Hi Folks.
I've been away from my printing efforts for over two years. Back then I picked up a new extruder feed and took it apart to install and never got back to it until lately. I finally got the extruder mounted, taking all of 15 minutes, but while I was in there I decided I wanted a magnetic build plate so dove in and worked that out. I made a prototype proof of concept and even that worked pretty well, but continued on and built a pretty nice magnetic platen and found some shim stock that suited the platen pretty well. I like the new magnetic table WAAAY more than I expected to. I highly recommend it.

So I was barely starting to figure out how to print things again and a motor driver started acting up. I worked around and/or with it until it finally gave up, then installed some TMC2100 drivers to replace the X & Y, but it screamed like a cat getting a car door shut on it's tail. Just awful. I figured out that I needed to 1) increase the voltage to 24V and 2) replace my high-inductance motors with some better ones. But until I got that hacked, I played around with what I had but somehow I ended up frying the board instead. It was either time to give up and toss the thing into a river or totally rebuild the thing. Deciding on the latter, I surrendered and took the Duet board I purchased intending to use it on my next (much better) build. I'll pick up another one once I'm close to having that next one going. But I need a printer to make parts for the next one anyway, so this will come in handy. Since I have to rewire the whole thing, I figured it would be a good time to enclose it too so I can print some of the several spools of ABS I have on the shelf (I didn't know better back then). Other than the warping and terrible de-laminating I've been getting with ABS, I like how it prints so I hope the enclosure solves my woes.

Long story short, here's a list of the upgrades I'm doing now. Should be under power and tweaking settings probably next weekend.

1) Will have more tidy electronics and room to get around it all
2) 24V power supply upgrade
3) New Duet control board
4) Heated build chamber
5) New low inductance motors for X, Y and Z
6) New Acme lead screws for Z
7) Much more rigid frame (just adding a couple gussets to solve the wobbly)
8) Get BLTouch working (installed it just before letting the smoke out and never finished setting it up)

Here's a picture just after I got it going a few weeks ago:


After the new magnetic platen was installed:


Trial run with magnetic build plate (8" spring steel, .020" thick):


Enclosure progress:


Enclosure finished and fitted (minus doors - coming soon)


And now after I took it all apart :


Good news coming soon... I hope.
Honestly this printer has been not much good for me and have very few successes come off it. Hopefully I have nailed down the issues and will do a TON better once this gets finished.
And yeah, I am aware that this thing is too crappy to deserve all the attention and upgrades, but I do need something to print parts on for the next one, so it'll have to do. Maybe it will finally actually print well and be worthy of the space it takes up! I hope so.

Kind of looks like my old Ordbot Hadron. It was a good printer. My brother currently has it.

Yup, it's based on the Hadron. I relied heavily on the drawings and BOM when I made it, but I ended up machining several more parts than the original design (from necessity) and modified it a lot. It's been a constant process of modifications more than a printer so far.
I had some limited success printing with it for several minor things, but I hope after this round of upgrades I'll have a lot more success with it.

Been developing a checklist of stuff I need to get this back together and it's nickel & diming me to death, but I'm persevering forward. Not spending a fortune, but certainly a lot more than this little thing deserves... maybe. If it prints well, I figure it will have been worth it.
I can't see why it wouldn't print well really. It's now got decent motors, great controller w/splendid drivers, Bondtech extruder and a DIY copy of an E3D hot end, great bed heater, new 24V extruder heater, E3D cartridge thermistor, new BLTouch bed sensor, magnetic build table, new Acme Z-axis leadscrews. The slides are that Makerslide arrangement the Ordbot was designed to use and they aren't as good as some but should be adequate. I suppose I could purchase a genuine E3D premium hot end or something, but mine should be better than most already. If it doesn't work with all this done to it, I don't know what else a guy could do.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2018 10:33PM by vinny.