Large-scale 3d printer

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epicepee
Excellent!

One minor trick that has helped my bed heat faster is covering the unused portions with aluminum foil, kapton-taped down. It reflects the heat that might otherwise radiate away. It won't help if you're using the whole bed, of course, but if you're only using a bit it can make a huge difference in terms of heating speed and power required to hold temperature.

i did cover the glass with a piece of carpet, hair facing down. pretty sure it helped with faster heating.
will use something more sophisticated next time, after i hook up the solid state relays.
i plan on using pet board in the future, it's some of the best quality/price options on the market, especially when bought from china directly.

started the first tests with pla.
will post pics soon.

as promised, here's a couple of pics.
not the brightest surface, but working on it.
as for dimensional precision, it stayed within 0.2 mm.

It lives! Congratulations. Those are the most under-stated postings imaginable for bringing this beast to life

Those look like tiny layers for a printer that size. Getting a huge printer to print small parts as accurately as a small printer is always going to be a stretch. Fling a 1mm nozzle on there, print something a meter long and make us all jealous!

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JamesK
It lives! Congratulations. Those are the most under-stated postings imaginable for bringing this beast to life

Those look like tiny layers for a printer that size. Getting a huge printer to print small parts as accurately as a small printer is always going to be a stretch. Fling a 1mm nozzle on there, print something a meter long and make us all jealous!

i used a 0.35 mm nozzle. the other extruder, not yet set up, will be 0.8 mm, for infills and/or support.
thank you for your kind words, will post more pics as i print.

youtube link below:

[www.youtube.com]

I saw a commercial one on television recently large enough to make a chair. It took over a week to make the chair.

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Lymphomaniac1
I saw a commercial one on television recently large enough to make a chair. It took over a week to make the chair.

I believe you are talking about 3dp printers.
they go 1x1x0.5 meters printing envelope.
regardless, there's ways to improve that, by using a larger nozzle.
i'm planning to use a 1.2 mm nozzle soon enough, for the time being, the largest nozzle I have is 0.8 mm.

..printing parts for my printer while calibrating and learning the machine.
next to the printed part, in this case a link arm for the wiring, one can see the first attempt.

How's the foam bed working for you? I can't be sure from the pix- are you printing on a raft?

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

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the_digital_dentist
How's the foam bed working for you? I can't be sure from the pix- are you printing on a raft?

not bad at all, imagine turning on the printer, waiting 1/2 min. for the hot ends to come to temperature, then printing.
used the paper covered foam first, bought a 4x8 sheet, cut it in two, but peeling off the paper was a nightmare.
however, the paper covered foam gives a smoother surface once the paper peeled, as opposed to the aluminum foil one.
which brings me to the issue of how much to sink the tits into the foam.
due to slight ups and downs on the foam surface, i got best results when going 2-2.5 mm into the foam.
and, as you said, removing the part can be a bitch, the largest part i printed so far, the link arm pictured above, posed no problems with its 4 inch length, but i wonder what will it be like when i will print a 50x42x45 inch part.
am using a skirt.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/05/2016 11:20AM by val c..

I found that the foam is a little springy, and so corners of parts printed directly on the foam (without a brim) tended to lift a bit. Using a raft fixed that- the corners of the raft would lift a little but the print was fine. Also, when printing the part directly on the foam a little of the foam remains embedded in the bottom surface of the print. Not a problem most of the time, but maybe once in a while.

You can sand the surface with a piece of coarse sandpaper to smooth it if it starts getting to uneven.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

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the_digital_dentist
I found that the foam is a little springy, and so corners of parts printed directly on the foam (without a brim) tended to lift a bit. Using a raft fixed that- the corners of the raft would lift a little but the print was fine. Also, when printing the part directly on the foam a little of the foam remains embedded in the bottom surface of the print. Not a problem most of the time, but maybe once in a while.

You can sand the surface with a piece of coarse sandpaper to smooth it if it starts getting to uneven.

indeed, the foam is elastic, might ruin the flatness of the first layers. raft is best option. i used a small file to clean the part, no problem there.
i plan to try it as soon as the second extruder is hooked up, next wednesday.
i also plan to use soluble pva for raft, and abs for the part. hope the pva will work fine with the foam.
wanted to ask you, how did you get the idea to use foam?

also, i gave you due credits on our openbuilds forum:

[www.openbuilds.com]

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val c.
wanted to ask you, how did you get the idea to use foam?

I was having trouble getting prints to stick to my printer's glass bed at the time and started thinking about how to fix that. I saw a 90's vintage Stratasys FDM1600 industrial printer at the makerspace that prints on urethane foam (that they sell for a ridiculous price). I tried a piece of the Stratasys foam and it worked well, so I started looking for a substitute that was available cheaply. I figured it had to be something that wouldn't decompose at nozzle temperatures, which quickly led to PIR. Then I checked availability of PIR, found it for sale at Home Depot, and also found a sheet of it in the woodshop at the makerspace so I cut it up and tested it. When I tested it I used carpet tape to hold piece on my glass bed and used the z offset in slic3r to move the first layer up. It was the first material I tried and it worked well. The rest, as they say, is history. The guy who owns the Stratasys printer at the makerspace (haveblue) now uses PIR.

I ultimately went with a heated tooling plate bed for my printer even though it's more trouble to set up, because it has less on-going maintenance to do. For a large printer like yours, where a bed heater would cost a fortune to install and operate, the foam is perfect. There's no messing with different glues and potions because everything sticks to it. There's no waiting for a giant bed to heat up. There's no need to get a perfectly flat and level surface, both big problems for big printers.

