What is the best customizable 3D printer system these days?

I can't imagine much out there being more customizable than a Voron 2.4 or Trident.



I took a few short video clips when I was setting up my newly built Voron 2.4 last year.

Actually, if I remember right it was November of last year, so i've been using it now for a year.

So far, so good. Its up to 1600 hours and still runs great.

These videos kinda suck. I'm not a youtuber.

During the first test runs:


The first test print:

Trying to get the LED macros and LED Effects Plugin to work correctly for the WS2812 GRB case lights:


After installing the nozzle brush and purge bucket. I've since added a second nozzle brush/purge mirrored on the other side. The macro has the printhead alternating sides during the homing, levelling and bed mesh routines:



The first timelapse video, after getting the timelaps macro to work:

Some more timelapse videos:
https://youtu.be/n1ZtWm3p0zs

Spiral egg holder for the fridge, timelapse:
https://youtu.be/wHHNwjwNgp0

Baby Groot timelapse, after I figured out how to move the toolhead out of the way for each frame of the timelapse:
https://youtu.be/5kgF-dWcor8
 
Ok I pulled the trigger on the Qidi Max3 printer today. That is to fill my growing need for 3D printed parts.

While I was at it I ordered a new extruder and hotend for my old prusa since that is what was giving me trouble before I bought the Ender. That is to fill my need to tinker with a 3D printer.

The Ender is going to turn into a laser machine. I ordered the laser kit for it a while back but never opened it. I want to try etching PCBs with it. If that doesn't work out I'll find some other use for a weak CNC laser.

With the old Prusa I'm going to do... something. Rebuild it at a minimum; mill an aluminum replacement for the MDF frame and re-print all the broken 3D printed parts with modern high strength engineering filament on the Qidi. But I probably won't be satisfied with that, and it will probably end up evolving into something weird that only I will be able to look fondly upon.
 
I know a Special Effects coordinator in Atlanta that converted a very large robotic arm into a 3D printer. I have not seen the finished product but I think the print bed is 12'x10'!
 
Well I've had this thing for nearly a week and put a few pounds of plastic through it, here are my thoughts.

It's big. Not as large of build volume as I had written down on paper that I wanted, but in real life, about at the limit of what most people would be willing to manage. Smartass delivery driver barricaded me in my house with it. I had to walk around from the back door.

20231111_104733.jpg


From cutting the box open to printing the first part took about an hour, maybe a little longer, I wasn't exactly timing it; no assembly required, just unpacking and following setup instructions. It is very much ready to go out of the box.

It prints just about everything on the market except peek and probably some other ultra problematic stuff I don't know about. Ships with a second nozzle (hardened steel for the carbon fiber stuff). CoreXY so it's fast (600mm/s). Probably not as fast as Voron but fast enough to look (to my eyes at least) like the print head is teleporting when it makes a rapid move; just disappears and reappears 3" away. That's something I'm not used to so it still draws me in and makes me stand there watching it and being unproductive.

Hot end goes up to 350C, build plate to 120C, and heated build chamber to 65C. Auto bed leveling, input shaping, all the stuff the cool kids have. It is running Klipper and has Fluidd web interface. Open source FTW. Nothing about it is locked down that I can tell. I haven't jacked around with any of the config files but I've looked through them.

Direct drive extruder means TPU is no problem. It also means there's a lot of weight being slung around at warp speed in there, so it needs to be on a sturdy bench. I put it on a wobbly one to start, and it had parts and tools falling off all sides of the bench.

20231118_235645.jpg


The heated build chamber is just what I needed for all the ABS parts I need to make. I have never had this much success with ABS.

20231116_152209.jpg


With about 1.5kg of ABS through the nozzle, this is the closest thing I've had to a failure:

20231118_011942.jpg


The first ~20% of the layers look like poo but I'm pretty sure that's my fault. I usually turn my filament dryer on the night before so the filament is nice and dry, and preheated, and then in the morning turn the printer on, let the build plate and chamber heat up for at least 30 minutes for everything to equalize, and then print. I keep the dryer running while printing. That morning I had forgotten to turn on the dryer the night before and I just turned everything on the same time. 30 minutes later started printing and above was the result. I theorize that the beginning of the acceptable print quality coincides with the time that the filament dryer finally got the roll up to temp. Here's what I'm talking about with the filament dryer:

20231117_230737.jpg


So far I've printed TPU, a bunch of ABS, some PETG, and the obligatory PLA benchy with the small roll that came in the machine. No issues with any of it.

