Ok, they’re not perfect yet…the process just needs a little dialling in.
I’ve googled a little, I really do think I’ve done something unique! Me, a mid 40’s Welsh bloke doing something no one else has…
I genuinely think this has never been done before…
Happy to be proven wrong 🙂
After having a few failures over the past few months, i’ve tried a number of things to increase the print success rate.
The biggest improvement came from temporarily moving the printers out of the cold conservatory and into the much warmer living room.
That’s a bad thing to do on a full time basis as resin fumes ARE toxic .
There’s a whole slew of ways of heating up the printer. People have heated their rooms (expensive). Put the resin printer on a heated printer bed! (genius, and works). They’ve also cobbled together a bunch ‘o bits and made a heater. Probably the most elegant one i’ve seen is by Elegoo!
So, what does a person do when there’s pretty much a slew of commercially available suitable heaters for a 3D printer………
Yep, you go and roll your own!
I worry that the commercial ones may be too powerful I only need to raise the temperature around 10-15 degrees above ambient. Having seen friends use 50watt lamps in vivariums of much larger volume than my printers, I’ve figured a 50 Watt dedicated heater device should be more than enough….
So
I’m going with a https://hobbycomponents.com/sensors/684-w1209-temperature-control-switch W1209 Temperature control device and sensor
(thankyou to https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3442165 for the inspiration for the product and also this Hackaday Article
a 50 Watt PTC Heater 12V DC https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07SC15TK7/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
(thankyou to the Elegoo heater thingy for this decision)
and a 60mm Fan https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07HCGZ5FZ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Thank ME for this one – I purchased 5 off 80mm Artic F8 case fans back in March last year for an absolute steal. With the intention of upgrading cooling on the Wanhao D9 and in anticipation of designing a small heater for the resin printers. I can’t find them, so, this pair was about the best deal I could find for quick delivery
This lot cost me about £20 in total – Not bad considering it’ll be twice as ugly as the £10 commercial units, which, at £10 will be delivered in March, which co-incidentally is about the same date that i’ll likley finish assembling this monstosity!, D’oh!
ah well……..
Now, All I need to do is create some sort of 3D printed enclosure to house ’em all, figure out how to route cables and voila, i’ll have a nice ‘thingy’
Note, this lot can be gotten for easily around a tenner total, if your patient. However, It’s cold NOW, so i can’t wait a few months for delivery (when, in the UK it’ll still be cold, just a bit less cold)
Very early days yet on this design. A couple of hours of measuring and sketching in Fusion360. Needs some finessing, but the principle is sound.
Given 90% of my printed things are quite short, (keyboards, Mini computer case prototypes and miniature monsters) I can comfortably make a very efficient 90 Degree bed resin drip drainer and keep the cover on!
Most drainers are maybe 20-40 degrees or so!
Having some fun with the printer this past few weeks. many, many fails
Lightly used, honest
Some possible lessons learned….
1 – Don’t mix Resin brands and pigments in untested combinations
I’d ordered a bunch of ‘expired’ Elegoo translucent green resin, going ridiculously cheap, (like 1/3rd the price it should be) it prints FANTASTICALLY…BUT
….I normally use Anycubic Clear, just because it’s what i started with, and it works.
I also add various pigments from http://resin8.co.uk
Mixing in an old batch of C64 Brown with the new Elegoo didn’t really work. I had 6 failures in a row – which i’d assumed was the FEP or me doing something silly / bad levelling . The 7th failure punctured the FEP! At that point i’d realised what i’d done (mixing all the stuff together) so, ordered some new Clear resin. I got a perfect print straight away!
The thing you see above is me, changing the supports (finally) after having issues with the old base layer being too thick and seperating from the build plate. I’d gotten around this by using longer base exposures, but still, had more failures than I’d like.
Hopefully now i’ve new FEP, new resin, and spent a couple of hours doing the supports properly, I’ll get a fresh print tomorrow!
My next issue – as you can see above…QMK. I spent weeks learning how to, and setting up QMK on my old laptop, which the kids smashed.
