Some additional work going into the printer, now that it's warm enough that I don't have to absolutely baby it. It's finally heating the bed to temperature on it's own, even if it takes a while (Large mass of AL as the build plate).
Work that's been done I haven't mentioned here:
I Replaced the PEI on build plate, and made a spare. The older PEI was a first attempt, and ended up with air bubbles, and then warping from a careless application of a heat gun. I'll be cutting the old piece down for some of the ENABLE folks around here.
Cleaned up top deck wiring:
Added adhesive wire management points, and generally bundled it together better.
Refilled and tested laser cutter:
Went absolutely flawlessly. Our first sheet was challenging, with spacing between parts set at paper thickness. Cut so beautifully that we didn't have any cleanup to do and got full drop out.
Designing printed brackets for chamber heater relay:
As I'm using a "IoT Relay" that comes with pre-wired plugs and an IEC in, as well as a large control voltage range, there weren't pre-designed brackets, nor were they considerate enough to include screw holes to mount it to something. The first revision of brackets (which are on Repables) work with wafer head screws. But I forgot I don't have any of the correct size to spare (Yay computer re-assembly). So the second revision is printing now, with wider and deeper counterbores for the button head screws (11MM diameter, for those curious). It will mount to the bottom side panel that I haven't put a wiring duct onto.
More cooling, and another newly designed part:
I went ahead and got both a Berd-Air, and two more layer cooling fans. We'll see if they all work together without blowing a fuse. I went ahead and printed up a little clip for the Berd-Air that should be able to go onto the 713Maker mounts, and accommodate the wire loop on them. Once I get a chance to test it, I'll post it.
Wiring random stuff together:
Not quite random. But for the moment, I've got the wiring for the chamber heaters together using large crimp connectors as my split point for it to go to the two fixtures, and solid core wire from the crimp point to the fixtures, as that should move much, but the stranded wire might need plugged/unplugged. I also wired together a harness that will allow me to use my fans in any combination, as they get individual connectors.
Worked on design for larger printer:
I've been doing most of my layout on paper, and sourcing components. Once I'm done with figuring out most of how it goes together, I'll do up a cad model and finalize my BOM. Current approximate costs are 3500$ USD. Yes, those pictures of white paper in the gallery are the design so far, and those are yard sticks for scale. Bit of a big fellow. I'd be more than happy to talk more about it with people who are interested in it, but it's not an immediate project.
Wheeled base for printer table:
We went ahead and picked one up, since it was on sale at woodcrafters. Seems to work well so far, and most of the other stuff in the shop is on wheels for ease of reconfiguration.
Stuff still to do:
Test Rambo control of chamber heating, and document:
Need to test that A) Firmware to treat chamber as additional hotend works, B) Relay switches when commanded to by Rambo, C) That impromptu chamber temperature sensor works. (Actually an E3D heater block with the thermistor mounted that's spare. I plan to get 5 screw in thermistors, and update the thermistor E3D regular and volcano blocks, as well as the stock hotend to them, as well as make a little aluminum or copper plate that one threads into for a better temperature sensor, but that's once I have money again (anniversaries are expensive, at least if you like your current girlfriend, and happen to be a broke college student. It's even worse when it's valentines day as well))
Install chamber heaters:
I need to test that the wiring harness and bulbs work, and then decide which bulbs to work with first, as I have a IR filtered bulb, a ceramic heater, and a heat lamp bulb, all the same wattage, to test. Harness is parallel so I can test them either alone or in pairs. I may need to create a mounting puck to go under the bases though, which would be annoying.
Trip to Chicago:
There's a convention meeting in Chicago, to which my father and brothers will be going (I'm staying home to take the printer apart again). They will be picking up an 80W laser tube, a rotary attachment for the laser, and some other stuff while in Chicago. So you may see some more spiffy laser cut stuff from us soon.
Additional work on alternate beds:
We'll be cutting a Baltic birch circle of the correct size for the bed to print Nylon on, and engraving registration on it, too. Once that's cut, we can use the sheet it came from to register the glass bed in the laser and engrave registration on that too.
24V's for the bed:
We plan to obtain soon a 24V, 21A power supply, along with the circuit breakers and connectors(Powerpoles, thanks to this lovely forum for point me at them). It will be an external supply, with automatic failover to the internal 12V supply. There will be proper protection on as much of this stuff as possible, and it will have both a printed portion to the external box, for mounting the DIN rail breaker and other components, and a laser cut case to make sure that if the chassis ground starts to float that people aren't shocked.
Print server and laser cut rack mounts:
We happen to have several older extra motherboards and CPU's, as well as hard-drives (we assembled a 6TB NAS out of spare parts, to put it in context). So we'll be putting together a design for a laser cuttable 4U rack mount case, since the table we use for the printer is an Ikea Lack, which will perfectly accommodate a 19 inch rack. There sadly aren't designs already available, so once it works, we'll be releasing those as well. It's some days of solid work away though. Once that's done, all our slicing and print control will be done on one of our spare computers that lives with the printer permanently, and another rack mount case will be cut to fill out our other impromptu server rack.
Imgur gallery of all the various stuff mentioned here, where pictures are available:
http://imgur.com/a/Z8btV
As always with my stuff, let me know if anything in particular interests you, and either I'll elaborate on it here, or else I'll start a thread (or find an appropriate one that already exists) for it.
