Thing-O-Matic Restoration

I found a poor ToM sitting on a shelf that hadn't been used for years. Pieces were missing or broken, and there was a nice layer of dust over everything. I was able to procure it from the previous owner for a very nice price. I plan on building a very large Delta bot in the future (for printing RC airplane wings/airfoils and other large parts), but this would help me on my way. I can even print some pieces I need for my Delta bot with this printer.

How I got it:


Tearing it down:



I decided to disassemble everything and glue the wooden pieces together that will never need to come apart:



Build platform had some aluminum and Kapton tape that was all tore up. I took all of that off and replaced it with two criss-crossed rows of Al tape followed up by blue painters tape



I decided to replace the bronze pressbearings on the X and Y carriages with Delrin pressbearings. I didn't know this, but bronze pressbearings were NOT designed for linear motion. Neither were Delrin, but at least it is a little better than bronze.


Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/2013 03:14PM by MrBaz.

I took all of the stepper motor cables and braided them to keep things nice a neat



I did the 5V mod to all the stepper motor drivers (sorry - no pics)
I did a little bit of cable management. I replaced the prefab network cable with a custom cut one for better length (shorter) and more room on the connector ends:



Grounded all of the stepper motors to the power supply to prevent ESD problems.


Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/2013 03:50PM by MrBaz.

Nice to see somebody keeping the old machines on the road!

I don't miss my thing-o-matic at all but props on you for trying to bring it back to life.

Most excellent. Good luck on your Delta build.

Since i'm replacing the 17 tooth pulleys with 16 tooth pulleys, I need to change the steps per mm in the firmware somewhere. I'm mainly using ReplicatorG for the Thing-o-Matic. Does anyone know how I can change the stepspermm?

I've been calibrating the printer lately. The delrin pressbearings were no better than the bronze ones. I get chatter on the X carriage when moving in the positive X direction. At least it isn't straight up binding like there would be with bronze pressbearings. That, and the delrin is crazy lightweight. I plan on eventually replacing them all with LMB6UUs or something similar. First I have to get this thing calibrated so I can print out a whole bunch of replacement parts.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2013 09:23PM by MrBaz.

Quote
MrBaz
Since i'm replacing the 17 tooth pulleys with 16 tooth pulleys, I need to change the steps per mm in the firmware somewhere. I'm mainly using ReplicatorG for the Thing-o-Matic. Does anyone know how I can change the stepspermm?

What firmware are you running?

I'm using the latest Sailfish firmware from Jetty, not Makerbot. I find out how to adjust the stepspermm just fine. I've been doing a lot of fine tuning lately.

Now if anyone knows where I can find a Makerbot Gen4 LCD interface kit, that would be awesome.

Had a filament jam, so I took that opportunity to do some work on the extruder that I had been thinking about. The stock arrangement of the delrin plunger on the hobbed pulley sounded dump to begin with.

The stock setup has the hobbed pulley arranged such that it is so close to the motor, the set screw is not engaging in the flat area of the motor shaft. I flipped it around and aligned it up so that the set screw now makes use of the flat part of the motor shaft.



I also removed one of the plastic washers. I took the two metal washers and bent them into domes. Now, they act more like a really stiff spring. I know it is nearly impossible to see it in this picture, so I apologize for that.


Well, now you can see a problem. The pulley sticks out on the shaft so now it doesn't clear the aluminum heatsink. I guess I'll have to fix that.


That should do the trick.

By the way, don't try and hold this with your hand while working with power tools. It doesn't end well.

The filament moves MUCH more fluidly than before. It still engages the hobbed pulley so well I get 0 slippage when pulling on it myself with quite a bit of force.

I just tried to print a calibration cube. I now have a higher amount of plastic flow than I did before. Well, back to the drawing board on the calibration sequence!

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2013 09:45AM by MrBaz.

As an update, funny enough, the calibration prints are just fine and look MUCH better!

First non-calibration print:


Looks good!

I'm also bringing a TOM back from a long period of inactivity. I bought one used in late 2011 and got frustrated with it after several filament jams and bad prints.

Do yourself a favor and upgrade your extruder with this... [www.ebay.com]

There are other ones you can printout yourself if you want to save a few bucks. Since upgrading to this I have had very few extruder problems. The only time I have jammed was when I had the extruder way too close to the build platform and the filament had no where to go.

Here is a video of mine running after a few weeks of tweaking.... TOM priniting with acceleration on.

Quote
JimFouch
I'm also bringing a TOM back from a long period of inactivity. I bought one used in late 2011 and got frustrated with it after several filament jams and bad prints.

Do yourself a favor and upgrade your extruder with this... [www.ebay.com]

There are other ones you can printout yourself if you want to save a few bucks. Since upgrading to this I have had very few extruder problems. The only time I have jammed was when I had the extruder way too close to the build platform and the filament had no where to go.

Here is a video of mine running after a few weeks of tweaking.... TOM priniting with acceleration on.

Cool. I'm going to be printing me out an extruder upgrade just like that. I just wanted something better than stock until I replaced it with a bearing/spring-force extruder.
I've since been printing directly on the bed. The raft is just too difficult to remove and leaves a terrible surface.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/27/2013 09:14AM by MrBaz.

Quote
MrBaz

Cool. I'm going to be printing me out an extruder upgrade just like that. I just wanted something better than stock until I replaced it with a bearing/spring-force extruder.
I've since been printing directly on the bed. The raft is just too difficult to remove and leaves a terrible surface.

It took me several days of tweaking to get a good print without the raft.

I found the most critical part is getting the bed super level. I have the HBP and the stock setup with the screws was just not easy to level at all. I used my laser engraver to cut some knobs and used some springs to allow me to easily adjust the level. That was probably the turning point to getting the TOM to create a consistent good print.

Another issue I have with printing directly on the bed, is you have to smash the first few layers to get good adhesion to the bed. That will then cause your part to be a bit wider at the bottom than the intended design. I found when I was creating some bearing spacers and printing directly on the bed, my parts then were a few mm larger on the first 3-5 layers.

I also have a Replicator 2X and the way the rafts on are done on it make it easy to remove the part after the print. However, the bottom of the part does not have the nice smooth bottom.

I got rid of the stupid acrylic ABP and replaced them with crappy ABS versions designed to hold a mirror!

It is actually printing replacement print bed holders since the ones that are installed are gen1 and measurements are a bit off.

Better picture. Printing parts to a better filament spool holder. Absolutely NO warping. This is AMAZING!

Great topic. I too am restoring a Thing-o-Matic with Mk7 stepstruder but I'm hesitant to upgrade the firmware from 3.1. So far everything looks pretty good calibration-wise, but I get a bulge on the top +x+y corner of the cube when I try to print at a high resolution (layer height 0.27). When I increase the layer height to 0.36, everything's very clean, but the layering is very obvious.

Do you guys have any tips for improving the resolution on my ToM prints?

Also, is there anything I should be aware of when updating my firmware to Sailfish 4.1 or above?

Do any of you guys know exactly what type of wood the TOM is made of? I'm restoring one I got off eBay but parts were crushed during shipping. I've located a laser cutter, but I can't seem to find the right type of wood.