I realize, looking back now, that it’s far past time to issue an update. Give me a moment to recount where I was last time.
Okay. I’m not going to go too in depth on anything. This is just to catch up.
The big printer is nearly finished.
I ordered all the parts – many more not even pictured.
After a couple failed attempts with a hacksaw, I went and bought a proper metal band saw.
I got everything cut to length, drilled, and tapped as necessary.
While these manual taps work okay, you’ll end up with a very sore hand after a short while. These combination drill / tap bits are great. I got these at Harbor Freight, and was shocked to find them in metric size. Insert the drill end slowly and straight, wait for the thread tap part to “grab hold” and it will pull itself in. Don’t push. Make sure to use a little cutting oil each time. It’s messy, but it will greatly prolong the life of your bits.
The frame is assembled.
Additional parts are printed.
Linear rails are cleaned.
All of the parts go together, motors go on.
Duet boards go in.
Belts are sized and installed.
Limit switch mounts are printed as an afterthought.
A new stand is built.
The printer makes its first moves.
The aluminum tool plate arrives. It was very poorly packaged, but the company was cool to eventually refund my shipping charges.
The silicone heat pad is added, and the new PEI spring steel build surface from Fulament arrived just the other day!
And that’s where I’ve gotten to at this point.
Next steps are to get a mount printed for the cable chain that will guide the wires for the bed heater and thermostat. I also have a few little pieces to print for various electronic parts. I have some junction strips, and I have the solid-state relay for the bed that need mounting. And then the wiring finished between them. And THEN getting the umbilical cable and all the wiring done up top. Set up the heaters in Duet web control, and then fire it up for some test runs.
Challenges
There were some design changes made. On the printer, I went against my initial decision to use 3D printed pulleys. I had no way to be certain, but I just wasn’t sure they were going to work as well as metal. I redesigned a few things and ordered metal ones.
For the longest time I had issues with belts wandering up and down the idlers. After learning more about them, I realized that due to how they are made, it’s somewhat of a normal and unavoidable thing. They were tending to bind and make bad popping and rasping noises as the carriages approached the sides. I tried a number of different alignment techniques, and eventually ended up using several bearings with a flange bearing on each end as the idlers.
Getting that fixed, and also determining that I was off by just two teeth on the front belt helped to get things in order.
Changes
The inspiration behind creating this new larger 3D printer – the aspiration to build a CNC, and the need for parts larger than what my Ender 5 Pro could print – also changed a bit.
I decided in lieu of designing something from scratch, for the time, being, to start on a PrintNC; a proven design. Working on this showed me how much work there was to creating a design from scratch. I wanted and NEEDED to get going quicker.
While it initially seemed a little overkill, I eventually warmed up to the relative simplicity of the PrintNC, and the robustness. It was ultimately going to end up being something much quicker to production.
Fairly recently I finalized my plans, ordered the kit, and went and picked up the steel the other day. The project has certainly not been without its challenges. I will share more about that in upcoming posts.
What’s Next
I’m sad to say that the Ender 5 Pro I’ve relied on for the past several years has reached its breaking point. It has been a real trooper, and is beginning to show the length of its engineering and needs some repairs to continue to function.
Given the size and capability of the new printer it may seem silly to pour money into this one, but honestly it’s been a great little printer, and does many things well – and it’s nice to have two printers in case one ever goes down or needs new parts printed. I upgraded a couple years back to the MicroSwiss direct drive kit. It included a new gantry plate, an all-metal hot end, and the necessary hardware.
It has worked well, but the hot end has always been its weak point. There’s several parts to it, and switching a nozzle often means that things get loose and then have to be tightened back up. Clogs have been a constant source of frustration, and are probably what has slowly added up leading to the demise of the extruder driver, and possibly the extruder motor as well.
As it is, XYZ functions all work, but E will run a little, make horrible grinding noises, then cease to function for several hours.
The frame of the unit is solid, so I’ve decided to upgrade it by replacing the decent but subpar Creality board with a Duet 3 Mini 5+, new OMC Stepper Online steppers (just to get a fresh start), and a new Bondtech DDX extruder with a Slice Engineering Mosquito hot end.
The order has been placed for those. Beyond waiting for those to get in, the only other thing has been waiting on parts to come in for the PrintNC.
More to come soon, on this project, the Ender 5 Pro upgrade, and the PrintNC as well.