First time building a printer with the ultimate hardware kit.

Recently i came across an amazing deal on a Stratasys SST printer. The problem is i have never had or used a 3d printer before and my coding experience is limited but still generally above par (or so id like to believe). I have about 2 years experience the Google Youtube 3D Printing University so my approximate knowledge of the situation is vast but unhelpful.


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Problem is, they took out some of the juju that runs it. So i improvised and ordered a rambo 1.2a from amazon.


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The stepper motors are 8 lead steppers with your standard 4 wires coming up for the top and the bottom coils. Even through i am able to put alot more juice in these steppers they wont be much of an upgrade from nema 17s with my setup. (if even possible)
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Which leads me to my first problem my steppers dont move or even tighten when connected to the board. Which makes me beleive my 12 volt power supply is the problem (i dont have the confidence to hook up the powersupplys left in the machine)


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The rambo board has repetir firmware and connected to repetir host on the computer on it (i somehow bricked it and figured outish how to re program it real fast). The next thing i want to connect is the heated chamber and lights and fans.


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Theres 4 fans total with revered plastic blower thinggies and polarity protection to make sure the air goes through properly. And 2 heated thinga ma nigs on each side of the chamber. I have a budget of about $500-800ish more dollars to make this thing put out some low quality dental floss and was thinking of wiring all the fans/heated chamber separately. So any help in pointing me in the right direction to make this thing print at least air would be greatly appreciated. There is still a lot more going on in this printer that i haven't gotten to yet. (possibly provide some inspiration for your own diy project).

All the options and do hickeys in this thing to fine tune prints are are nice and all but my first goal is to at least make the stepper motors twitch.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2015 11:51AM by Treak.

Some pictures my friend took of the steppers, chamber fans and max end stop for those curious.

[fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net]
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[fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net]
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Link to the reddit post also [www.reddit.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/14/2015 04:51PM by Treak.

After hitting my first brick wall with the stepper motors. I got rid of the xbox power supply and moved on the ones already inside the machine. 2 of the 3 PSU's connected and all the fans + lights i have available in the machine. I plan on making a line filler box when i add the 240v PSU for the chamber/extruder heaters. Originally i wanted to go to the department store and make the filler box out of sheet metal and screws. I wanted to explore a team collaboration for creating parts and i am able to invite people to the grabcad workbench for being an adopter. If you use solidworks PM me your email and ill toss you an invite link with max powers for those who want to play with it.

The box will have...

1. USB plugged into the rambo (or ramps, whichever i get working first)
2. Main Power (computer style plug in)
3. 12V 2A Fuse
4. 24V 6A fuse
5. 120V 3.15A fuse
6. Respective trouble shooting leds/Test points

Below is a picture of my "just get it working" power set up

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The lights/blowers are all direct independent power from the 24V PSU, and running a bit high but not worrysome. I plan on adding in line resistors to tune all the blower fans output even through it may not be necessary.

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I reinstalled the original SBC and connected the LCD, hard drive and PSU but it did not budge when i flipped the switch. I am having trouble finding anything about this lcd. It would be nice to connect it to the rambo or ramps if possible.

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Moving on to the electronics, the thing that makes this a printer and not a heated brick with fans and lights.

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Only the 12 volt is connected to the rambo using this diagram. i connected everything with the information i have at hand and my best guess for the stepper motors (each of the stepper lead pairs are isolated and connected to their respective pins but the position is a crap shoot)

[www.geeetech.com]

(I hear the rambo board can go to 24v but im not so sure about this china made one the picture with 12v down the line for power input made me lose confidence in putting 24v into it.)

There are two types of temperature reading devicdes that normally have some sort of signel amplification. But today we are using electric tape for the chamber sensor which appears to be just a wire stick poking inside.

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The other is a thermocouple and the only thing i know about that is the name, Thick as hell wires go into i and communicates with PWM.


Chamber

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Extruder

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/16/2015 05:49PM by Treak.