Ender 3 coreXY conversion kit from Kay3D

this is an end of three that's been converted to core XY with a conversion kit from k3d in this video we'll see what's involved as well as what it can do the Kree ality end of three is perhaps the perfect gateway 3d printer I imagine a lot of people got it as their first ready printer had some trial and error but learnt the ropes and now they might be ready for something more the trouble is they might not have the budget or space to get a second printer outright recently I covered the Ender extender kit which repurposes our end of three as a large format 3d printer the idea of repurposing your current printer to better suit your needs is a concept I'm really behind so when I was offered this kit from k3d to make a video about I jumped right on it now the installation for this product is quite involved and this video will be far too long if I covered everything step by step so instead I'm going to concentrate on giving you more of a feel for the steps involved rather than breaking down every individual little item later in the video I'll show you how it prints as well as give some constructive feedback there's a lot to cover so let's get right into it here we are on the k 3d comm website and let's have a quick explore we've got a firm web page we've got STL's we've got a page explaining the benefits of core XY and then we've got our assembly manual if we come to the store page for the core XY conversion kit we can see that it costs us three hundred and twenty nine dollars and it does a good job of running through some of the features of this particular kit in here we are on the actual assembly instructions I'd recommend turning on the document outline so you have all of these headings and then you can switch between sections and you might notice it's quite a long document the current version being 269 pages now it is quite an involved build but the manual is this long because it breaks things down in extreme detail for any of the steps it's got multiple photos from different angles to try and ensure that you don't make any mistakes I wouldn't recommend printing it because it means if there's an update you won't have the latest version it's also worth mentioning that there are a couple of support options including a Facebook group and discord community in addition to this as an FAQ and email support after watching my video if you have any questions probably best to start on the FAQ I'll be converting a standard into three instead of a pro for this video and previously all they've done is update the firmware which means I've burned a bootloader and that is a prerequisite for this conversion you should also check your stepper motors to see if you have the newer style pulley without a grub screw and the completely round output shaft these are very difficult to remove without a tool such as this printed pulley extractor I did try to use this but it started to fail in two different places so I ended up switching to some spare stepper motors I had lying about I'd recommend checking yours before you start and either getting a replacement stepper motor or purchasing a metal pulley extractor in terms of printed parts that you need before you start if you're running the standard fan duct and hot end you don't need to do anything but if you're running abl perhaps that Hiromi fan duct all of the parts required are listed for download so you can print that ahead of time there's also a page with conversion kit STL's all of these should be included in your kit the only one missing for me is this belt alignment jig and the edge is ment to be tapered it's by design before we disassemble it's important to have a large clear area to put all of the sub assemblies it's also extremely important to label the parts as you pull them off using the part numbers listed in the instructions let's begin by tearing down this end of three we start by unplugging the connectors for the stepper motors and endstops after this we start on the frame by removing the filament holder and the horizontal piece across the top of the machine we're now going to manually twist the Zed lead screw to lift up and remove the gantry the instructions then cover how to disassemble and label the parts for use later on we remove the power supply loosen the y-axis belt tensioner remove the belt and then the tensioner we then remove the y-axis stepper motor and the y-axis end stop the BET comes off and is separated into into your components now we removed the z-axis end stop and the LCD controller from the front corner of the machine these two bolts from the front left come off and need to be stored for later on at the back of the machine we remove the z-axis stepper motor and then flip the printer over and remove the vertical frame pieces from both sides of the machine as before what's left of the lower frame is disassembled into smaller components but that's not the end because we're still going to separate the frame pieces further making sure to keep labeling everything as we go finally we turn our attention to the electronics box following the instructions to disconnect almost all of the wiring in fact the only thing left will be their two connections for the heated bed and the main power supply input this was all I had left on my workbench with the remaining components and sub assemblies of the printer placed and labeled ready to go for the rebuild we can now start to unbox the components for the conversion this various sizes of free slot extrusion a bunch of components in a plastic container and even more brackets and wiring looms in this bag the instructions call for us to verify and label all of the parts from the kit so that's what I did and I highly recommend that you do the same all of the small parts fit nicely on the open lid of the plastic container as well as the parts that go into the kit there's also this handy little jig it's used to align items in the correct position and also has these openings for doing up nuts very nice let's begin the build and for the most part it's pretty straightforward if it takes a little bit of time to do sub assemblies before we bolt major components together you'll spend a fair bit of time pre preparing bolts and matching T nuts through components much of the assembly calls for the components to be flush so use one of the spare pieces of extrusion to align the edges as you do up the bolts it's also important that nothing is skewed so make sure you're working on a flat surface and verify that the frame is square and sitting flat before tightening everything properly the upper frame is assembled in much the same way except this time using internal