Introducing "Unobtanium"

Having owned a Prusa i3 for about two years now and having replaced and modified almost every part of the original kit I'm finally able to use this printer without any tinkering and the print results are usually great without having to do any voodoo anymore. But what's the fun in that?

So, it's time for a new project. I have been looking around for a design that I really liked and stumbled upon the G&C printer made by filipeCampos and his design ticked most of the boxes.

Although the print quality of the Prusa is fine after all the modifications, there are still a few things that I would like the new printer to do better that the old one;

1 - Speed while maintaining a high print quality.
2 - Repeatably and reliability, I will need to be able to do small production runs.
3 - Ease of use, so that my wife and kids can also print something when daddy isn't home.
4 - Less noise while printing.
5 - Look better.
6 - Have an enclosure to eliminate warping due to draft.

Due to the fact that it will be almost impossible to reach all these goals I will name my printer "Unobtanium" and this will be my build log.

I will follow Filipe's design as much as possible but I will make modifications where necessary.

The specs will be;

- Original size according to Filipe's design
- Enclosed at 5 sides, the top will stay open
- MKS SBase 32bit contoller (Smoothieboard ripoff, yes, yes I know!)
- 3.2" color touchscreen
- Single Bowden hotend, maybe a second one in the future
- 200 x 200 mm Mk3 heated bed, with a glass build surface
- IGUS bearings for the X and Y axis.

I have been working on the for a few weeks now and this is the story so far;

While waiting for the parts to arrive from China (and Germany) my prusa is working overtime to print parts for the new baby.









The first shipment has arrived.



A nice package from Motedis.com arrived so I could finally start building.







The 3.2" TFT touchscreen. Time will tell if this is the way to go, but so far I like it.



MKS SBase v1.2





More and more parts start to arrive and I'm making slow but steady progress.



Test fitting one of the side panels.



I realy like how robust and sturdy the Z carriage is.



The IGUS bearings for the Y axis didn't work (too much flex) so I replaced then for LM8UU's. They do seem to work for the X axis, so for now they can stay!



3.2mm rods for cable management.



Optical endstop for the Z axis.



Easy adjustment for the Z height.



230V and an aluminium frame could spell disaster, so I will take extra care to make this machine safe.





Edited 8 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2016 10:12AM by Nosmo.

Unobtanium.. hahaha... good name!

I like your cable arrangement and your z endstop, very clean solutions.

One question: you are going with an enclosure, then why the little black panel at bottom and not go directly with the enclosure solution?
I see you have an E3D v6 to print abs too. It will be nice if you put a complete enclosure on top, you can go with the chain cable solution David was used.

4. I have found that TMC2100 stepper drivers for X and Y axis did a great job on making printer very quiet.

with the MKS SBase is not possible to put these steppers, but it can go with two dampers on the x and y motors. It help to reduce the vibration and noise.

if you are going with an single hotend you can replace the printed piece that secure the hotend with this one:
[www.ebay.com]

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2016 06:05AM by filipeCampos.

Quote
filipeCampos

One question: you are going with an enclosure, then why the little black panel at bottom and not go directly with the enclosure solution?
I see you have an E3D v6 to print abs too. It will be nice if you put a complete enclosure on top, you can go with the chain cable solution David was used.

The enclosure will be black acrylic at the top and bottom and clear acrylic in between as windows. The windows are going to be easy removable for ease of access. I'm not aiming for a airtight construction so there will be some gaps.

I don't like the smell of ABS so I don't think that I will ever use it, so a heated enclosure is not on my list at the moment. Cable chains for both the Z platform and the hotend were already on my todo list and are being printed at this moment

What touchscreen is that? How does it interface with MKS-Base?

---

My Personal Blog. Build blog.
[engineerd3d.ddns.net]

Modicum V1 sold on e-bay user jaguarking11

Quote
jaguarking11
What touchscreen is that? How does it interface with MKS-Base?

The screen is a 3.2" touchscreen from MKS. This is the Aliexpress link.

The screen is connected to the Aux1 connector of the controller.

Unobtanium is alive!

Hi,

In the video they are some type of stops of the carriage, is only a problem with the video?

The stops are when the Z-axis moves down one layer. Probably this will need some (or a lot of) tweaking to get it working more smoothly.

I don't have the spindle yet, this is the only part that is keeping me from finishing the printer. All all the wiring is done and everything functions.

How much tension do the belts need? They are reasonably tight at the moment but I can still pull them about 10mm towards me at the point where the cross (mid-front), they are not so tight that you can use them as piano strings.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2016 11:50AM by Nosmo.

Quote
Nosmo
The stops are when the Z-axis moves down one layer.

Ok, now the stop make sense...

