Turn An Ender 3 Into A Belt 3D Printer Of Your Very Own

February 25, 2021 by Jenny List 20 Comments

Infinite-bed 3D printers have long been an object of desire in our community, but it has taken a long time for the promise to catch up with the reality in terms of relatively affordable models that live up to expectations. They’re still a little expensive compared to their fixed-bed cousins though, so if you hanker for a Creality CR30 but only have the cash for an Ender 3, [Michael Sgroi] may have the project for you. He’s created the EnderLoop, a set of parts to perform the conversion from a stock Ender 3 to a fully-functional belt printer.

It takes the Ender 3 gantry and tilts it sideways on a pair of 3D printed supports, and replaces the stock Y azis with a belt on rollers driven by a larger motor through a timing belt drive. He has a variety of suggestions for sourcing a belt, and in his case he’s chosen one from PowerBelt3D. As well as the GitHub repository already linked, it can also be found on Thingiverse.

It’s clear that hacking apart a reliable printer in this way is not for the faint-hearted, and that a cautious hacker might prefer to wait a while for a cheaper off-the-shelf model. But we can see that the reliability of the Ender 3 will mean that its parts are still of decent quality in the new configuration, and that it looks as though the base printer can be reassembled should a belt-based build be a failure. Infinite bed printers will inevitably have a major presence in our community, and it is designs such as this one which will lead the way as they evolve into reliable machines.

3D Print A PCB The Hard Way

February 22, 2021 by Al Williams 15 Comments

There’s an old joke about the physics student tasked with finding the height of a building using a barometer. She dropped the barometer from the roof and timed how long it took to hit the ground. Maybe that was a similar inspiration to [Moe_fpv_team’s] response to the challenge: use a 3D printer to create a PC board. The answer in that case? Print a CNC mill.

[Moe] had some leftover 3D printer parts. A $40 ER11 spindle gets control from the 3D printer software as a fan. The X, Y, and Z axis is pretty standard. The machine can’t mill metal, but it does handy on plywood and fiber board and should be sufficient to mill out a PCB from some copper clad board.

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Improving Cheap Ball Screws

February 22, 2021 by Al Williams 22 Comments

Most 3D printers use leadscrews for at least one axis. These are simple devices that are essentially a steel screw thread and a brass nut that travels on it. However, for maximum precision, you’d like to use a ball screw. These are usually very expensive but have many advantages over a leadscrew. [MirageC] found cheaper ball screws but, since they were inexpensive, they had certain limitations. He designed a simple device that improves the performance of these cheap ball screws.

Superficially, a ball screw looks like a leadscrew with an odd-looking thread. However, the nut is very different. Inside the nut are ball bearings that fit in the grooves and allows the nut to spin around with much less friction. A special path collects the ball bearings and recirculates them to the other side of the nut. In general, ball screws are very durable, can handle higher loads and higher speeds, and require less maintenance. Unlike leadscrews, they are more expensive and are usually quite rigid. They are also a bit noisier, though.

Ball screws are rated C0 to C10 precision where C10 is the least accurate and the price goes up — way up — with accuracy. [MirageC] shows how cheaper ball screws can be rolled instead of precision ground. These screws are cheaper and harder, but exhibit more runout than a precision screw.

This runout caused wobble during 3D printing that was immediately obvious on the prints. Using a machinist’s dial gauge, [MirageC] found the screws were not straight at all and that even a relatively poor C7 ball screw would be more precise.

The solution? A clever arrangement of 3D printed parts. ball bearings, and magnets. The device allows the nut to move laterally without transmitting it to the print bed. It is a clever design and seems to work well.

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Apple II Talks To 3D Printer With A Little Modern Help

February 21, 2021 by Tom Nardi 16 Comments

Controlling most desktop 3D printers is as easy as sending them G-code commands over a serial connection. As you might expect, it takes a relatively quick machine to fire off the commands fast enough for a good-quality print. But what if you weren’t so picky? If speed isn’t a concern, what’s the practical limit on the type of computer you could use?

