Installing a 3D Printer in our Overland Truck - Everlanders see the World!

welcome back everyone in this video we got a 3d printer to build it into the truck and power it directly from our solar so yeah i'm a maker anyone who's followed the channel for any length of time will know we built our truck from scratch and i've always been the guy making and building and doing stuff and one of the most uh important tools to me back home was our 3d printer i use that thing for everything it's the easiest and quickest way to make something out of nothing so i was really heartbroken when we had to leave our old printer at home it was just too big it was a cubic meter and just far too big to take along with us and in the rush to get out of canada it got left behind and so i was really missing having that option that flexibility to be able to print whatever i needed on the road and this last thanksgiving i was given a generous donation by one of our supporting channel members and i decided to pull the trigger and get ourselves a 3d printer that i could build right into the truck and run it off of our 12 volt solar and so i got the ez 3d nano it was about yea big it was super tiny and it ran directly off of 12 volts and so it looked super promising that that would be a good solution for me just to make little doodads and parts that i needed to fix up whatever we needed fixing up so i got that here in mexico after much to do and i really wanted it to work but it really didn't work i had problems right out of the gate with the extruder it was under extruding horribly as you can see in this clip here the lines in the middle of this cube are supposed to be solid and they were just stringy and strandy and it was just terrible and i tracked it down to the extruder gear slipping on the filament and that's just something i couldn't fix because it was a molded polycarbonate case for the whole hot end was all in one little heat melted together heat welded case and it just wasn't something i could fix and so we ordered and just received our ender 3 version 2 straight from you long ding dong china and i know how much you guys love our unboxing videos so let's get this one open we got the user's manual we'll be needing that and there she is the ender 3 version 2. now the astute among you will notice this isn't a original version 2. i've made some changes to better suit our needs so let's go through those now notable improvements over version one where they replaced the original pulley at this end with a adjustable tension pulley system on this side the little lcd display is gone and they've replaced it with this beautiful display and they've installed these higher power higher quality meanwhile 350 watt power supplies all of which we will not be using i've modified this printer to remove this pulley tension adjustment i did that because the original stuck out to the right side of the printer quite a bit and that is going to take up super valuable real estate the next thing i did was got rid of the original hot end fan assembly i got rid of the loud fans that were there originally and put on these two uh 40 by 20 millimeter ultra quiet fans as you can tell this printer is running right now and you can barely hear the thing the silent stepper motor drivers are fantastic much quieter than our old reality machine at home now what else have i done here i installed a lead screw bearing up here at the top just because this will be mounted rigidly inside our truck as we drive and i didn't want that screw wiggle wobbling as we drove and of course the power supply is not here i'm running this currently off of uh directly off of our batteries and uh i'll get into some more detail on that later another change i've made here is i've designed and printed these uh extensions for these bottom 40 40 rails these space the whole printer out from the wall so that this motor for the y-axis doesn't protrude past the back of the printer so this way i can put it flat up against the wall and fasten it obviously without the display the other change i've made is uh i've got a octoprint install instance running here on a raspberry pi uh that's temporary of course dangling there but we'll get to that in just a jiffy first things first is i'm going to spin out two of these four millimeter bolts from the top and i've got some studs that i'm going to thread in here and then i'll have studs that i can put this through the panel which i'll show you in a moment and suspend it from a spot you'll have to bear with me and we'll go over there and show you what i'm talking about all right so this is our side compartment door our electrical closet batteries water drinking water everything's in here and this normally has some outdoor stuff floating chairs that sort of thing and up in here is a little bit of a void that i oftentimes pack up junk and stuff that we need to take our volcano folding grill and i usually pack it much more densely than it is right now but it's hard to get stuff up in that little crevice and so that's where i'm going to mount our 3d printer there are other reasons which will become more clear in just a few minutes all right so i've got all the kegs and stored bits mostly out of here and this is just kind of another view give you another better idea of where it's going it will be fastened up against this composite panel which is the underside of our bed and then those two black plastic blocks you saw will rest up against the front wall here with some l brackets to support it that way so i'm going to actually remove these panels here which are my dinette seat cushions and that'll give you a better view from this direction b-roll okay so this is our bed platform these are our froley bread springs we are super super happy with if you guys are interested in these froley actually gave us a discount code uh i think it's froli 20 nope it's not it's er20 20 off uh i think that's right link is in the description if you want to check those out but i just point that out because i had to remove two of them