If I were making a large printer I'd probably design the frame that holds the foam so it can hold different sized pieces of foam, and then use foam that is sized to match the print. That way you don't end up using big pieces of foam for small parts. Of course, you can always print off-center on the bed and move the prints around on a large piece of foam. Either approach should help minimize foam cost.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/05/2016 01:51PM by the_digital_dentist.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

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the_digital_dentist

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val c.
wanted to ask you, how did you get the idea to use foam?

I was having trouble getting prints to stick to my printer's glass bed at the time and started thinking about how to fix that. I saw a 90's vintage Stratasys FDM1600 industrial printer at the makerspace that prints on urethane foam (that they sell for a ridiculous price). I tried a piece of the Stratasys foam and it worked well, so I started looking for a substitute that was available cheaply. I figured it had to be something that wouldn't decompose at nozzle temperatures, which quickly led to PIR. Then I checked availability of PIR, found it for sale at Home Depot, and also found a sheet of it in the woodshop at the makerspace so I cut it up and tested it. When I tested it I used carpet tape to hold piece on my glass bed and used the z offset in slic3r to move the first layer up. It was the first material I tried and it worked well. The rest, as they say, is history. The guy who owns the Stratasys printer at the makerspace (haveblue) now uses PIR.

I ultimately went with a heated tooling plate bed for my printer even though it's more trouble to set up, because it has less on-going maintenance to do. For a large printer like yours, where a bed heater would cost a fortune to install and operate, the foam is perfect. There's no messing with different glues and potions because everything sticks to it. There's no waiting for a giant bed to heat up. There's no need to get a perfectly flat and level surface, both big problems for big printers.

If I were making a large printer I'd probably design the frame that holds the foam so it can hold different sized pieces of foam, and then use foam that is sized to match the print. That way you don't end up using big pieces of foam for small parts. Of course, you can always print off-center on the bed and move the prints around on a large piece of foam. Either approach should help minimize foam cost.

that's the thing, i already invested some 600 bucks in a heated bed, silicone pad and glass, only to find your post about pir foam a while later. :-)

Ouch!

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

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the_digital_dentist
Ouch!

that's okay, my hat goes off to you for your equally springy imagination.
as for the unused parts, i'll put them up in craigslist.

I promised to build a largeish (has to fit through doors) printer for a startup. I have neither talent nor time to roll my own, so help me make a choice here, please. I'm open to anything with a decent BOM, these are just what I've stumbled into.

Cbot / Dbot. Proven design, but is it still rigid enough after scaling the size up significantly and hanging double direct extruders on?

Open Gigabot, this is the right size with no changes. Brand new and unproven. Does anyone know more about this?

Traditional cartesian? For example Voxel Ox looks sturdy enough to scale up a lot. Slow?

It will be using two volcanoes with direct extruders (maybe titans), a duet board, 24v, PIR bed (thank you DD!), and printing PLA (for starters).

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StupendousMan
I promised to build a largeish (has to fit through doors) printer for a startup. I have neither talent nor time to roll my own, so help me make a choice here, please. I'm open to anything with a decent BOM, these are just what I've stumbled into.

Cbot / Dbot. Proven design, but is it still rigid enough after scaling the size up significantly and hanging double direct extruders on?

Open Gigabot, this is the right size with no changes. Brand new and unproven. Does anyone know more about this?

Traditional cartesian? For example Voxel Ox looks sturdy enough to scale up a lot. Slow?

It will be using two volcanoes with direct extruders (maybe titans), a duet board, 24v, PIR bed (thank you DD!), and printing PLA (for starters).

be careful with scaling up the printer.
if planning to do so, try to stay away from large moving parts.
in that respect, I don't believe voxel ox, cute as it may be, will do the part, simply because that moving table is an inertial headache, getting in the way of you printing at higher speeds.
also, c-bots scaled up might pose a problem with the belt.
last but not least, I wouldn't worry about getting the printer thru the door. just build it so as to be able to take it apart, and you will be ok.

just finished printing a tall tube to test if there's any vertical drifting in the machine. there's none.
also tested was the newly purchased simplify 3d ver. 3.1, which works wonderfully.
the tube is 30 mm diameter, 3 mm wall thickness and 150 mm height.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/2016 11:07AM by val c..

Wow!

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

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the_digital_dentist
Wow!

wow?
it's just a tube, dd.
at least save it until I make one of those ubiquitous yoda heads

dd, I fiddled with how much the nozzle skims the foam, now it prints even better.
no need to use rafts unless the part geometry makes it absolutely necessary.

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val c.
at least save it until I make one of those ubiquitous yoda heads

The potential for a 1m³ Yoda head is frankly terrifying!

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JamesK

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val c.
at least save it until I make one of those ubiquitous yoda heads

The potential for a 1m³ Yoda head is frankly terrifying!

terrifying it is, but impossible is not.
1.5 cubic meter make that, the machine volume this big is.

meh, you're right, yodas are overrated.
better start designing a small electric car for my kid.
i'm thinking something around 2-3 feet wide, 4 feet long, some 12 volt electric motors, the works.
not to mention all the kids in the park will want one.

Electric Yoda head? That might empty the park

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JamesK
Electric Yoda head? That might empty the park

I could print a small yoda head to go on the hood, rolls royce style.
but i'm dead serious about designing a driveable small car.
on top of the printer, I can use whatever experience 25+ years of cad designing brings with.
besides, I love spending time on my autocad designing 3d stuff.

Very nice. Let's see a HUGE print now!