I am building a RichRap 3DR

Hi all,

I am new to 3D printing having had a Prusa I3 back in October.

As with my other main hobby, old motorcycles, one never seems to be enough ao I have started building a RichRap 3DR. I have printed 3 sets of - motor mounts, electronics mounts and top covers together with the rod end adapters, extruder and the top and bottom triangular parts.

I was wondering what issues anyone else had come up against. Also I am looking for a source for the rod ends, can anyone suggest a source?

Cheers

Z

Hi,

I built my 3DR a few months back.



Here is the BOM I assembled:

[docs.google.com]

I've just noticed that the adapters that I glued onto the carbon rods is missing from the list. I got them from here:

[www.cambrianplanes.co.uk]

In all honesty, the carbon arms I made, although they look nice, are not really suitable. There is too much flex. This is not RichRap's fault, it was my own design. I think this is one reason that the FSR auto-level doesn't work perfectly for me, as flex in the arms leads to inconsistent measurements. I'm toying with replacing the rods with magnetic joints or the spring-tensioned ball-and-sockets but that would require reprinting the carriages and micro-platform. The alternative is to simply follow Rich's instructions!

Another problem I hit was that I used the cheapest LM6UU bearings I could find. In retrospect, this was a mistake. Some of them are ok but others are _very_ noisy. If you go this route then buy more than you need and try them out to find the quietest ones with the tightest tolerances. This wouldn't be a big problem for me except the smooth rods are a very tight fit in my printed parts. Removing them to replace the bearings is going to be a pain.

What electronics are you using? I've used Ramps+GLCD with a Trinket to drive the FSRs. I've put a few bits and pieces up to youmagine.com (https://www.youmagine.com/users/adavidm) that might help if you go down the same route.

Best of luck with the build. The 3DR is a lovely printer and I really enjoyed the build process.

adavidm

Hi adividm,

Thanks for the info. I have not decided what electronics to use yet. I have a spare RAMPS board and Arduino Mega so will probably use that, at least to start with.

My smooth rods should be here by the weekend so I am hoping to start bolting things together at the weekend. How much of a task was it to set up and calibrate?

Z

Setup was very straightforward. I'd taken some time to ensure that the adjoining plastic faces were true before bolting them together, both top and bottom. I did this using a belt sander and a square, but no reason it can't be done by hand.

The holes in the plastic pieces have enough depth to them that the rails and rods naturally run perpendicular to the top and bottom without any real hassle. The tight fit of the holes means that any problems here would have caused real issues, as the rods are almost impossible to move now.

For calibration, I was very lazy and used Rich Cattel's Marlin fork to auto calibrate. The aforementioned issues with the rods and FSR accuracy meant that this was NOT a good idea. Once I'd stopped that and used Jay Couture's Youtube videos, things went much more smoothly.

adavidm