temporarily these are where the bolts are going to come up and i've got the printer here and hopefully all my big mouthedness saying it's going to fit without any too much problems doesn't come back to bite me in the keyster and now i just spin on some nuts i 3d printed little wingnut holders for these so they just turn on there now these studs are obviously too long they're sticking up through the floor about an inch so i'll need to trim those down here in a moment now tradar a little bit dingy and dark in there but i do have some led lights i'm going to install in here and obviously i still need to support the back against the wall but that's about where that's gonna go all right it's been a couple of days and uh i've got it mounted nice and solid what i did was cut some aluminum bar i was able to find the length of aluminum bar here and i cut a length and threaded it with bolts and then bonded it to our composite panels which make up the front wall and then this l bracket i found at a little tienda construction store and so it's bolted into the aluminum plate and then t-slots in these extrusions have accepted these two bolts here and so it's bolted in on both sides and as you can see it's super solid uh i did get some questions in the comments of the last video how i intended to keep this thing intact rattling down the off-road roads that we do so that's part of my uh solution i hope is that by keeping everything nice and solid and rigid uh that it'll keep it from rattling and then the the moving parts that need to remain movable like the gantry and the bed i've written some custom g code that parks the head onto a foam block and locks everything in place with a little bit of cushion so the other thing i did you might be able to tell is i've added six led light strips in here and these are controlled by my todd boards which allow the printer to turn the lights off and on which is great because when i access the printer from this hatch up in here from inside the truck i can see inside this crevasse very nicely and also the printer has control of the lights as i said so the time lapses are nice and evenly lit with artificial light which is great because i tried doing some time lapses outdoors with natural light and just the clouds and the fluctuation with light really makes it uh strobofic horrific so expect some nice time lapses ahead okay one other thing i've done in here is i've got a raspberry pi camera on a little flexible arm ball arm and that's of course connected to the raspberry pi but since this is the longest length of flat ribbon cable i have it's just kind of dangling here by its wires and one of the other campground friends we have here stefan he was just mortified that i had left my berries dangling so it doesn't matter if you've got this bigger berries or the smaller berries you really need to have them supported so that they're not hanging it's hard on them so uh that's one of the first things we'll do is print a bracket that will mount this berry up here against this arm and then the next thing i want to do and i'll show you will be a good example for cad is down here in our floor i've recently needed to cut a hole for some new wires and tubing that's coming up through here so you can see the exposed plywood and honeycomb composite panel but i would like to have a bulkhead tube fitting that fits in here one last thing i almost forgot is the power supply i mentioned earlier i've removed the 110 volt power supply the original meanwell supply and we're powering it off of our solar and batteries via this 1500 watt dc to dc step up converter so this takes 12 volts in off of our batteries switched by our todd boards and converts that to 24 volts which then runs up to the printer i want to get more into this later but i think i will save all the dc to dc conversion stuff for another video i am also aware i could have converted this printer to be 12 volts by putting in a 12 volt heater cartridge and uh and just dealing with the slower heating of the the print bed but i decided to keep it 24 volts just so i had fewer variables when messing around with something and also i need 24 volts for other things so having this step up converters going to be interesting for future videos but we'll leave it at that for now i just wanted to point out that i have it mounted here i did some 3d printed brackets which are mounting it nice and firmly here to this back plane all right inside the truck now and at the computer this is where i do all my work 3d design and eat lunch but it's also how we access our 3d printer so this rear seat back cushion here used to be mounted rigidly it was bolted to the frame but i've 3d printed these petg brackets with just a square hook on there and those reach up behind the aluminum frame and hold it firmly in place and then when i want to get in there i can just throw it up here on the bed and then i've got good access to the printer okay gang here's another view inside the compartment where the printer will be living as you can plainly see i've printed all of our channel member names right on the print bed by modifying a 3d printer into a 2d printer and also you might have noticed on the right side here i was able to find a way to get the original lcd display to fit in a more compact way i just needed to print these little adapters spacers that allowed the original steel pin from the back of the display to ride inside the t-slot and then it spaces it out so it's held in there nice and firm again i don't really use it that much with octoprint it's not necessary but i've got it there in case i need manual controls for whatever reason and as i mentioned earlier when we're traveling we want to be able to park the print head so it doesn't slide around and move and get jostled around so as you can see on my screen here this is my octoprint install and i've written three two relevant uh codes here park on phone block and unpark on foam block and so when i run this you'll be able to see the printer homes all its axes just so it