New Things *.*

Hello there! Do you guys still know me?

I know, I've been very quiet after my last post, which was back in the December last year... Long time, I know. But there is a reason for that. It's because:

I've build a new printer!

Bigger!

Faster!

Self designed!

More accurate!

Better looking (not yet fully, but way better than the other :b)!

This is the bad boy

It is based on the CoreXY movement system.
Why?
Because I think it is way more advanced, due to the special arrangement. None of the motors is tied to an axis, which makes the moving parts lighter. That again gives me the ability to move the axis faster.

I also decided to go for a Bowden Extruder with this one, because it, again, reduces the weight which has to be pushed around, and gives better results in print quality.

Furthermore I gave up the wish to make my own electronics and software. It sounds sad I know :(
But if you take a closer look it makes sense:
- developing a driver board on my own has the downside that it costs a lot. I'm obviously working with a tiny budget (which is my pocket money) and there were a lot of problems and difficulties because of that. In the end it wasn't fun anymore.
- writing the software on my own is neat, because I know the inner mechanics and I'm able to implement my own functions easily without the time I have to spend now to read the marlin documentation. I really liked that. But I was very unexperienced when I started: I didn't knew about the inability of the raspberry pi to do precise realtime things, Interrupts where a horror to implement(in contrast to arduino) and the code was evolving with my skills. Which means that there were snippets which were really awfully coded and messed up. All of this lead me to a point where I lost the fun I had doing this. In the end, I procrastinated the things I wanted to change on the code.

That should be enough for the topic "reasons why I gave up".



Back to my new printer:
- RAMPS 1.4
    - with a self-made breakout board to power 3 Z axis steppers
- Marlin 1.6.7
- print volume: 300mmx300mmx530mm
- auto-bed-leveling
- (until now without a heated bed  -  PLA works fine on blue painters tape)

Here are some pictures of my most recent test print:

- 0.2mm layer height, 2½ h, PLA, 185C°, 6,5cmx3.2cmx4.9cm
The Z axis is, apparently, a bit wobbly, thats why there is a vertical wave pattern on the print.
In the next days I'm going to get some more precise M8 rods.


So that was a tiny update on what was going on in the past 7 months. I'm sorry that I didn't made the video I announced in my last post, but my other Printer is no longer in a presentable form. I had to re-use the steppers and the extruder, because, as I already mentioned, I only have my pocket money for this project.
Obviously there won't be a video about this printer in the future. But maybe about my new printer. I don't know for sure yet.

I think I will post some more about this printer in the future... if I'm in the right mood for writing ;).

Cheers,
JHL