QMK has moved on a little it seems as now there’s a dedicated QMK MSYS32 installation…BUT, it doesn’t compile my old keyboard layout. if there’s anyone good with QMK out there, give me a shout!. I’ve no doubt I can get things working again to work on the code a little, just pressed for time for the next month or two and, i’m getting the coding itch this past few days 😛
Who knows if it’ll work yet, but whilst trying to support a large, flat, thin surface for printing, I found that the slicing software didn’t really seem to ‘get it’
So, I tricked it a little by adding the seeds for supports inside Fusion360
Essentially this is just creating a grid of ‘support tips’ and merging them with the wanted body.
The slicer software sees these tiny sticky-outy bits and has no choice other than to add supports to them
alternatley, they can serve as a grid for you to add some manual ‘heavy duty’ supports and surround with more medium duty ones
This is a large flat lower part of a case.
Closeup of zits on a grid
By adding an easy ‘pattern’ of 0.5mm high by 0.1mm diameter zits, I trick Lychee into supporting those areas.
The End result – Evenly spaced ‘starter’ supports that can be manually supplemented. This ensures that no points of the model will be droopy.
I’ve started with a grid around 10x10mm. no reason why this grid can’t be a bit smaller, just some experimenting needed
Hi All,
Quick update –
Arduino’s are still stuck in Limbo. I received 50 incorrect ones a long while back, ordered another 50 and they’ve been stuck somewhere in the UK for a couple of weeks now. I did order 10 locally at about 2x the price I normally pay to work through some of the waiting list, but that exhaused my supply of PCB’s
So, I ordered back at the beginning of February some more PCB’s
They arrived yesterday, and, I quickly soldered one up to test, so I can start ‘kitting up’ the keyboard kits.
I may have discovered an issue with the way that i’m Using EASYEDA, which has recently shown up in an EASYEDA update….it could be a bug, or a behaviour change, but, it’s B0rked my PCB!
This will set back the kit availability a couple of weeks whilst I address it and get new boards made. I know what the issue is, I can re-create it and have a work around to order more PCB’s so it’s no major worry
Here’s the C64 Keybaord matrix that i’m using. I’ve always used number prefixes for the number keys. i.e. if it’s A, I’ve used the PREFIX A, 1, Prefix 1, etc , etc.
Something changed in EASYEDA a couple of months ago which now means that Prefixes with a single digit number now all seem to tie their nets together.
Here’s the resulting PCB – Note, the nets for the centre pins are all the same!
I didn’t spot this in the one that I just had made! and despite the thoroughly heroic efforts of the JLCPCB staff to fix a couple of cockups i’d made , I have to now trash this batch .
Ah well, off to learn a little more about EASYEDA, quite an expensive mistake though, but this shows why, when you make changes, testing is important.
You can imagine how amused I was when I discovered that EVERY key worked on my board, except the number keys, which only typed 0 or 9 !
In other news – I purchased one of these
An Ultrasonic Cleaner – Dual Frequency 28KHz and 40KHz. I’ll do another post about it later.
All i can say now is WOW – No need for the wash and cure station now! – this thing superbly and consistently cleans the prints, giving a good surface finish. Prior to this, it was impossible to get a good finish on every key, every time. Now, i’m 4 prints in , and 3 are perfect, 1 is crap due to over-cleaning! I’m dialled in and ready for production
Whilst developing the Commodore 64 mini keycaps and iterating the prints, it came clear that the caps are little buckets that hold quite a lot of resin.
I’ve been holding the keyboard over the tray to drain all this resin out, and it takes “ages”
So, when you can use CAD and have a few 3D printers , you go and spend time developing a widget to optimise the amount of time holding a build plate at an angle!
And by “spend time”, and “optimise”, I mean, take longer doing in CAD than the total amount of time that would have been spent holding the bed in the first place
I present….
Total amount of time in CAD, and reworking, maybe 3 hours…
Total amount of time holding a bed to drain, maybe 3 minutes.
Number of beds to hold to recoup time in CAD…60!
So, after 60 prints, I’ll have broken even on the time invested in making the thing!
Version 1 wasn’t as optimal, it needed shifting over to the left by about 30mm to give far more clearance on the case for everyone not printing 25mm high keycaps to be able to use.
