Hot end, top bearing block, finished version 2 carriages and platform and new delta arms. Things are slowly coming together for my 3D printer, but I still have a lot of work to do!
Lets begin with the hot end. I purchased a Makergear hot end (1.75mm filament version) with a 0.5mm nozzle. I brought a kit that had a half assembled heat core. I wish that I had forked out the extra $7.50 for the fully assembled heat core but you live and learn.
Putting the heat core together wasn’t too hard. I followed the instructions on the Makergear website and managed to get a completed hot end for around 3-4 hours of work.
Next up is the top bearing blocks. They hold two bearings with an M5 bolt going through – The pulley slides onto the M5 bolt and that is the top pulley idler completed.
The small limit switches attach to these blocks and are triggered by a M3 bolt that sticks out from the carriages. The bolt in the carriage can be raised or lowered to trigger the switch at a different position – This is how the tip of the nozzle will be levelled to the stationary build platform.
Unfortunately my first iteration of carriages and platform ended up with some faults. Firstly my CNC router wasn’t running well due to some sticky movement so holes for example were smaller than in my drawings due to the flexible couplings lagging behind. Also I hadn’t accounted well for the size of my bearing joint parts.
So I redid the parts and they came out really nice this time round. Perfect dimensions all over! I then added some JB weld between each half part, aligned them up via the parts alignment holes and glued them together. The finished parts are very strong and should do very well.
Long post (feels like it anyway) if you’ve made it down here congrats. Lastly then to finish I recently got around to cutting out some of the long arms that will be used to connect the platform to the carriages.
I had originally intended to make these from HDPE plastic. However after CNC’ing one of the arms out I realised that HDPE was much too flexible and wouldn’t do at all! I was a little confused as to how I would proceed and remembered seeing people using carbon tube for the arms.
Carbon tube is very rigid and perfect for this application. I managed to track down some 6×4.5mm carbon tube for a cheap $29 NZD, very happy! Next big issue was the little jaws to pop on the end of the carbon tube – Making them on the CNC would be difficult so I turned to my friend Bert from protoneer.co.nz
Right away he was on the job and check out the results. His UP 3D printer produces some nice looking parts! So as for the arms – Sorted!