MPCNC – finished dust shoe system

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Inspired by one of my readers I had a look  at the dust shoe for the Kress again. I redesigned it completely and got rid of the additional tubes and clamps. I thought that it would be a good idea to have a highly flexible part between vaccum and CNC. If I had ordered the 20mm silicon tubes it may have worked as well but reducing parts is allways priority.

So in the end we got a pretty classic dust shoe here. It doesn´t have a brush at the bottom as it seems to work pretty good at the moment and I really like to see the endmill. However I included three holes at the bottom for a later brush design.

It works pretty good with lighter materials but GFK, aluminum or similar are not fully sucked up.

It has been printed in 0,3mm draft quality for testing purposes.

It has been released on thingiverse here http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2119491

Now also available in my shop here

Designing and Building a Dual-head 3D Printer

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I had the opportunity to try out at least 5 different printers. All of them had sifgnificant backdraws like missing heatbed, price and noise. They all did there job anyway and my Fabrikator is working pretty much „fire and forget“ all the time. Nevertheless I´m tempted to create my own printer just for the sake of adding it to my collection of valuable experiences.

I came up with T-Bot first iteration closely related to prusa´s I3 framewise. I didn´t liked the Z leadscrews standing out that much and too far away from the linear slides so the second version focused on making this a little more aerodynamic.

I am aiming for a precise as possible head and bed positioning mechanics with dual extrusion the bowden way. I have good experience with bowden so I don´t see any significant disadvantages at the moment.

The second version with the new z and x mechanics.

There are E3D V6 mounted on the gantry at the moment but it should be stable enough for light milling operations.

The frame is designed with 16mm MDF in mind but I probably change to a different material (not OSB). Thats why I have to redesign most of the frame parts as the new material is somewhat thinner.

I already have most of the electronic components in mind. The first prototype might be powered by components I have laying around but the finished version is meant to be state of the art 🙂

Watching Thomas Sanladerer´s channel really helped me out making decisions at some points in the design process so thank you for your effort in making great videos, if you ever read this.

 

mostly printed camera slider – part 2

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I took another iteration to make it move like it should. As you can see, in comparison to the previous entry, the case and the mechanics have been modified. The belt system used is a bit more complicated than I initially thought and I couldn´t get it to perform „super smooth“ like its contestants.It is best suited for actioncams as you can see in the picture below. I tried a DSLM and it works somehow but it flexes under the load generating a somewhat unstraight path.

I think it´s okay anyway, taking the money spend into account versus performance. At least it was a good exercise. In the video below are some cam transitions made with it so get the idea of the achievable smoothnes. It´s more like basecap than edelkrone 😛

This project is currently in long term testing and refinement stage.

Mostly printed camera slider

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Inspired and a bit fascinated by the glide arm style camera sliders I decided to build my own version of it.

The parts are all standard you got laying around either from a MPCNC build or if you like modifying or building 3D printers. Anythin else can be sourced from your local hardware store or other sources.

 It is not working yet as I´m wating on some hardware parts that are announced for arrival next week. After that it will be tested in various conditions and then maybe released into the wild 🙂

Parts list:

-soon-

Raspi based synthesizer with prynth

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Some time ago I discovered „The Mitt“ by Ivan Franko. I liked the idea of a flexible software synthesizer combined with a precise hardware controlled parameter modulation.

The idea is to create different concepts of modulation or forms of synthesis in general. The prynth framework itself is based on the legendary „supercollider“ and is served via a webapp running on a rapsberry pi. That way it is very easy to modify with a few clicks.

I had quiete some different synths and other hardware instruments and always came to a point where I really wanted to modify a tiny bit. I know, being limited at some point can help to develop new styles and they teach you how to efficiently use your ressources but this time we have full control over the bits and sounds. FINALLY

I took part in a competition by Ivan in which he gave away a set of prynth pcbs that are used to feed the hardware signals into the raspi. Looks like I´ve won, together with 2 other participiants and for the first time I received a letter from canada!

 The main pcb has a teensy on it reading the voltage on the voltage dividers made up by the potentiometers. Up to ten variable resistors are supported by the muxi control mainboard. For bigger projects featuring more control inputs the smaller mux pcbs add a maximum of 80 (!) inputs.