Released on Thingiverse – right here – for free! works a treat.
Only some thoughts on this one –
The PCB inside the Mono looks to be a custom PCB.
However, it’s widely known that Anycubic uses Chitu Systems drivers and panels
When I cracked open the Mono – I found really only 3 chips of significance…
An ANLOGIC FPGA – EF2L45LG144B –
and
a GD32F307 Arm Cortex M4 controller
Having a nose around ChiTu’s website found this little device – The ChiTu L M1
https://home.cbd-3d.com/hardware/controller-board/chitu-l-m18-9-4k-monochrome/
Have a look at page 12 / 73 and what do you spot ? – Item 8 – an ANOLOGIC EL2F Series FPGA Chip!!
AND….an STM32F407ZET6
Cortex®-M4 32-bit RISC core operating at a frequency of up to 168 MHz.
Sound familiar?
a GD32F307 Arm Cortex M4 controller – Cortex®-M4 Core @ 120 MHz
What this means? – No idea 😛
BUT, what this could mean…
1- The Anycubic Photon Mono board is possibly capable of using a 4K LCD
also, i’ve spotted that Chitu systems sells an ESP8266 module specifically for their boards – it could be that Anycubic plans on selling their own, or just goofed up with the polarity of the header on the board!
And, finally, after all the above, that i’m going to publish anyway, i’ve also spotted
Which looks practically identical, also has the FPGA and the ARM board and is only 2k!, D’oh!
More on the mechanicals this time – didn’t think to get some last time……..and, A revelation as to why it’s so quiet!
Continue reading “Anycubic Photon Mono Teardown Part 2”A first look at the guts
I got myself a Resin Printer!
So, Naturally, before printing with it, I attack it with a screwdriver – or hex driver in this case……..
Here’s the first tear-down and initial dismantling of the brand new Anycubic Monochrome Resin Printer
And, some more photos..
Continue reading “Anycubic Photon Mono Teardown – Part 1”Picked up a Tefal rice cooker when living in Australia. They’re superb, reliable and make great cakes
Highly recommend buying one 🙂
Our latching mechanism broke recently, requiring us to jam some weights on top to ensure the lovely cooked rice goodness continued……….
I’m getting a little better at Fusion360 now and my work with the C64Mini keyboard taught me enough about surface modelling to knock up this thingy 🙂
The old one’s at the top………the sticky outy bit snapped.
Now, another rabbit hole though……PLA is quite tough
….Until it’s warmed up.
….Rice cookers get a little warm…
It lasted a couple of weeks at least…
Picked up a roll of ABS, first time I’ll be using it, so wish me luck!. Also i’ll redesign those curves just a little better 🙂
Add M420 S1 after G28
Someone on facebook suggested that the stock wanhao Firmware doesn’t handle leveling propertly. They’re right
Check out……..
https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?415,789128
given the 1000’s of people having issues getting the D9 to print properly, there does seem to be something fundamentally wrong with the printer….
In your Cura / startup script, find G28
Continue reading “Wanhao D9 – Bed leveling -do this to make it work!”
It’s been a busy personal and work life for the past few weeks so it’s been difficult to ‘tinker’……….I have however made something new!………….. Continue reading “Wanhao Duplicator 9 – New X Axis parts coming”
The Wanhao printer bed is made of Aluminium, below this is a flexible heating element.
It’s been widely reported that the D9 doesn’t level very easilly, Here’s why people are having issues….
Aluminium expands when heated!
If you’re having ‘levelling issues’ ensure to do the electronic bed levelling whilst the bed is hot! – (pre-heat to typical printing temperature first)
Anyways, some math.
Here’s a datasheet for the Aluminium I purchased for my carriage upgrade
Two things I note here –
| Physical Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Density | 2.71 g/cm³ |
| Thermal Expansion | 24 x10^-6 /K |
Density – Steel (which the carriage is made of) is generally around the 7 – 8 g/cm³ – or Three times that of Aluminium! – win there, I can use a sheet of aluminium Three times thicker than the steel on the carriage and have the same weight (in theory)
Thermal Expansion – Translated this means that Aluminium expands by 24 micrometers per millikelvin. Also known as 0.000024 meters per degree
How does this affect the D9 Printbed?
