3d Printer hacks

2516 Articles

TFT35 Dual Mode 3D Print Control – Hands On

January 3, 2022 by 18 Comments

I was rebuilding one of my 3D printers — again — and decided I needed a display upgrade. A color screen is nice, but there are some limitations. I also found there are ways around these limitations, so I wanted to share my thoughts on a dual-mode color touch screen LCD controller for your 3D printer. The screen in question is a TFT35 from BigTree Tech. It is similar to an MKS screen, but it can operate in two different modes, as you will see.

A few years ago, I picked up an Anet A8 which was very inexpensive, especially on sale. Not the best printer, though, because it has that cheap acrylic frame. No problem. A box full of aluminum extrusion later, the printer was reborn. Over time, I’ve completely reworked the extrusion system and the Y-axis, leaving only the motors, bearings, and the controller/display as the original.

That last part was what bothered me. The Anet board is actually pretty capable for a small cheap board. But it is just what the printer needs and nothing more. If you wanted to hack the printer there was very little memory left and only one spare pin for I/O. So it was time to replace the board and why not the controller, too?

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3D Printering: Adding A Web Interface Where There Was None Before

December 31, 2021 by 8 Comments

[Renzo Mischianti] got himself a Chinese 3D printer, specifically a FlyingBear Ghost 5. (Cracking name, huh?) He was more than a little irritated with the fact that whilst the controller, an MKS Robin Nano, did have a integrated Wi-FI module, it provided no browser-based interface for monitoring and control purposes. This seemed a bit short-sighted in this day and age, to say the least. Not being at all happy with that situation, [Renzo] proceeded to write dedicated Wi-Fi firmware using websockets, but not without fully documenting his journey in a detailed series of the blog posts.

The resulting BeePrint web interface supports all the usual functions you would expect when managing a printer, everything from monitoring warm-up at the prep stage, to keeping tabs on the potential spaghetti monster via the connected IP camera. All good stuff. [Renzo] used an ESP32-cam, which is a low-cost 2 MP unit from our friends at Olimex, but we suspect it wouldn’t vastly difficult to add your own IP camera into the mix.

[Renzo] has a YT channel detailing quite a few other projects, which is definitely worth some viewing time in our opinion.

We’ve been covering 3D printer hacking since the dinosaurs were roaming. This is the oldest, and still one of the strangest, posts that we could find in a quick search. Anyone care to find something older?

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UV Printing PCBs

December 28, 2021 by 12 Comments

We always enjoy [Thomas Sanladerer’s] 3D printing videos. But his latest isn’t only about 3D printing. He shows how he uses a DLP printer — which has UV light, after all — to expose PC board blanks with great results. Honestly, once we heard the idea, we immediately saw how that could work it is surprising more people aren’t taking advantage of their DLP printers like that. Of course, [Thomas] does his usual thorough treatment of the topic.

Really, this isn’t exactly 3D printing even though it uses a 3D printer. Exposing boards with UV light and artwork is an old process that has been around for years, usually using transparency film and a UV light source. With a printer, you can create artwork digitally and the UV light source is already there.

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roetz shows off his multi hot end 3d printer

Maximum Throughput Benchie

December 26, 2021 by 8 Comments

Have you ever needed to make a few hundred of something quickly? [Roetz 4.0] has got you covered with his massively parallel entry into the SpeedBoatRace competition.

The idea behind the SpeedBoatRace is how quickly you can print a Benchy — the little boat that is used as a test print for a 3d printer. Speeding up a print is quite tricky as it means moving the head quicker and giving layers less time to deposit and a whole other host of problems. So [Roetz] took a page out of a CPU designer’s playbook, and rather than increasing the latency, he raised the throughput. The original plan was for 20 hot ends, but due to cooling issues, that had to be reduced to 18. Perhaps even more impressive than the scale of the machine is that the only off-the-shelf parts on it are the fans for cooling. Everything else is printed or machined by [Roetz] himself. The whole run was completed in less than an hour, which technically gives him a sub 3.6 minute time per benchy, even accounting for a few that failed.

