Titan Aero MakerSlide mashup

This is a “simple as I could make it” mounting bracket for E3D’s Titan Aero to a Makerslide carriage plate. It is made from 2″ aluminum angle iron (2″ x 2″ x 0.125″ x 93 mm long). It was made using a drill press, table saw and an inexpensive compound slide milling table. It probably could be reproduced with a drill motor and hack saw.

The goal was to make it as rigid as possible while keeping the weight down. So far it’s been tested using ABS, the original NinjaFlex and PETG. All have printed well thanks to the Titan Aero. Pretty happy with the purchase so far. Note: no affiliation with E3D, just glad quality parts are being developed and sold for open source printers.

Here’s a photo of the completed bracket:

 

And a dimensional drawing in case someone would like to reproduce it::

The Makerslice Wheel Carriage also requires some modification (or some shims between the two brackets) to create clearance for the extruder’s gear. Here’s the end result of what worked in this instance:

Once the brackets are complete, they were bolted together and the Titan Aero assembly instructions were followed to complete the project.

Here’s a short video of the setup printing a calibration model in ABS:

Quadrature encoder for Power Wheels gearboxes

completed_gearbox

These additions to a Power Wheels gearbox along with some open source software and an Arduino allow for sensing how far the gearbox has traveled and in what direction. It counts ~1228 “clicks” per revolution of the output shaft. For Sketchup files or .stls go here. For instructions on how to proceed with the modification click here.

Yet Another Bowden Extruder

Main_image

This is an extruder designed to be used with 3mm filament in conjunction with a Bowden tube between the extruder and the hot end, to help reduce the mass of the moving print head.

The design objectives were to provide for a way to reduce the lateral loads on the gear reduction output shaft, securely mount the tube to the extruder (and the tube to hot end), expose the hobbed gear as much as possible for inspection and cleaning, keep filament centered as it enters tube and finally, be made from easily accessible parts.

It uses a 5.2 to 1 gear reduction nema 17 stepper motor, a modified compression fitting to solidly hold the PTFE tube in place and Airtripper’s fuel line based tensioner. It mounts on a 20x20mm aluminum extrusion.

This 0.1 version has been working on a delta type printer for approximately 4 months now and has been solid so far. Retraction settings have been the most challenging obstacle, it seems as if every brand of filament acts slightly differently.

Future modifications: eliminating the compression fitting and directly threading the PTFE tube into the filament guide would be first in line. A fast release would be handy. Could be much more compact. Integral filament wiper…

The STLs are here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:142977

Instructions are here: https://thefabfor.com/yet-another-bowden-extruder/

Ready for Launch

RetroRocket44

Retro Rocket 44 by Cerberus333 on Thingiverse. (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:126895)

Three’s a charm it seems. The first two attempts were too hot and showed it. The third one, while not perfect, is an improvement.

 

Laughing Buddha Timelapse

Here’s a video of http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:29188 compressed down from about 3 hours to a minute and a half.

Printed on a delta type printer in ABS.

The bed of the printer wasn’t mounted tightly enough horizontally, causing the strips across his belly.

A Thing a Day

koch2_200

As a relative newbie to 3D printing I need lots of practice. So I’ll be posting something newly printed each day. Here’s the first one.

It’s one of  hakalan’s scripted vases (search “scripted vase” in thingiverse.com) printed at 300mm (11.8″) tall.

Other print info.:

0.20mm layer height

MatterHacker gold PLA

40mm/sec. print speed

0.05mm jHead hot end

homebrew printer & extruder