knows where it is for reference and it presents the print bed just so i can install the foam block here it gives some tones just to indicate it's ready moves the print head up so it can clear the block and then sets the gantry down on that foam block compressing it just a little bit and then it disables all the stepper motors i doubt anyone will want this code but i will post it on our website everlanders.com and as you can see the print head there is some friction there just on the foam behind it doesn't want to move the bed has some movement but really doesn't want to move and that's all fine and dandy then when we go back here to octoprint when i'm ready to print something i just hit unpark from foam block and it lifts the head up out of the way far enough so that it clears the foam and ready to go all right so let's jump into designing a part let's support them raspberry pi first thing is you need the measurement of the shaft that you want to clip the support onto so i've shown that here 11.9 millimeters is the the diameter of that shaft and then center to center here is 49 millimeters and that's for the hold hole center on the raspberry pi's so that's the shape that we need and then to extrude it you can see here i've got it set to extrude seven millimeters so just to show you if i set this to 30 it would extrude 30 millimeters but 7 is fine for this it's more than enough and boom there's a part uh then i just punched two holes in it here and those are the holes that line up for the raspberry pi all right so once you've got the part designed you save it as a stl or stereolithography file and import it into your favorite slicing software now i'm most familiar with cura that's what i'll continue to use and basically what slicing software does is takes your three-dimensional part and slices it into as many layers as is needed for the 3d printer to print sequential layers and stack them one upon each other so here you can see the part in the software and here as i scroll through the layers you can see it's got solid perimeters pretty sturdy parameters and this orange color in the middle is infill which is hollow but still strong center section so you save filament don't need to print part solid it prints uh hollow as needed or as you set it so there's that ready to go it's calculating i need four grams of filament or 1.29 meters of filament and it will cost 12 us cents and take 34 minutes to print so 34 minutes later we can reach down into our grown up easy bake oven and there's a part now i just printed one at a time just to make sure it fits and is going to work well uh so once i confirm this fits on the pie nicely we'll print off another one and then we can support it raspberry pi all right now let me show you the raspberry pi in its final temporary home [Music] as you can see i've got this small rig it's a camera equipment arm but it sits here and then i can position the pie and the camera anywhere as needed and tighten it down and as you can see on the octoprint screen i now have a webcam showing the print bed area and if i was to home the head for example i'm able to watch it remotely and this is also how i record some of these time lapses although it's not the very best camera it's sufficient for this sort of stuff okay so admittedly that's a pretty simple part let's do another quick and easy part so the software i'm most familiar with is solidworks i'll show that on screen here now we'll just get into a little more detail on this one i basically just need a tube with a little flange on it so to do this i draw a 60 millimeter disc extrude it two millimeters perfect and then on that i draw another circle from the center the diameter of which is 50 millimeters which happens to be the only hole saw i have along with us which is why all of my holes are 50 millimeters and then i need to extrude this 53 millimeters so now i've got this little top hat and then we drill a hole through it and so in the center now we'll drill a hole through the middle that's 45 millimeters in diameter which will leave us two and a half millimeter walls cut blind through all giver so there's the basic shape of it and now we can fill it these edges oh look at that whoops two millimeters i actually wanted both filleted so nice look at that so admittedly i've just designed a piece of pvc tubing if i had chunks of tubing along i could just use that but we don't and further i want a little cap to fit in there so let me show you that now i've designed this off screen but i've made these two little half circles and when we mate this piece to this piece and this piece to this piece this piece to this piece you can kind of get a sense of the three circular circles this will be a water line a large gauge wire smaller wire and two other smaller wires and these two halves will fit thusly all right so here's a basic tube with the uh split cap thing that holds the wires and tubing in place so next we need to send this through the slicer and then to the printer and then a couple of hours later we've got the part now this one has a little bit of stringing this is largely due to the time lapse uh intersecting the code and pausing but that's really quick to take sandpaper and wipe it off okay today is tomorrow i've given these parts a quick sanding and then a spritz of clear coat both to make it feel and look nicer but it also helps bond the layers together a little bit in my opinion and then also these two half circles that clamp onto the tubing and wires and here it is ready to install i'll put in a clip of that being installed here now [Applause] and so this is a very basic part very boring and bland but i'll show you now some examples of other things i've printed recently this was actually done by my friend taylor back in canada and he sent that to me when cara went to canada and came back but it turns out that this ts-100 is a very popular soldering iron and three other guys in the campground have them and so i've printed cases for some of the other guys here for those as well this i