. During the initial heating of the machine it pulls so much current… I have not tried running the steppers at the same time to see max current pull but it would be interesting to measure.
I am really impressed with the machine and the Duet is just an amazing board. I couldn't be more impressed.
I made the bed just slightly too big to fit the stock nozzle cleaning basket, I have to still design a new one. This also forced me to relocate the chamber heater.
For a hamegamer this is a heavy printer. It weighs in at just over 115lbs. It is very rigid though, I need to find a more rigid table to put it on now. Missing in the image is my 7" PanelDue that is "remote" mounted using a coil cord and has a flashlight built in. I will have to share that design when it is completely finished.
The one downside with my current set up is the length of the bowden tubes. The oozing has been harder to control than I was hoping but single extrusion prints are looking really good.
E3d just release the water cooled chimera. I might have to upgrade and cool all of my steppers at the same time to be able to run the chamber even hotter...
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sounds interesting, i will run e pretty simular setup (2x water cooled chimera (one v6 hotend and one with vulcano hot ends)
what chamber temps do you run?
my goal is to reach about 100-110°C in the chamber,
but i am not sure how to properly set up the chamber heating system.
i have 6 silicon heaters 30x30cm with 750W each,
still have to figure out how to control them so they dont start heating on full power
when heating up or it will propably blow my fuse (standart is 16A 220V)Phil
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I am only running about 40C for my chamber temp. I have started to experiment with higher but I started having skipped steps in my print. .
Why do you have so many heaters? If your enclosure is decently sealed it should only take one of those to get to 50C really easily(unless you have a huge machine). I would think two could get you to 100C without issues. My heater is 600w and can easily get my chamber to 70C in under 5 minutes. Now thats not what i would call a "soaked" temp but atleast that is most of the air around the printing head.
If you are going to run 100C chamber temp you will have to also cool the filament path to the hot ends as the teflon tube and filament will start to get soft and can cause issues with force required to push the filament. This was the technique used by older stratasys machines.
Make sure you have a fan blowing air across the heaters in a manner that will cause a forced convection current through your machine and place a thermistor about level with the XY gantry, maybe a bit lower.
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the heaters are for the heatbed (300x300mm, the heatbed itself is 610x930x6mm Aluminium), i picked 6 so i can heat the entire heatbed or just parts of it, when printing smaller. I will check the chamber temps with just the heatbed running.
I havent really thought about the filament getting soft, i might have to run some test when warm is to warm
most of the pieces missing for my printer should arrive next week so i can run the first test.
thanks for your input
Phil