When heated, the 325 x 325 x 2mm thick aluminium bed becomes a bit larger
………How large?
Here follows some very rough calcuations……..
Continue reading “Aluminium beds – some thoughts on levelling”
The Cheapy ‘Hiwin’ clone rails and blocks arrived a while back and they haven’t really dissapointed. By that, I mean, I kinda got what I was expecting. Still, only a small premium paid and 3 workable carriages / rails……
Continue reading “Chinese ‘cheap’ clone linear rails MGN12 Beware and a teardown”
I’ve found a solution to having a fairly stable base that’s wider than the 60mm square wheel carriages Wanhao uses…
It’s possible to create a 120mm wide base, IF you offset the mounting of the bearing blocks from the centre as can be seen above and below…
After the new 1.64B firmware, I’m having some issues with the printer….it starts printing about 1mm in the air……lets investigate
I’ve levelled the printer bed, manually, then autolevel
I’ve set the Z offset during the levelling process
I try printing, it’s 1mm high in the air and refusing to stick
Home the Z axis on the Printer, send this command with Pronterface
G0 Z0
find out what the Z reading is and check what the offset is
SENDING:M114 X:10.00 Y:0.00 Z:0.00 E:0.00 Count X:797 Y:0 Z:17
SENDING:M851 echo:Z Offset : -0.20abl_enabled
that’s telling me that at Z home, i’ve got Z = 17 with -0.2 offset, so, Z should read 16.8 Lets try resetting back to defaults
SENDING:M502 echo:Hardcoded Default Settings Loaded >>> m501 SENDING:M501 echo:V07 stored settings retrieved (590 bytes; crc 9778) echo: G21 ; Units in mm echo: M149 C ; Units in Celsius echo:Filament settings: Disabled echo: M200 D3.00 echo: M200 D0 echo:Steps per unit: echo: M92 X79.80 Y79.60 Z400.50 E94.20 echo:Maximum feedrates (units/s): echo: M203 X300.00 Y300.00 Z5.00 E25.00 echo:Maximum Acceleration (units/s2): echo: M201 X500 Y500 Z100 E500 echo:Acceleration (units/s2): P<print_accel> R<retract_accel> T<travel_accel> echo: M204 P500.00 R800.00 T500.00 echo:Advanced: S<min_feedrate> T<min_travel_feedrate> B<min_segment_time_ms> X<max_xy_jerk> Z<max_z_jerk> E<max_e_jerk> echo: M205 S0.00 T0.00 B20000 X10.00 Y10.00 Z0.40 E1.00 echo:Home offset: echo: M206 X0.00 Y0.00 Z0.00 echo:Auto Bed Leveling: echo: M420 S1 echo:Material heatup parameters: echo: M145 S0 H200 B60 F0 M145 S1 H240 B80 F0 echo:PID settings: echo: M301 P33.41 I1.47 D189.27 echo:Z-Probe Offset (mm): echo: M851 Z-0.20
Hmm
I have no idea what’s going on! looks like the Z offset isn’t ‘sticking’ (Much like some of my prints!!)
Either way, something’s a little inconsistent 😦
Iteration……it’s all about trying, adjusting, trying again. from the first basic drawing on the left and the first print….right through to the Rev6 print (that’s now REV 7)
The tall bit pushes against the conservatory roof…the little ‘hook’ holds it in place on a small ledge, the long dangly bit presses against the wall and holds the LED strip….REV 7 increases the length of the sticky uppy bit on the right!
Back a few weeks ago, I purchased some LED strings to light up the conservatory during the winter months
Also purchased a few types of incredibly sticky double sided stuff….they just would not stick……The sticky pads stuck to the PVC windows just fine, but whatever teflon type material the clear IP tubes are made of, well, it’s better than teflon, nowt’ll hold that up….
Enter my shiny new 3D printer….A few brackets will hold them up nicely!
I used some Playdoh to get an idea of the outline of the PVC Ledge that I could clip some holders to…Made some drawings and knocked up something in Tinkercad
On the left is my first foray into 3D cad in nearly two decades….I’ve merged them to show the Rev7 bracket that i’m now to print….