I am very happy with the printer but here are the gripes I've managed to rack up so far:

- the front window doesn't go up high enough. All the action happens at the very top of the machine and they only left about an inch through which to view it, and that inch has a curve in the window "glass" right in the middle of it. It's hard enough to see by eye but near impossible to get an un-distorted picture of the action from the front.
- the auto bed leveling takes forever and runs by default on every single print when sent from the laptop; no way to disable it in slicer. You can however just upload the file to the printer, then go to the printer and select the file, disable the bed leveling, and then print. But that's an extra step (or more steps, depending on where you put the printer).
- at the end of the print, nozzle, bed, and chamber temp setpoint all go to 0. Also during auto bed leveling and homing, all temp setpoints go to zero. If you're like me and want to keep those internals at a consistent operating temperature all day long, well this printer seems designed to stop you from doing that. I haven't looked into it but I'm guessing there's probably a g-code that slicer is putting at the end of all my files to set the Temps to 0 and I could probably manually delete it, but I doubt that will help for what happens during auto bed leveling.

Also I got a bondtech extruder with slice mosquito hot end for the old I3 along with a BigTreeTech SKR and a RPi, and I'll be diving into resto-modding that old dinosaur pretty soon.

p.s. check out how sexy acetone-treated ABS is:

20231116_160538.jpg
 
Last edited:
Bit late to the party, but... If you want the ultimate in customisability, the Duet3D control boards running RepRapFirmware are what you're looking for. I transformed my Ender5 plus by ripping out the mediocre board it came with and adding a Duet2 WiFi. The cool thing about it is everything is configured with gcode. No flashing, recompiling or anything like that. Just text edit, reload and you're done. It'll run any type of CNC, so be a good option for your laser conversion. The support forum is excellent too.
Other things I like about it: I can send prints from Cura directly via WiFi.
The web interface it presents is outstanding and allows control and monitoring if every aspect of the printer.
They have a lovely configurator you can use to get an initial config going.
I added their magnetic filament monitor, which actually measures how much the filament moves compared to what was asked for in any given move and can pause the print in cases of extruder failure, clogs, skipping or plain old filament out situations.
Great discussion!
 
That acetone treatment is impressive! Can you provide some details on the process and tools?
GsT
 
GeneT45 said:
That acetone treatment is impressive! Can you provide some details on the process and tools?
GsT
Click to expand...
The "recommended" procedure involves building or buying an acetone treatment chamber but I used the first of the "not recommended" methods in that article: brush application. I went that direction primarily because I'm cheap and lazy but also because I can selectively treat surfaces while leaving others untouched (like the bore of the screw in this case) and because I can apply just enough coats to get the desired result without going too far. I printed that part with 100% infill so no risk melting through the wall. Doing it with a brush leaves ugly white patches where the acetone dries but those are easily erased by going over it with a shop towel lightly dampened with acetone, leaving that nice clean glossy finish.
 
Lo-Fi said:
Bit late to the party, but... If you want the ultimate in customisability, the Duet3D control boards running RepRapFirmware are what you're looking for. I transformed my Ender5 plus by ripping out the mediocre board it came with and adding a Duet2 WiFi. The cool thing about it is everything is configured with gcode. No flashing, recompiling or anything like that. Just text edit, reload and you're done. It'll run any type of CNC, so be a good option for your laser conversion. The support forum is excellent too.
Other things I like about it: I can send prints from Cura directly via WiFi.
The web interface it presents is outstanding and allows control and monitoring if every aspect of the printer.
They have a lovely configurator you can use to get an initial config going.
I added their magnetic filament monitor, which actually measures how much the filament moves compared to what was asked for in any given move and can pause the print in cases of extruder failure, clogs, skipping or plain old filament out situations.
Great discussion!
Click to expand...

I did already order the SKR board but I am still listening. On your recommendation I did a cursory investigation of the Duet boards and I see what you are talking about regarding GCodes for configuration. I am trying to wrap my head around how I could leverage this aspect to make a more capable/customizable machine.

Here's an example I came up with: for a 5 axis machine, let's say I want to print a worm gear. The machine starts out as a 3 axis machine, prints a tower in the center of the print bed. Once the tower is complete, a gcode is executed which tells the machine it's now 5-axis, and the tower rotates horizontal, and starts getting layers deposited on its side, around its circumstance and along its length.

Am I on the right track? Is that a good example of why you recommend it? Do you have any better examples that might help me grasp the advantages it offers?

Thanks for speaking up!
 
A question for all you 3D'ers. Has anyone entertained the possibility of using a CNC mill for 3D printing? I already have very workable 3 (and 4) axis control. It would seem that what would be needed would be the print head, the heated platen, and a translator into G code the the mill understands.

I have already adapted the mill for laser etching, using the control for the flood coolant to turn the laser off and on.. The same could be used to turn the print head off and on.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top