Hi everyone,
On these last days, I’ve worked on my MPCNC, this time to use it as a giant 3D printer.
I made the first tests yesterday and it seems to work pretty well.
So, first I prepared a long Z axis. I made a quick connection system so that I only have to disconnect a few plugs and the Z axis can be swapped entirely. I think it is about 60-70 cm long, I haven’t really measured.
The extruder is mounted on top of it, the reason being that this way it’ll be closer to the gantry most of the time. I didn’t want to have it at the bottom and I didn’t want to have a super long bowden tube, so this was a compromize.
There is not much flex or play, actually I was surprized. I was expecting the thing to be wobbly and crappy, but it tuns out that it holds up pretty good.
The Z axis integrates my auto homing system, but I did not activated it yet, so I printed after positioning the head manually,
Any way, as usual, pics or it didn’t happen:
Before the tests:
[attachment file=93054]
During the first print:
[attachment file=93055]
[attachment file=93056]
The result of the first print:
[attachment file=93057]
The first 1/4 of the part is pretty bad, for two reasons: first, because the first layer was too low, so the 3-4 first layers were pretty crappy. Then, I was doing some settings tweakings for the other layers, until I finally got it right. The middle part looks pretty great. Nothing to complain about it, except maybe that retraction/prine parameters could be optimized and that I have a tiny bit of Z wobbling. But that is very marginal, really not an issue in my opinion.
The last layers failed because the Z motor coupler got loose, otherwise I think it would have finished the test part without any problem.
So far, I call that a big win, the results look good enough for the things I plan to do and it is incredibly fast. It took a bit less than 30 minutes to print this with 3 perimeters. I think If I used the delta to print the same amount of plastic it would have taken me something like 4 or 5 hours. And it lokks super strong too, I definitely could not break it by hand, impossible. The 1.2mm nozzle is quite convenient.
So, the next step is to make the heating bed, because otherwise the warping will be pretty bad, so this is a must. For that, I will experiment first with the silicon pad, I just need to find a big glass plate that will fit the bed size. I’m pretty excited about this mod, it will be a very useful addition to my little workshop!
