Hey guys,
This is the second part of my blog posts on my prusa i3 build, if you havn't read the previous episode, you can find it here -
http://www.h4hacks.com/2015/06/beginning-of-my-3d-printing-saga-first.html
Apologies to my readers as i am taking so long to write about the work that i have done. I request everyone to be patient, (lot of you guys ask me on facebook and all, Thanks) as i am finding it quite difficult to find time to do so.
Ok now if you have read my first post, then you know that i made a huge mistake by buying the whole kit from the cheapest Indian seller at that time (Sep 2014). So whats done is done, i want to build a 3D printer. So i decided to burn lot more cash to replace all the crappy parts that was in the kit i bought.
First of all, I purchased a new set of printed parts from global easy buy in ebay (geb.ebay.in). Here i bought a set of neatly printed prusa i3 parts. You can see the difference here
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Y Idler end |
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Neat quality |
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Finally working frame piller :-) |
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Nice quality X carriage |
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Good quality |
Now that I have all the good quality printed parts i wanted to upgrade some other items from the kit too.
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A direct drive extruder |
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All metal hotend |
So Finally I got some good parts for building this prusa. Now all that is left is do start building it. So here we go
The Build
I don't want to bore you guys with all the detailed build instructions of prusa its already neatly documented on the reprap wiki pages and there are plenty of youtube videos. So instead of all that lets have a picture by picture progress of the build
The Y Axis frame
So First i built the y axis and the base frame of prusa.
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Base frame - Y axis |
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My Room was all messy as usual |
The Move
In the midst of this build i had to shift myself to a new home. Man that was challenging, I had to pack all of my hardware and move it to new place.
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Reached new home |
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All tools and parts are safe :) |
And i have unpacked everything and started with the build again :-)
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all stuff back on the ground |
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Y axis build progressing |
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Added Y motor |
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Aligning stuff |
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Belt added for Y |
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Heat bed mounted |
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How does it look? |
So the Y axis is almost good now. Lets progress with others
The X Axis
Now lets see the x axis build
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X axis rail with extruder tray |
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With direct drive extruder |
The Z axis and X axis marriage :-)
Lets quickly see how i put together the X axis and the Z axis together
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X and Z together :-) |
Completing the frame
Lets go ahead and complete the frame of Prisa by merging it all together
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Finally |
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Looks like a prusa :-) |
Setting up the electronics
So now that the frame is up we need to work on electronics. I am using a standard RAMPS 1.4 board and if you have done some homework that you may already know that the MOSFET's in ramps heat up badly after some time. So my first task was to put some heatsinks on them
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Here are those guys who heat up |
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I made these hand cut aluminium pieces |
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Ramps heatsink |
Now that looks fine. Now i will mount the extruder and connect everything
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Extruder is completed :-) |
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All motors are connected |
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This cool fan mount helps |
Now for holding the filament spool i created this holder with help of some PVC pipe, cheap and very effective :-)
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Cool holder |
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PVC looks awesome |
Testing and Printing
Now that everything is ready lets just test it
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Repetier Host |
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Configuring |