actually printed for our friends christian and asha whose rig tour we did a video of up here you can go check that out and this connects or rather adapts a 12-volt cigarette lighter socket to their wall switch plate the standard european style that they were using so that spaces it out for reasons but that's just something you can't buy and so i was happy to be able to make this for them the next thing are these little buck converters this one i use for my soldering iron to convert 12 volts from our house batteries up to 24 volts so that the soldering iron can operate at peak wattage and these are cheap little dc to dc converters but a little bit janky to have these connectors just soldered on and if i set it down on something metal i need to be really careful that i don't short it out to anything and so printing nice little cases like this make something that's homemade and terrible looking look a little more professional as well as a lot safer for shorting out as i mentioned the next thing are these laura communicators i've touched on briefly in the past we have a video coming up on that hopefully here in the future but they come as these bare circuit boards with a battery holder and antenna and such and so this is a work in progress doesn't have the screen yet but to print cases like this or here's another variation just to have a plastic case that you can manhandle it just a little bit more is certainly nice and again something you can't buy you have to be able to produce it yourself and here's another example of that 50 millimeter hole saw i have a tube running through our bed platform for my cpap breathing anti-death machine and it's just a 50 millimeter hole cut through the composite panel so i printed two of these one half for top one for bottom in complementary colors for the panels they're going up against so this will finish that hole really nicely and give nice filleted edges for the tube to run through and these are little brackets i printed to hold a dc to dc power supply for the aforementioned cpap machine this will hold it in place and hold it up against the panel where it's dangling around right now keeping it nice and firmly in place so there's another example of a quick print just to hold something and of course there's little doodads that you don't really need but they're kind of nice little things to have this is a just a thingiverse print for a ratcheting toothpaste squeezer tube i've printed a handful of these and they're fun little trinkets to give away to friends and gave some way for christmas and so on so there's little doodads like that nice and handy things a friend of ours has a set of calipers that he had in his toolbox really nice set of analog stainless steel calipers but he had no case for them so it was just wrapped up in a rag and so to be able to print him a nice case like this was very nice and then our other neighbors on the other side the nomads they have a 12-volt transfer pump that they use to pump water from the plastic jugs up into their main tank and it had a toggle switch on it that was just dangling there by its wires so we drew up a quick bracket and it holds it all in place keeping the wires nice and secure and the switch nice and rigid so it's easy to use they also wanted to install a fan behind their refrigerator and there was originally a vent built into the side of the camper there but really no good way to mount a fan inside that vent so to be able to print off a nice little adapter like this so they can mount that fan in there permanently and make a good seal so it's as effective as possible it's really great to be able to help other people and that's something i really hoped i would be able to do and it's turning out that i can so that's really nice they also wanted some little wire holders to keep the usb cables for charging various things neatly tucked against the side of their table and the wall so as you can see these turned out really nice and they just allow the wires to drop down and then when they need something they grab whichever cable they need and they can plug in their device right at the table all right another quick thing i did was made mounts or little clips that hold our hiking poles i used to have these just bungee corded up against the back of the door here but i've printed these clips out of petg which is a little bit flexible and so they just clip in there and when we're ready to hike grab a pair and go all right so that's a little overview of what i've been up to lately a little bit of a taste of 3d printing if you had no experience with it now you should have a basic understanding of how this all happens and converting a 3d printer to run off of our solar and batteries it's been actually running for a couple weeks here and works like a champ so that's really amazing i'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of our legendary channel members your support means the world to us all of your comments are heartwarming we still read everyone and uh if you're interested in having your name scribbled on stuff we're up to and a shout out in the video consider pressing that join button down below there's three uh membership options available for you uh the price will vary depending on your country but will be shown in your home currency so check that out if you're interested leave a comment if you made it this far let me know what you thought of the video and uh thanks everybody for watching we really appreciate it we'll see you next time you

Channel: Everlanders

Views: 14,128

Keywords: solar 3d printer, mobile 3d printer, mobile 3d printing, 3D Printer camper, 3D Printer Overland, expedition vehicle 3D print, expedition vehicle 4x4, overlander solar, everlanders camper, diy camper, diy camper truck, turtle v, rv solar panels, diy camper shell for truck, expedition vehicle build, ender 3 v2, ender 3 v2 upgrades, ender 3 v2 upgrades bltouch, ender 3 v2 upgrade springs

Id: 5MXkD7Z_ndc

Length: 30min 2sec (1802 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 01 2021