So close and so much learned...

Final parts and minor revisions are happening to this tank of a printer. Just waiting on a small revision to the Y motor holder and then all that’s left to print is the electronics case and the extruder mount.

This adventure has taught me so much about designing for 3D printing along with the obstacles that come up when you prototype and want things to fit perfectly but want to leave some room for errors.

Key awesome things:

• 2GT belt design. After numerous prototypes I’ve designed a tooth pattern that easily accepts the belt, won’t slip, and prints far better than any tooth pattern I’ve printed. It really does slip in the n the first try and it handles a ton of force without slipping.
• LDO anti backlash nuts. I love them. They are a perfect fit and due to their shape allow for tons of freedom to make sure they’ve been centered. Going forward if I need to design for threaded rods this will be my choice going forward and I may rework the bear X axis to accept them if there is room.
• Tolerances. So many tolerances to learn. I’ve slowly learned what tolerance should be applied to different holes, cuts, and other areas that make printability and final fit much easier. With parts needing to mate together there are time you need some wiggle room or changes so it prints correctly in the orientation it’s supposed to print or you need things to be spot on because it’ll push something else out of alignment. It’s not as easy as lining up all the parts in CAD and saying it fits perfect. Prints are bound by your printers tolerances and settings. They can drastically change the final fit of mating parts regardless of what the CAD shows.
• Printing without supports is a whole new level of mind manipulation. Sure. Designing parts can be easy but can you design them to not only print properly, fit correctly, have the right tolerances, and print without support???? Problem solving is already a step in CAD design but sitting down and solving that problem with the restriction that it needs to print without supports is another fun element and I’m appreciating all those who take their time to design for print without support.

In the end I’m going to make a new GitHub section just for quick helpers in 3D design for 3D printing while also making far simpler CAD designs of motors, pulleys, gears and so on because while grab cad is aweosme the parts are over complicated and many times dimensionally inaccurate. I brought in motors and pulleys and they were off. My trusty calipers and I did all of the heavy lifting and even though the CAD said Nema 17 is was way off and I resorted to just measuring the object and using that as my reference.

The need for simple objects to quickly assess your work exists and it’s easy enough to make it happen so stay tuned for very simple STEP files of motors, pulleys, belts, misc hardware and so on.

All this leads to finally designing a printer. I have plenty of support from key manufacturers to get test products and amazing people with mad CAD skills to help with my questions as I go forward but I need a timeline.

Currently I have to finish 3 printers ASAP. The one I’m currently finishing, a secret one for a soon to be announced to patrons special hotend, and the stock MK3s. After that a Voron 0 which I’ve finished all the part printing for.

This shouldn’t take long and hope to have the 3 main projects done this week. So by end of this month I hope to have a rough draft of what my custom printer will offer on paper. From there it’s off to CAD land to draft the base design and start making parts. You’ll all be along for the ride and I hope to make a really kickass open source printer for the masses so stay tuned!!!