corner brackets and here's the two on top of each other verifying the flat and matching sighs we can then install the four corner pieces using the GK to keep them flush with the edge of the lower frame with the four vertical posts in place we can now flip the printer upside down use the corner brackets to attach it to the upper frame and we have our basic structure complete we now use another jig piece to put the holders for the z-axis in place on either side after the four of these pieces are in place we can add even more corner frame pieces to stiffen up the frame and that step completes the frame so now we move on to the core XY belt system there's many components for each of these sub assemblies I chose to leave the spaces in the packets so I wouldn't get them mixed up the diagrams are quite clear and asked us to stack components in a certain order is my front left idler assembly once this is built we add a second piece to seal all the components and every time we have one of these parts we make sure that everything turns freely the right-hand side is built almost symmetrically these two then bolt onto the upper front corners of the machine there's quite a few sub assemblies that we put together in this way around the machine none of them are difficult you just need to take your time and reference the diagram carefully after we've built these sets we need to disassemble the V rollers from the existing into three parts they are then inserted loosely before we salvage more pieces from our original end of three parts to build up a sub assembly for the other side these can now be inserted onto the top frame from above we then use tools to tighten up the bolts for each V roller finally we can tension the eccentric nut and make sure that they slide back and forth freely now we're up to the part where we need to remove the pulleys from the X&Y stepper motors as I mentioned earlier I couldn't get this done with my printed extractor so I switched to some spare stepper motors with the same plug with the bonus of having a flat output shaft which helps when you secure the new pulleys for the belts it's time to build some more stacks of spacers pulleys and idler bearings and then we attach our stepper motors to these new sub assemblies building up to near symmetrical sets for either side of the printer these two sub assemblies are now secured in the back corners of the machine we now get our new belts and use them to align the vertical height of the police on the stepper motors once the correct height is found we can do up the grub screws double check the alignment and apart from installing the belts our core XY kinematics are complete now we're onto the z axis components and as the instructions state this is fairly involved we cleverly use the original frame parts as a jig to correctly position these corner brackets before installing some linear bearing blocks on either end as we continue to bolt components to the frame we once again use jigs to ensure the correct placement and alignment we add parts to the front and rear of the machine in this way and that allows us to insert the linear rods with a minimum of fuss making sure to remember to include the parts for the moving bed as the rods go through now was a good time to check your alignment and make sure there's no sticking points and if there's not we can continue with building the Zed belt system as you might imagine when we insert the threaded rod there's a specific order in which the components need to be stacked and once we've done this we can manually turn the lead screw to move each side up and down we now build this component for the z-axis which holds the stepper motor as well as the belt tensioner this attaches to the lower part of the frame and then the closed loop z belt goes around the two idlers around the stepper motor pulley and that leaves the actual tension in pulley which when pulled towards the stepper motor pulls all of the belts tight back on the top of the machine we insert the crossmember for the x axis steal the V rollers and some other parts from our original end of three printhead insert the wheels and the left-hand side of the belts onto the new carriage resting it gently in position because it's now time to attach the belts using the clear color-coded diagram I found this to be a really straightforward task the upper and lower belts are kept completely separate so it's just a matter of routing them through the pulleys on your way around the printer the new carriage does have the mounting holes to fit in a 3d camera but I was using the standard hot-end so I reattached that as well as the factory fan shroud now it's time to tension them and this part is particularly well done okay 3d provide a full video taking you step-by-step through the process basically we take our printed alignment tool from earlier we attach it to the back of the gantry and then pull the top belt tight enough that the gantry skews to meet the angle on the printed part and then we cable tie the top belt in place we now remove this printed part and install two other alignment tools pulling the lower belt tight enough until they're touching on both corners of the printer we cable tie the lower belt in place and then use the sliding motor mounts to do our final fine-tuning to make sure everything is tense as well as the gantry square the video does a great job of explaining this and when you're done you can snip off the cable ties and our belts are complete we're now going to reassemble the bed using a piece as a jig to get the correct alignment and then putting together this sub assembly which can now be attached to the printer we can now bolt the lead screw nuts to the bed brackets and manually move the z-axis up and down through its range of motion to ensure everything is correctly aligned we can also manually check that our x and y axes are moving freely before we connect the stepper motors and have to worry about back EMF frying the main board we can now reattach the power supply the z n stop system as well as the Y n stop holder as well as the extruder to the side of the frame using the included bracket all that remains is electronics and wiring for the most part we use a standard wiring loom with two of these being extended there's quite a few steps in this section once again but everything is very well described and labeled so if you follow it step-by-step you'll have everything correctly in place in around 10 to 15 minutes we tidy things up by reinstalling the factory LCD as well as the factory filament spool holder as well as undertaking a little bit of cable management that completes our build and you can expect to have some