I’m amazed really, in modern times, a 3D printer enables you to take some measurements….Create an item, try for fit….re-design the item, try again…..rinse, repeat….in just a few hours!. 7 iterations of trying, wiggling about an ‘guessing’ what needed changing and it’s done (till I improve and get to rev 10 :-P)
I’ve a long print running, but when it finishes, i’ll print up about 20 of these in clear filament and show the final product installed….can’t wait!
Finally – Wanhao have released a decent firmware – V0.164(B)
Now, Levelling the bed…..
There’s LOADS of videos, methods ,etc out there….this way is SIMPLE, CONSISTENT and reliable
Make sure your printer head is clean and free from cooled plastic
MAKE SURE THE BED IS CLEAN...(I’m using baby wet wipes, but they dont’ seem to be the best, i’ll need to try isopropyl alcohol like the old timers are)
How to clean….Use a sponge, soap and water………that’s it!
1 – LEVEL the Z axis – use a ruler / visual marks on the back, whatever, make sure the bar is level
2 – Use the menu to go into the LEVEL selection
3 – Get the Z axis offset correct by using a piece of paper so it’s just gripped by the head
4 – TURN OFF THE PRINTER (yes, TURN IT OFF, DO NOT CLICK NEXT)
5 – MANUALLY move the print head to CLOSE (maybe 10mm away from) to the corners…
6 – Go back and check each corner and tweak slightly if necessary
7 – Turn printer on and LEVEL THE BED IN SOFTWARE AS NORMAL……
Now, if you really want to be pedantic, you should do this whilst everything’s warmed up to your normal working temperatures!
That’s it, the end
I’m having a go at Using Octoprint with one of the 10’s of Raspberry Pi’s I seem to have Lying around
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2479352/
After figuring out that 20mm, just ain’t good enough to calibrate, I had a nose around on thingverse….
The largest ‘calibration’ thing I found was the above 280 x 280mm square……..Awesome, that’s good enough, close to 300mm too for maximum calibratory goodness…
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1278865
Lots of basic printing suggested that the front to back measurement was slightly off…so, finally I’ve decided to calibrate the printer….
By, printing a calibration cube! I’ll do it a little differently and record just a bit more information…I’ll measure 3 points for each axis, giving 9 points for the cube….
Continue reading “Calibration – WYISYG, Don’t use a 20mm Cube for accuracy!”
Well, as i’m thinking ahead for a change and have purchased some glow in the dark filament
I’ve now discovered that the stuff is quite abrasive and I really should be thinking about getting some spare nozzles
A quick search for ‘replacement nozzles’ and….err
fairly quick one here…..
Make sure your bed rails are parallel by slackening one screw and manually moving the bed……………..
I picked mine up for £399 just over 3 weeks ago!.
already it’s dropped by £50………wow!!
https://www.box.co.uk/Wanhao-Duplicator-9_2327623.html
I get no benefits at all by linking to these guys, just highlighting a superb printer (so far!) for a superb price here in the UK
Immediate upgrades – Better wheels x 6 for the Y axis Bed (open builds type, see my other posts) and a better blower fan – <£40 extra and it’s a superb, 24V printer
Well, having left the printer on overnight to knock out an urgent print for a friend, I’ve discovered that, it’s a little on the noisy side!
The Wanhao D9 has FOUR fans! (yep, FOUR)
One 60x60x15mm fan in the power supply and Three 40x40x10
Two of these…AAA HZHZ 4010 MS 24V DC 0.10Amp fans
One on the extruder, right by the number 7, top yellow arrow
This one is the fan that cools the extruder block
Hmm, Looking at DWIN.COM.CN…There’s quite a few LCD’s that may fit the bill- quickly copy / pasted the parts into Excel – All are 2Gig memory and 4.3″ screens
It’s HOOOOOOOGE. look at that box!, you can fit a 6 year old child in that (no 6 year old children were harmed in determining that fact)
More pics…
What’s more than my £200 budget, but, less than my self imposed £400…and just happens to sport some ‘go faster’ stripes in my favourite colour
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the CREALITY CR-10S 300
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