Endless 3D printing - DIY conveyor belt delta bed

this modified delta 3d printer can now work through a print queue autonomously ejecting parts automatically when done today i'll show you how i created a 3d printer that can print by itself forever or at least until it runs out of filament [Music] simple to explain but a long time in the making converting a 3d printer to have a conveyor belt bed so it can automatically eject finished parts and process a print queue by itself there's a lot to cover so we'll jump right in by looking at the inspiration for this project a while back i proposed a 3d printer called the 3d farmer with a belted bed so it could automatically eject parts when they were done ideal for a print farm i wanted to have a 3d printer like that after testing the creality cr30 as i loved the way it could automatically eject parts but i didn't like the compromise of the 45 degree printing angle traditionally if you're printing many parts at once and one of them goes wrong it's going to knock off the others resulting in an epic failure whereas with the conveyor belt you can print these parts individually one after each other but even if some fail the rest are unaffected there's been a lot of development in belt printers since the creality cr30 was launched and the ifactory one which was launched around the same time there was already the commercially available black belt 3d as well as the open source white knight with new models since then including the sanesmart infi 20 and the powerbelt 3d0 you can also get kits to convert your existing 3d printer such as the ender loop for the ender 3 and the aditiva belt ready printer kits again for the ender 3 and the artillery x1 all of these still use 45 degree printing but there are other options we have conversion kits such as the one from robot factory in italy that replace your bed slinging y axis with a conveyor belt instead this means you can eject parts when done a similar design comes from infinity 3d who previously had a campaign on kickstarter again replacing the y-axis with the belt and as a bonus giving the ability to eject parts when done this particular model interesting because it can be converted between 90 degree traditional mode and the angled 45 degree mode another interesting option is print shift from paul chase designed for the prusa mini and positioning a belt around the existing y-axis and bed when the print is done a very clever coupling system is used to rotate the belt and eject the parts out the side beyond belts there are other solutions such as this system from make anything which relies on the part naturally cooling and then being pushed off by the printhead allowing automatic part ejection similar systems such as quinley from 3dq are designed to turn existing printers into print farm capable machines and then we have a similar system from auto drop 3d that introduces a traditional wiper to remove the part rather than relying on the print head last but not least tomson later i had an ingenious system that used actual print beds on his voron 2.4 this is a really novel idea with the only compromise being a reduction in printer volume and the need to manually reinsert the beds there's so much clever thinking out there in the community but my goal didn't quite match any of them obviously my primary goal is automatic part ejection but i want a traditional perpendicular nozzle because i don't like the compromises that come with an angled print head and that includes having to use a specialized slicer i'm happy to use a belt but i don't want x y or z movement affected by it furthermore i don't want to lose any build volume for this reason a delta printer is perfect because the bed is stationary and a belt can run over the top in fact i accepted reviewing the super racer with this project in mind and the clipper conversion was leading towards this too finally i wanted to be able to cue multiple prints without changing the g-code myself and i wanted to finish the project in a way that was open source with easy to buy parts for anyone else building along with me this solution in my opinion ticks all of those boxes so how did i design it you should understand that i completed this project designing it piece by piece as i went experimenting with packaging options and trying to use parts that i already had on hand a lot of effort was needed at the start to model the mounting points for the bed as well as the extrusions that make up the corners of the delta frame this gave me a nice foundation to base my custom parts on when it came to the v-slot lower frame i tried to work smarter rather than harder using this beam plug-in for onshape as you can see it's got many profiles available we simply select what we want provide it with some straight lines that the beam will be extruded along and then have it automatically create the required extrusions without modelling any of the small features if you also use onshape and you think this looks handy you come down to add custom features and then paste in the url that i have in the description to install the beams feature because of my design as i went approach i had a problem that required a design change halfway through the original belt path used three idlers to create space for the power supply under the machine but the mounting lugs on the existing fl sun bed