Currently the „hack and make Jena“ group is working on creating a mostly practical synth with some additional features to modulate it fluent and intuitive.

Solder fume extractor

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3

A definetely important tool that I´ve delayed way too long. Micha remembered me of the importance of these devices and as he needed one as well I had even more motivation to finally build one.

It is a simple design with a 24V 180 m³/h fan sucking the air through a 130 x 130 x 10 mm activated charcoal mat. The protoytpe on the pictures was designed with two fans in mind but the single arrangement was sufficient enough. The single fan design also reduced the printing time of course, so I went with that as standard.

I added some legs that increased the range of the system so you don´t have to be too close to the „defumer“. The working range is usually around 40 cm. The closer the better.

Material:

5,6mm female plug – Example

120mm Fan 24 V – Example 

24V power source- Example

Flip switch – Example

Activated charcoal mat – Example

MPCNC – New KRESS FME800q tool-holder with dust shoe assembly

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First render of the new tool holder with dust shoe, connected at the bottom. The goal was to stiffen the spindle for aluminum milling and the transition to a more comfortable suction system as I don´t like standing next to it for an hour.

The clamp itself has already been printed and the vaccuum attachment is on its way. I will see how this turns out and if I need some kind of brush to bridge the gap to the workpiece or if the pure airflow is strong enough to keep the chips and dust under control. The spindle is closer to the gantry and sits firmly clamped by two M4 screws with washers and nylocks.

Sorry for the bad print quality, it is printed in PETG and I didn´t dialed in the parameters carefully as this is a plain mechanical part with no optical ambitions 😛

Those are my preparations for the nex aluminum milling test runs and the upcoming bigger project that might cause lots of dust.

MPCNC – Long-term testing and material decisions

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1. Long-Term observations on the XYZ part

I found a small crack in the XYZ gantry today. This is the second time that I´ve seen this. I milled some aluminum as you may know and I had a mild crash when setting up the endstops but I thought I was fast enough switching it off before it took damage. I printed some parts in the meantime and re tightened the XYZ assembly.

This is obviously a weak spot in the construction, at least if you over tighten the gantry. This is hard to measure as it will break sometime after tightening even without use. It was printed with the suggested high infill and outer wall settings but with a line infill instead of grid. That also could have influenced the partstrength.

The first time it happened on the upper XYZ part. I printed the replacement part out of PETG. It seems much stronger and surprisingly it is not bending the tiniest amount. I expected PETG to be tougher but more flexible but in direct comparison with the PLA part underneath in a tightened state on the machine this is way stiffer. (grey)

2. Conclusion

I´m reprinting the bottom XYZ part with PETG.
Thomas Sanladerer tested the same PETG in his filaween series and he confirmed the toughness of the material. The flexibility of PETG can be neglected in my opinion.

MPCNC filament spool holder

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My Hobbyking Fabrikator prints just nice but there are times when the build volume is just not big enough. So why not use the capabilitys of the MPCNC for that? I used the MK8 Extruder and mount from Ryan and designed a compact spool holder that uses leftover parts I had from the CNC build. In my case those are two M8 metric screws with a length of 70mm, a nut and two 608 bearings. Combined it looked like this:Spool holder postion

MPCNC spool holder

The clamp for 25mm tubes is fastened with four M3 *16 and nylock nuts. It can be rotated to aim at the printhead. For now it is available for center holes of 53mm and a width of 53 mm spools.

It can be downloaded here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2002909

 

Desklamp „century“ part 2

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I did finish the first „century“ lamp just in time for christmas. The base is very close to the CAD design, thanks to the excellent work of a friend and his lathe. The apple wood turned quite dark, alltough I used a clear finish. The lampshade printed from natural PLA gave it an almost glass like appearance. I´m currently refitting the MPCNC with an extruder so I may be able to print the more complex lampshades soon as my Hobbyking Fabrikator is just a bit too small for the task. I´m pretty happy with the result so far. Now I have to dive deeper into aluminum milling to get it a little more stiff.