This isn’t [Roetz’s] first custom 3d printer. He turned a CMM into a 3d printer a while back that offered incredible accuracy across a large build area. Thanks [Jan Roetz] for sending this one in! Video after the break.

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DIY High Flow 3D Printing

December 25, 2021 by 5 Comments

Sometimes we’re impressed by the sheer audacity of a project. [Stefan] rarely disappoints in that area, and his latest video shows him making an adapter to convert a normal 3D printed nozzle into a high-flow nozzle, similar to one you’d find on a Volcano. We say similar because [Stefan] took the trouble to drill three holes in the adapter to increase the melting surface area. The audacious part is that he doesn’t really have the machine shop to drill three tiny precision holes in close proximity — and he shows us the pictures to prove that he didn’t get it right the first (or fifth) time. But he did stick with it and got good results.

Why do such a thing? He wanted to mount the high-efficiency nozzles he’s been experimenting with on the Volcano extruder. The commercial one, in particular, doesn’t come in the extended size. To simplify things, he started with a long brass insert. The conical hex cut offers a natural center point if you are satisfied with a single hole through the center of the adapter. The hex cutout allows you to use a key to install or remove the spacer easily.

The idea behind the longer nozzles is that the filament has more time at temperature and can therefore move faster and still melt. The additional surface area should help, too. Of course, [Stefan] does plenty of testing and you can see the results in the video. A Volcano nozzle started misbehaving around 25 mm/s but at 30 mm/s, things started going bad. The CHT nozzle on the homemade standard spacer stayed working up to 30 mm/s and even at 60 mm/s was doing better than the standard nozzle at 45 mm/s. Sadly, the multiple holes in the special adapter caused worse extrusion performance, presumably by increasing pressure in the extrusion system. However, it did work well in real-life printing. Since the single bore adapter and the CHT nozzle worked great we don’t think it would be worth making the more complex one, as impressive a feat as that was.

[Stefan] thinks a lot about nozzles. He worries about wear, of course. He also built his own version of the high-flow nozzle.

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3D Printing Gets Tiny

December 25, 2021 by 6 Comments

Using a process akin to electroplating, researchers at the University of Oldenburg have 3D printed structures at the 25 nanometer scale. A human hair, of course, is thousands of time thicker than that. The working medium was a copper salt and a very tiny nozzle. How tiny? As small as 1.6 nanometers. That’s big enough for two copper ions at once.

Tiny nozzles are prone to every 3D printer’s bane: clogged nozzles. To mitigate this, the team built a closed-loop control that measured electrical current between the work area and inside the nozzle. You can read the full paper online.

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3D Prints With A Mirror Finish

December 25, 2021 by 15 Comments

As anyone who has used a 3D printer before knows, what comes off the bed of your regular FSD printer is by no means a mirror finish. There are layers in the print simply by the nature of the technology itself, and the transitions between layers will never be smooth. In addition, printers can use different technology for depositing layers, making for thinner layers (SLA, for example). With those challenges in mind, [AlphaPhoenix] set out to create an authentic mirror finish on his 3D prints. (Video, embedded below.)

As the intro hints, mirrors need very flat/smooth surfaces to reflect light. To smooth his prints, [AlphaPhoenix] first did a light sanding pass and then applied very thick two-part epoxy, allowing surface tension to do the smoothing work for him. Once dried, silver was deposited onto the pieces via a few different sprays. First, a wetting agent is applied, which prevents subsequent solutions from beading up. Next, he sprays the two precursors, and they react together to deposit elemental silver onto the object’s surface. [AlphaPhoenix] asserts that he isn’t a chemist and then explains some of the many chemical reactions behind the process and theorizes why the solutions break down a while after being mixed.

He had an excellent first batch, and then subsequent batches came out splotchy and decided un-mirror-like. As we mentioned earlier, the first step was a wetting agent, which tended to react with the epoxy that He applied. Then, using a grid search with four variables, [AlphaPhoenix] trudged through the different configurations, landing on critical takeaways. For example, the curing time for the epoxy was essential and the ratio between the two precursor solutions.

Recently we covered a 3D printed mirror array that concealed a hidden message. Perhaps a future version of that could have the mirror integrated into the print itself using the techniques from [AlphaPhoenix]?

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