V4 build in South Australia

LowRider CNC Your Builds
1

G’day from South Australia, where the weather is just starting to get warm again, meaning the time is finally right for me to build a LowRider! I’m a paramedic by trade but enthusiastic DIYer and shed tinkerer.

I’ve been watching Ryan’s work for years now; I was initially drawn to the MPCNC, but as time went on and I started doing more and more projects around the house, a full-sheet machine seemed like it’d be an awesome thing to have in the shed. Life has got in the way 'till now, but I’m really excited to be diving in.

I burned a huge hole in my “Black Ops” bank account (spending on “toys”) by buying a Bambu H2C to replace/supplement my slightly unreliable Voron V2.4, and it was because of this I made my first mistake on this build: not buying the parts from the V1 shop. It’s not been a massive deal, but between the stuffing around I’ve had to do locally, the wrong bits I’ve ordered online and the frustration of it all, I should have just bought it from the V1 shop in the beginning.

Anyway, the build is underway! The potential second mistake is my immediate straying from the Approved Path™️ by printing the parts from ABS-GF. I bought a bunch of it for some other projects and I’ve just been so impressed with it. I calibrated the shrinkage and haven’t had any early issues with assembly, but time will tell if I’m going to be back printing new parts in an approved filament.

As much as I disapprove of some of Bambu’s business practices, man… The user experience is a quantum leap from what I’ve been used to with my Voron. This is probably an indictment of me and the quality of my build more than anything, but it sure is nice to “point and click” without having to worry about whether it’ll work or not.

I just love the finish that fibre-reinforced filaments give, and the H2C does an amazing job (and it’d bloody want to for the price). The parts came off the printer perfectly first time; I don’t think I had to reprint a single part. I’ve gone with black as the base colour, and orange as the accent. I’m not sure if the orange will be a bit much all told, but, I guess that’s the beauty of having a 3D printer in the workshop – you can change it out pretty easy!

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I’ll use a Makita 700 series router to start with, and I’m trying to re-use some of my existing components from the workshop where I can. I had an unopened box of OMC 2A NEMA17s that are being put into service for the LowRider, and I’m intending to run Remora on a BTT Octopus Pro (lying around) and LinuxCNC on a Pi 4. We’ll see how that goes… I may yet raise the white flag and buy a Jackpot 3…

So far, I’m really enjoying the build and the instructions have been exceptional. I’m really looking forward to getting this thing built and making dust (which is the obligatory side-quest – I’m going to have a play with a 3D-printed dust separator too). Thanks, Ryan, for bringing an awesome bit of kit into the world.

Cheers from Adelaide,

Andrew.

2

Welcome, and I just went the darkside myself and bought a p1s. I cannot agree more. I have been fighting my ender and longer for 5 plus years now and the p1s is just a dream come true.

3

Welcome! We can’t wait to see what you build with it.

To be fair, the only people who really have an issue with it is those that believe everything should be open sourced. Yet, they will happily give Apple all their money. Bambu hasn’t done anything that almost every other company has done as they have grown and discovered what works and what doesn’t.

I would be interested in how this turns out. Everyone says PLA is more rigid than ABS, but then you add in GF and you would think it is more rigid.

Let us know how this goes. I looked at it and it looks interesting. There is also a plugin that allows you to “level” the workpiece or spoil board like you would a 3D printer bed.

4

Care to share an example of any ABS variant that outperforms the recommended materials in rigidity? (basic PLA, or PET-CF or PET-GF)

That’s false.

5

I don’t know where I said it was. I said you would think it would be. I didn’t say it definitely was. I got to learn to keep my mouth shut (or not post).

6

I like the orange. What build size are you going for? And what kind of table?

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I want to be able to machine a full 1200x2400 sheet, so I’m working on a 1250x2450 build.

I haven’t settled on the table yet; I think the answer might wind up being “a few of them” :rofl: One of the early jobs for the machine will be to build itself a new home.

There’s loosely the idea of a vacuum table floating ‘around my head. That might or might not happen. To start with it’ll be a pretty agricultural setup until I can design and build the permanent home for it.

8

wow! valid statement!

9

I don’t have a problem with them making a buck, or using open source software to do that. I just would prefer to see them give a little more back, rather than the asymmetric relationship they have with the open source community now. It’s a bit of an own goal, too, IMHO – OrcaSlicer kind of exists because they’re not really willing to work with the community in genuine partnership on their own slicer, and they’d have a bunch of awesome improvements in their product offering if they worked with the community instead of against it/in parallel to it.

Anyway – I’m not exactly on the moral high ground on this one given I’ve bought into their ecosystem in a fairly major way – but I do wish they’d be better corporate citizens in this way.

I’m interested too! :laughing: I suspect it’s going to be fine for what I’m going to be doing with it, but there’s no doubt that PLA is the superior material for this particular use case. I’ve got ChatGPT to do a little comparison of the various Bambu filaments based on their TDSes and come up with this, using PLA Basic as the baseline:

CNC-relevant property PLA Basic ABS-GF PLA-CF PET-CF PA6-CF dry PA6-CF conditioned
XY bending stiffness 1.00 1.04 1.44 1.93 1.99 1.29
XY bending strength 1.00 0.89 1.17 1.72 1.99 1.25
Z bending strength 1.00 0.78 0.83 0.83 1.36 0.76
XY impact toughness 1.00 0.55 0.87 1.35 1.52 2.15
Z impact toughness 1.00 0.38 0.57 0.33 1.12 —*
HDT 1.00 1.74 0.96 3.60 3.26 ~3.26†

I think this is pretty telling. PLA Basic is their cheapest filament by far (about AUD$16/kg in bulk) and essentially the best on every metric. If you were hell-bent on using something other than PLA, the other one that I find interesting is PA6-CF or PAHT-CF, particularly for something like the core, and maybe PET-CF for structural braces.

At the end of the day, the point of this project for me is building it, tinkering and having a bit of fun experimenting, so if it all falls in a screaming heap, that’s perfectly OK with me :slight_smile:

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I can see that point. But many companies have done the same thing. I will say Bambu has given one thing back to the 3D printing community. They made everyone else catch up and start doing more. Before Bambu, it seemed everyone just wanted to do the bare minimum on 3D printers. They were happy with the tinkering. Bambu brought it into the mainstream by making them easy to use. Everyone had to step up their game to compete. And now there are so many good alternatives (maybe not better :slight_smile:).

That’s a nice comparison.