leftover fasteners from the kit as well as some components from the original end of three with everything physically done it's time to turn our attention to firmware k 3d runs cheetah which is a branch of Mullen 2.0 which is set up to make configuring this and other machines easier much like th 3d does with a unified firmware many combinations of main boards and printers are covered including my combination of standard mainboard with the core XY conversion kit this firmware can be downloaded from their website or from their github there's instruction pages for various combinations and they take you like the build instructions step by step on everything you need to do to setup your firmware this is generally a matter of uncommenting a line to suit your hardware or substituting in a value in this case my stepper motor drivers where a line in the code is marked as change value everything is numbered and in order ascend ually case of reading down and on commenting each option one at a time the trickiest bit is really not that tricky or you find out what comport you're using and then entering it into one of the lines of the configuration files if you're still daunted by the prospect of this task there's pre-made configurations that are already set up that you can download from their website either way when you're ready to go connect to a USB cable to the printer and click upload to flash the firmware a reminder that as I said earlier you will need to have already burned a boot loaded to your mainboard when I powered on the printer I saw the firmware flash was successful as it said k3d cheetah along the bottom I also noticed a k3d commands submenu but probably the best way to test if the firmware is set up correctly is to select auto home and make sure that your printer is able to home successfully to the upper left hand corner I did notice that I'd put my bed on slightly crooked so I loosened some bolts and made some fine adjustments we can now load filament and level the bed and that puts us just about ready to do our first test printer we need to make a quick tweak to our slicer there is a slicer page with the profile already set up for Purusha slicer and some general instructions for other slices for me it was simply a matter of updating the build volume to the new size of to 30 by 205 by 400 and telling the slicer that the y axis now homes in the max direction finally I was ready to print and I started with a humble calibration cube it was done at 80 millimeters per se and apart from some general under extrusion it looked pretty good next up was a 3d bench and there were some zits from where the new layer started but apart from that it was pretty clean one thing I noticed and was really happy about is that the side walls of the cabin no longer had any zebra stripes these were in plain sight when I did a test print after assembling this printer and before this conversion either one of the settings in the firmware or the core XY kinematics seems to have solved this problem by then up to my base speed to 120 millimeters per second and thought our test precision with this print in place claw design the under extrusion has gotten worse but accuracy wise it easily passes the test my final test was Avars to see if the z-axis was consistent it was but once again I had the under extrusion issue so it's a good time for some constructive criticism firstly I had these three issues because I have an early development kit and anyone who orders now won't have them my Zed extrusions are too short therefore the rods stick out the top I had to leave out one bolt from a corner bracket because it lined up with the power supply bolt and the end stop holder overshift was too short so I had to print the correct one things I'd like to see it rest on the actual kit are the loose mounting of the control box perhaps with an optional printable electronics box that that user can print after the conversion some of the cable management is a little untidy and some very simple printed clips could do a good job of holding the wires closer to the frame and my main complaint is the path of the Bowden tube which in my opinion should be straighter as I think it might be leading to my under extrusion when I tested for my maximum extrusion rate I found that it was down from when the printer was stuck I think I can fix this pretty easily by moving the extruder higher up and having the Bowden tube clear the belts and feed directly in I should stress however that these are very minor complaints and easy to fix given the scale and complexity of this concept it's extremely well executed sometimes when I cover products they seem rushed and slap together other times it seems like there's a lot of engineering and problem solving that's gone in with this kit is a version of something that seems to be extremely well thought out and well executed it's not perfect to that our compromises which I've covered as well as losing that little bit of wire build volume but at least you get a fair bit of extra Z in return my final thoughts are on the price of this kit and it's definitely not cheap it's even more expensive than the original printer it does however come with a lot of parts and components and it's been in development for over a year to get it just right if your only goal was to own a core XY printer yes there's some existing models that you could buy and be done with it but the value when this comes from the fact that it's a project in itself if you're someone who enjoys modifying and tinkering with 3d printers as it's part of your hobby I imagine you'll get a great deal of joy of fitting this kit and tweaking it further to your liking if you've got any thoughts on this particular kit or any other ways you think an end of three could be repurposed please leave them in the comments below thank you so much for watching and until next time happy 3d printing g'day it's Michael again if you liked the video then please click like if you want to see more content like this in future click Subscribe and make sure you click on the Bell to receive every notification if you really want to support the channel and see exclusive content become a patron visit my patreon page see you next time

Channel: Teaching Tech

Views: 267,617

Keywords: 3d printing, 3d printer, 3d printed, 3d print, ender 3, ender 5, creality, corexy, kay3d, conversion, kit, upgrade, mod, modification, step by step, guide, documentation, firmware, marlin, cheetah, levelling, calibration, slicer, build, tear down, disassembly, assembly, tuning, belt path, belt tension

Id: 2tiOWzqP8As

Length: 19min 7sec (1147 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 10 2020