intersected with the top of the belt path underneath and required a change the new design only had one idler roller giving a simpler belt path but did require the power supply to be mounted on the side because of this you might notice in the footage the additional rollers are sometimes in view and the parts still contain the mounting holes for the old rollers i've also updated some parts since filming so expect some changes there to build this you will need additional hardware starting with a belt some time ago i was contacted by adam from powerbelt 3d creator of the powerbelt zero 3d printer kit that we saw earlier he wanted to know if i'd like to test the belt that they developed for the creality cr30 which apparently had been through 32 iterations over 28 months to get it just right adam also offers custom belts to your length and width which i purchase as the first step in this project the width of 280 was designed to just fit within the tower and cover the bed but the length i purposely ordered too long knowing that i hadn't designed the machine yet and i'd have to trim it down later the exact specs of the belt are provided in a bill of materials that also includes all of the printed part quantities as well as all of the hardware needed for each step it has links to buying parts on amazon as well as where i got the parts locally in australia the lower frame is made up from extrusions that i had lying around and i settled on 20 40 for the size five links are required and only one of them for me had to be trimmed down as 450 millimeters was the length of what i already had to put together the frame you'll also need six corner joiners of your choice and the rollers are based on what should be easy to get pvc plumbing pipe this is listed as 25 millimeters but it's actually a little over 33 external and just under 30 internal in north america this should be nominal pipe size 1 inch with a schedule 5 wall thickness through the middle of the rollers is m5 threaded rod and this is supported by mf-695z flanged ball bearings the belt system is driven by two stepper motors and then a series of two gt pulleys and the closed loop 188 millimeter timing belt and there's a pair of these on each side of the drive roller all of the hardware is listed in the bill of materials but it's largely m5 by 12 bolts some m5 nuts and lock nuts matching m5 washers and then of course m5t nuts to go into the extrusion you'll need four compression springs to mount the bed plate i wish these ones were a bit stiffer but they do work for the underside of the frame you'll need some rubber feet stick-on is fine if you can't find these bolt-ons the hardest part to source is this plate that i milled from three mil aluminium my cnc router in the garage was up to this task if you don't have access to this you could laser cut this piece from any rigid three millimeter material that can handle the temperature of the nearby heated bed apart from that everything else is ready printed and you might have noticed me printing all of these parts in a couple of my recent videos pla is fine with 50 or more infill for strength and only one of the parts requires support material everything is modeled the perfect size for me but you could always tweak the source cad to suit any variation in the parts that you use instead the next part is the disassembly of the old printer and the assembly of the new parts this video is going to end up way too long so i'm releasing a separate build video tomorrow to keep things concise in terms of this video we're going to continue by looking at the firmware and software changes needed to make this work on this printer i'm using clipper firmware partly because of the manual stepper feature which is absolutely perfect for this application we pasted the example into our own clipper configuration renaming the manual stepper belt and adjusting the pins to suit our main board the other values i settled on after some trial and error assuming we're using a 2209 stepper driver to match the rest we also need to add in a section to reflect this and to avoid errors we need to match the name in this case manual underscore stepper belt our final component is a simple macro using the manual stepper g code for the belt stepper resetting the position to zero and then moving it forward in my case 400 millimeters i also opted to add this macro to the lcd using a custom menu item which i've covered in detail in a previous video linked below also linked below is the full printer configuration posted to my github that's it for now with firmware but once the build is installed you'll need to run pid auto tune for the bed and you'll also need to rerun the delta calibrate clipper procedure to map out the new bed position as we've gained around 50 millimeters in vertical build volume once this is done the new values will be stored in the bottom of our configuration file the reason i'm using octa print is so i can use this continuous print queue plug-in it's recently had a change of developer and with that have come some new features these features are actually more than i need because in my case i just need to add my eject macro to the bed cleaning script as well as the cue finish script finally the slicer and there's not really anything that needs to change here apart from one thing i've increased the thickness and the height