In an effort to answer that question, [Max Piantoni] set out to control his Ender 3 printer with an authentic Apple IIc. Things were made a bit easier by the fact that he really only wanted to use the printer as a 2D plotter, so he could ignore the third dimension in his code. All he needed to do was come up with a BASIC program that let him create some simple geometric artwork on the Apple and convert it into commands that could be sent out over the computer’s serial port.

Unfortunately, [Max] ran into something of a language barrier. While the Apple had no problem generating G-code the Ender’s controller would understand, both devices couldn’t agree on a data rate that worked for both of them. The 3D printer likes to zip along at 115,200 baud, while the Apple was plodding ahead at 300. Clearly, something would have to stand in as an interpreter.

The solution [Max] came up with certainly wouldn’t be our first choice, but there’s something to be said for working with what you know. He quickly whipped up a program in Unity on his Macbook that would accept incoming commands from the Apple II at 300 baud, build up a healthy buffer, and then send them off to the Ender 3. As you can see in the video after the break, this Mac-in-the-middle approach got these unlikely friends talking at last.

We’re reminded of a project from a few years back that aimed to build a fully functional 3D printer with 1980s technology. It was to be controlled by a Commodore PET from the 1980s, which also struggled to communicate quickly enough with the printer’s electronics. Bringing a modern laptop into the mix is probably cheating a bit, but at least it shows the concept is sound.

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It’s Noodles All The Way Down: Ramen Comes To 3D Printer Support

February 20, 2021 by Al Williams 24 Comments

While ramen support might sound like a help desk for soup, it is actually a technique [GeoDroidJohn] uses to get easy-to-remove support structures on 3D prints. We saw the video below and we have to admit that it did remind us of a brick of uncooked ramen noodles.

We had to dig a little further to find out how he did it. We finally found a Reddit post that gives the recipe for Simplify 3D:

Nozzle diameter/2= layer height
Support material every other layer, 15% crossing at -45, and 45
5 dense layers at 90% 0 gap layers top or bottom.

We have to admit, we try to avoid support where we can, and where we can’t we just pick one of the stock Cura settings. It wasn’t entirely clear how — or even if — you could replicate this in slicers other than Simplify 3D. The layer height, of course, is a given. We think 15% support density with [-45, 45] in the “line directions” box might get partially there. Maybe someone who is an expert in Simplify and some other slicers can help translate.

In any event, it did make us think about experimenting with different support structures. We’ve played with Cura’s tree supports before this and liked them. So maybe the defaults aren’t always the best.

We’d like to have time to try more of what we read about supports. You can also fit your printer with a marker if you want to try that.

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3D Print Your Next Antenna

February 19, 2021 by Al Williams 40 Comments

Building antennas is a time-honored ham radio tradition. Shortwave antennas tend to be bulky but at VHF frequencies the antenna sizes are pretty manageable. [Fjkaan’s] 2 meter quadrifilar helicoidal antenna is a good example and the structure for it can be created with 3D printing combined with electrical conduit.

Many people, including [G4ILO] use PVC pipe for the structure, and that design inspired [Fjkaan]. Despite being a bit less substantial, the conduit seems to work well and it is easy to cut. The helical design is common for satellite work owing to its circular polarization and omnidirectional pattern.

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Plotter Uses Dual Disks

February 19, 2021 by Al Williams 19 Comments

If you want to move a pen (or a CNC tool, or a 3D printing hot end) in the X and Y plane, your choices are typically pretty simple. Many machines use a simple cartesian XY motion using two motors and some sort of linear drive. There’s also the core-XY arrangement where two motors move belts that cause the head to travel in two directions. Delta printers use yet another arrangement, but one of the stranger methods we’ve seen is the dual disk polar printer which — as its name implies — uses two rotating disks.

The unique mechanism uses one motor to rotate a disk and another motor to rotate the entire assembly. The print head — in this case a pencil — stays stationary. as you can see in the video below.

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