Quote
Nosmo
How much tension do the belts need? They are reasonably tight at the moment but I can still pull them about 10mm towards me at the point where the cross (mid-front), they are not so tight that you can use them as piano strings.

both belt must have the same tension and must have a good tension, but not was a piano strings. If the belt do not allow any unwanted movement of the carriage them the tension is good.
You can leave theses task only when you make your first prints. If you have a tension problem, it will be easy identify in the final print.

One my initial goals was to make the wiring of this printer look somewhat "professional" and not like an explosion in a cable factory So I spend so extra time and effort on cable management.
All cables are held in place by 3mm steel rods, this enables me go create clear and easy routes for the cables. All visible wires are sleeved with black mesh, I hope that this will make them less visible when the black rear panel is installed. I don't have a good solution yet for the cables that go to the hotend, I will have to design a clamp that will fix the cable loon to the back side of the frame.



I might change the routing of these cables if they block the airflow.






The little plastic bracket to hold the X-endstop is a bit to flimsy, I replace it with a stronger one.


I didn't like the printed spacers for the idlers so I made some from steel, hope that they don't rust! Also added an extra spacer for the unsupported screw of the stepper motors.


The printer is almost ready for the first print, but I'm still waiting for the Z-spindle to arrive from China.


Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/28/2016 03:27PM by Nosmo.

Cables guides, all cables with a perfect length. Very nice and clean... my cables of my printer are a mess in relation to yours.

two suggestions:
1) endstops: I prefer the endstop without red plastic wheel and metal. reasons: better precision and you can gain some mm in the axis.
2) Yours printed pieces that secure the belt are not in contact with the carriage and your are losing some mm in the X axis because of this. The bed is only 20cm and for now you do not need this extra mm, but it will be necessary if you decide in the future to change to a dual hotend.

Quote
Nosmo

Quote
jaguarking11
What touchscreen is that? How does it interface with MKS-Base?

The screen is a 3.2" touchscreen from MKS. This is the Aliexpress link.

The screen is connected to the Aux1 connector of the controller.

Thank you for the link. I appreciate the info.

---

My Personal Blog. Build blog.
[engineerd3d.ddns.net]

Modicum V1 sold on e-bay user jaguarking11

Quote
filipeCampos
Cables guides, all cables with a perfect length. Very nice and clean... my cables of my printer are a mess in relation to yours.

two suggestions:
1) endstops: I prefer the endstop without red plastic wheel and metal. reasons: better precision and you can gain some mm in the axis.
2) Yours printed pieces that secure the belt are not in contact with the carriage and your are losing some mm in the X axis because of this. The bed is only 20cm and for now you do not need this extra mm, but it will be necessary if you decide in the future to change to a dual hotend.

Honestly I am not sure why would anyone continue to use mechanical end-stops. I switched to hall effect sensors and I have to say I could not be happier with them. The precision is very very good, while reducing weight and complication. Here is my setup. [www.youtube.com]

---

My Personal Blog. Build blog.
[engineerd3d.ddns.net]

Modicum V1 sold on e-bay user jaguarking11

Today my spindle arrived so I can finally run some test prints.




Marvin is not so easy to print without a layer fan, but at least the printer is working.


Still a lot of tweaking to do but the first results are not bad.

Not easy to see because of the color of the pla. From the feats of the marvin the layers appears to be very uniform, you have some cooling problems because of the missing fan. You need to print something with lots of retractions to check if your bowdem extrduer works correctly.

Overall is a great first print..

The Igus bearings in the X-carriage are replaced by LM8UU's!

I couldn't print round circles, only lemons and the infill didn't lineup correctly leaving smal gaps. Changing the belt tension didn't help but replacing the bearings did. I suspect that there was too much friction between the Igus bearings and the smoothrods.

Also the Chinese E3D V6 clone is gone, this hotend kept on jamming due to retraction. I modified the old V5 clone that I was using in my Prusa so that I could use it with the bowden extruder and now the printer works fine. An original E3D V6 should arrive tomorrow, hopefully that one will work ok.

lots of problems with theses igus bearings..
Personally i very please with theses bearings and the only complain/problem i have found was the find the correct force to apply on the screws.
But your are not the first person to complain about this and i think is the best to add this info in the page of the printer to inform other persons.

I sorry about these igus, i have indicated them on the printer page because i really think they are great. I was not aware there could be so problematic.

I think that the Igus bearings would be great if they were placed inside a metal sleeve, this would add the necessary rigidity and protection against over tightening.

The printer starts to print really nice now and the sound isn't too bad. So far I am very happy with the design and the progress that I'm making in tweaking the machine. The Igus bearings were only a minor issue for me and it didn't take me much time to fix it.