of the skirt to make it chunkier and more robust before i made this change i had some incidents where it was too thin still stuck to the belt and got sucked down in the gap at the front on paper everything was finally ready to go so i just needed to install the belt and do some printing to assist with belt installation power belt 3d supplied tutorial video on their website explaining that the joining tape is pressure sensitive so you can work methodically to attach one side tightly followed by the other i replicated this process wiping off any fingerprints with some paper towel and ipa before applying a strip of tape to one side of my belt applying pressure from the center outwards but peeling back and removing any air bubbles as necessary and finally introducing the other half of the belt and following the same process to attach the tape to it to finish up is an easy job by trimming off the excess tape from either side which means we're ready to tension with the system built into my modification this was quite an easy job righty tighty to pull that corner towards the front and all i did was monitor the tension by tapping up and down on top and making sure it wasn't too floppy i also found it handy to run my eject macro during this step to see how the belt was tracking under movement and make any final adjustments to keep it centered the rear roller brackets have oversized holes in case you need some fine adjustment there too using a combination of these various tools i was able to get the belt tracking in the center and reliable after all this work i was pretty nervous when i started my first print and unfortunately the nozzle was way too close to the belt and started running into it as i scrambled to adjust the baby stepping when the cube was finished it was really stuck and i was worried that i had destroyed the belt underneath but as i ejected the part i found that it still peeled off quite nicely and furthermore while there was evidence that i had printed too close the actual belt seemed to be undamaged so that's a tick for its durability at this time i designed printed and fitted these wedges to go on the front just to aid with part removal cleanly from the belt the idea is to slide it as close to the belt surface as you dare with this in place the ejection system was working quite well and no longer needed my hand there to catch the object shortly after i fixed up my first layer and started to test the continuous print plugin some more here you can see the print is finished and the macro to eject is activated automatically by the plugin the belt turns the part ejects and then we notice afterwards that the printer starts heating up again by itself and soon after commences the next print in the queue this plugin is perfect for my application because it's so flexible and easy to use even after you have a queue running you can still add other print jobs change quantities and make adjustments it works so let's evaluate the system overall i'm happy to say that as far as i'm concerned i managed to tick a box for all of my design goals and i even gained some build volume on the z-axis as a test of faith i set up a queue of six items and went to bed leaving the printer unattended the next morning i was anxious to see if it worked but i was very pleased to find this time lapse that showed all six items printing and ejecting autonomously so clearly the system inherently works but that's not to say that there can't be some improvements it's very subtle but i've noticed that the part can move very slightly on the belt during printing so i might need to play with tensioning some more there's also the tape where the belt joins you can print on this but it is slightly thicker and it's going to leave a mark on the underside of the first layer earlier on i showed you that thin objects if ejected too fast can wrap around the belt and then jam in the crack at the front i slowed down the belt speed but i think a future improvement will be to add some fans to the side to cool the part and increase its rigidity before it reaches the end of the belt so far i've tested this by using a hair dryer set to cold and it works really well for taller parts it's not really a problem but i will add some cooling to make the system more reliable for skinny parts if you want to build this everything you need to recreate this mod is available on printables and please use the comment section below to give me some feedback and suggestions this isn't a mod that i needed but i felt compelled to design and make it simply because i wanted to and in the end that was satisfaction enough thank you so much for watching and until next time happy continuous 3d printing g'day it's michael again if you like 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: 134,266

Keywords: 3d printing, 3d printer, 3d printed, 3d print, automatic, automated, autonomous, belt printer, print queue, print farm, conversion, flsun, super racer, ender 3, cr-30, enderloop, guide, powerbelt3d, belt, eject, ejection, octoprint, klipper, step by step, tutorial, lesson, firmware, wiring, parts, open source, free, printables, design, inspiration, continuous, testing, tension, tracking, pla, slicer, superslicer, github, mod, upgrade, modification

Id: hgTfSCgL0L0

Length: 15min 3sec (903 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 22 2022