The only real problem that I still have is with the hotend but I hope that this will be fixed tonight when the genuine E3D hotend arrives.

After spending a few days trying to get my Chinese V6 hotend to work, I decided that enough was enough and ordered a genuine E3D V6 hotend. What a difference an other hotend can make! The Chinese knockoff kept jamming no mater what I tried, the genuine hotend prints perfect on just the default settings recommended by E3D.

Youtube video of the first test print with a genuine E3D hotend

The first test print om default settings!


Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2016 11:42AM by Nosmo.

Looks great!

I read that the E3D clone is a question of luck, you can get a good unit or not. For me this is a component where you can not go cheap, i only buy the original ones.

ps: the video and the photo are very good..

Unobtanium is more or less finished. The only things left are the side panels (windows), some end caps for the 60x20 and the 20x20 extrusions and some more tweaking to get the print speed a little bit higher. At the moment the speed is 150% of my Prusa and the print quality is a lot better.

Hotend with dual coolers


"Unobtanium" start screen






Lights are on!




The stepper drivers were getting a little to hot for my liking so I added a small 50mm fan between the front rails to cool the board


Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2016 12:07PM by Nosmo.

Very good looking machine, I want one!

Just a quick update,

Although the print quality wasn't bad at all I still wasn't happy with the reliability of the extruder, especially when using more than 2mm retraction or when using fast retraction. The extruder motor (and driver) couldn't handle the high torque and was causing the filament to get stuck inside the heatbreak.
The solution was to use a geared extruder so I bought the new E3D Titan. This little beasty can produce almost 5 times as much torque as the MK8. After upgrading to the Titan all my retraction issues have disappeared.

I also mounted the transparent side panels. I have used small (8mm) neodymium magnets to stick them to the frame. This makes it very easy to remove them for maintenance or easy access to the print bed.





So far I'm very happy with the print quality, the speed and the noise levels (much lower than with my trusty old Prusa).

I think that this project is finished, at least until I get infected with a bad case of upgraditis again.

Quote
Nosmo
Just a quick update,

Although the print quality wasn't bad at all I still wasn't happy with the reliability of the extruder, especially when using more than 2mm retraction or when using fast retraction. The extruder motor (and driver) couldn't handle the high torque and was causing the filament to get stuck inside the heatbreak.
The solution was to use a geared extruder so I bought the new E3D Titan. This little beasty can produce almost 5 times as much torque as the MK8. After upgrading to the Titan all my retraction issues have disappeared.

yeahhhh i bought one of those "all aluminium" extruder kits, i recognise the red metal arm. they're s**t, aren't they!! some unusual requirements (3mm filament on a bowden tube) i had to design my own compact geared extruder using the bits that i had available, i ended up with a 53:13 (4.08:1) gear ratio - goodbye skipping problems. it's a modular design so i might make a direct mount point adapter for a J-head-style hotend, just for a laugh one day.

the titan looks well-made - is that *two* sets of gears?? no, i see - it's just the one, the filament comes in at the corner. hope those are strong gears (not PLA!) - those look like very small teeth.

Quote


I also mounted the transparent side panels. I have used small (8mm) neodymium magnets to stick them to the frame. This makes it very easy to remove them for maintenance or easy access to the print bed.

niice. i like that idea.

Quote

I think that this project is finished, at least until I get infected with a bad case of upgraditis again.

haha nooo don't do it - start another one wait... i got something to tempt you with: look up the Flex3Drive. read up jason's design report and methodology, you get the best of both the bowden and direct-drive worlds with absolutely none of the downsides. he's running at 350mm/sec with all the usual artefacts you get at *slower speeds* completely gone, and that's down in part to a whopping 40:1 gear ratio.

Don't know what material the large gear is, but its certainly not PLA. The small gear is metal. The gear ratio is 3:1 but the little drive wheel is also smaller than the MK8 drive wheel so the total reduction is about 5:1 compared to the MK8.

Thomas Sanladerers review of the Titan

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2016 12:42PM by Nosmo.

Hi,

Can you post a complete photo of the acrylic panels?
Loved the idea to use magnets to secure the panels. This is a great solution to the central panel to have easy access to the electronics.
How many magnets you are using for each panels? there are strong enough to not fall down with the print vibrations?


review of the E3D Titan made by my favorite German (Thomas Sanladerer):
[www.youtube.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2016 12:55PM by filipeCampos.

I am using 2 magnets per corner, one on the panel, one on the frame. These neodymium magnets are very strong so there is no risk that panels will fall off. The panels are not sitting flush to the frame to prevent them from rattling against the frame.

I will post some more pictures tonight.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2016 01:04PM by Nosmo.