Category: 3D Printing

May 9th, so about 3 weeks ago I bought a 3D printer kit with the intention of learning about how the technology works and intending to modify it into a automated pipetting robot for my CTC experiments. I came across this idea after learning about the RepRap project that created open source 3D printing technology and hearing about a OpenTrons that’s trying to do this on a commercial scale. However, I know for my experiments I will need to do more than pipetting so I need to modify the hardware and electronics. I came to the conclusion that the Prusa i3 had become a pretty popular design in the RepRap community and can be purchased in a kit form available on-line.

In searching, I came across 3dprintersonlinestore.com that seems to be the best site out there with reviews of 3D printer kits. Amazon.com has some reviews but their prices and selection aren’t as good and they don’t have a categorical view to see all the models in. If you look at at kits, you’ll notice even though they all claim to be Prusa i3 designs each kit has modifications to it in various ways. For example, many have changed the threaded rod terminating the y-axis carriage to plates. I decided to go with the design that looked most like the open i3 designs, (there are a few i3 designs, rework, Einstein) with the threaded rod thinking it would be easier to modify. So I purchased the He3D i3 for $265 + $90 shipping from China. The rest of this post is about the story of putting it together and getting it to print over the last few weekends. It rained I believe every day of May so it was a good project while staying indoors.

So the box arrived the Thursday after placing the order. The included invoice claimed it as 12 metal stents. There were no instructions included but instructions to e-mail them for instructions.

I didn’t notice the letter on how to get instructions until the 2nd day I spent putting it together. The first day I spent trying to do it from i3 assembly videos on you tube in which there are many series. I was able to get the y-axis partially built in the first day but it was clear this design had its specifics that I needed the videos for. I e-mailed them the 2nd day and they replied with links to the videos (12 in all) and other files (circuit diagram, USB driver, test file, slicer configuration) within a few hours. The videos were very helpful for doing the mechanical assembly but not really useful for the wiring but there the circuit diagram really helped and so did looking up the RAMPS circuit diagrams online which it was pretty much identical too. After the first day, I had the y carriage and x-y axis assembled. With the videos, by the end of Sunday, I had mechanical axises together.

I put the project down during the work week and picked it back up again on Memorial Day weekend to finish the electronics and get it printing. I borrowed a soldering iron from work on Saturday. You can see some of the mess that comes with doing electronics work. I choose to work on the floor vs. on a table so that if I dropped screws they wouldn’t fall to the floor with me having to search for 10 minutes to find them again. My legs, particularly knees, got a little sore working on the floor but maybe that’s a good thing.

When I got to the end of the electronics I decided I should take a picture of all the tools + supplies I used to get to this point so I could put it up here. It’s not too many. You don’t need to have two drill bit sets for example you just need 4 bits but they’re metric (more accessible to the rest of the world but not me in Denver) and harder to get a hold of. You could get by without a soldering iron by using crimps instead.

I got the electronics together late in the evening. I smelled something weird (magic smoke leaving electronics) after I powered it up the first day and thought I had burned out the power supply. I looked it over closer the next morning with the digital multimeter (DMM) and found it was fine. I had bridged power to ground accidentally by hooking up one of the end stops wrong (switches so it can sense the end of the end travel) – after swapping it I got it to power up & motors moving. Here is a pic of it making it’s first print by the end of Memorial Day weekend.

The part is a test of nut cut ins I’ve designed. It was important to test the press fits of the nuts in a servo enclosure for a galvanometer on a laser scanning microscope we are building. Here are the the mechanical design and stl & solid works files if you are interested.

Test Print – Nut Cut In – Rotated.STL

Test Print Design.zip – SolidWorks files and pdf of above drawing.

Those measured values aren’t what I measured on my print though. It came out undersized. Those are the values I measured of this print on a Lulzbot Taz 5 that we setup a weeks ago at work. That assembly only took a few hours vs. 2 weekends for this one but I learned a lot more. I still need to tune the Configuration.h parameters (here is my current Configuration.h 2 weeks better than the one I used here)  for my printer I almost surely don’t have the right value for steps per mm set in Marlin. As I’m two weeks removed from this now but have still been working on it, I have gotten better printers and actually know a few things that still need to be done but I’ll put that up in my next post. Here is how that test print looked in comparison to off the Lulzbot Taz 5 at work. This post is getting kinda long so more to come on tweaks and tuning.

I designed and a periscope to change the beam height from a Mai-Tai laser which comes out at 5.41″ (where did they get that # from to 4″) . The design was done in solid works and was based around 1″ mirrors from thorlabs. I dimensioned the part around the mirror model I downloaded from Thorlabs after I mated them in an assembly. Here are some pics of the printed part on the table. I’ll try to upload the solid works and stl files later when I’m back at my pc in a few days.

I had it printed at the 3D printing store. More to come.

So here is some drawings and CAD files for the periscope.

Here is a drawing of the side view. The idea was that by adjusting the plane 1 offset it would allow the distance between to be configurable. Unfortunately, height configuration though adjustment of Plane 1 position didn’t work in this version. I checked it after printing what I needed and saw, when the plane 1 position changes the position of the mirrors change but the position of the circular holders doesn’t move. I played with it a little but wasn’t able to fix it. I’ll spend more time on it when I need another periscope. In the meantime, if this model might be useful you can down load it in the .zip file below.

Files:

Periscope STL File , Solid Works Files: Periscope Project 1650.zip

Here is prints of 4 new designs. Again off of a B9 Creator. I added features to help the parts fit together. These features are a hinge between the two parts at the bottom, a dove tail between the part still in supports and the part at the bottom, and a grove in the plate.

Unfortunately, the two pieces a the bottom printed as once piece it doesn’t move around the hinge and I was not able to free it. Here is a view of the hinge from the side.

I cut the top piece free. Here you can see that very small dove tail at the back of the top piece.

Here is that fitting into the slot on the piece below. The dove tail worked!

I ended up destroying the two parts that I had tried to hinge together in the process of separating them. I’m now going to try printing them as two separate parts. With the next version I’ll test out the hinge again and see if the it fits into the notch on the plate.

I picked up prints of my next design iteration from the 3d printing store. These parts once again were made on a B9 creator. The small parts came out nice I made the features slightly larger and tried to simplify the design.  

I was able to remove the small parts from the support structure. I had a couple design errors though including a crash between two parts. I also found the parts to be hard to assemble. I made the next desig. iteration to address these issues on Wedneaday and sent off the stl files that evening to 3d printing store for fabrication. They were having some issues quality coming off the B9 but hope to have the parts to me by Monday. 

I picked up some prints today from the 3D printing store. They came off the b9 creator and they were able to print these very small structures I designed. My colleague Doug helped me to get them removed from the supporting structures. We took the pictures on the dissection scope.

Pretty impressive. The fit too. Still have a few more iterations to go on the design.

I’ve recently been using 3D printing to fabricate some parts for devices I’ve been designing.  Here are some (local) resources I found for getting parts printed. Worst case scenario you can always get stuff through the mail but why wait on the mail when in town pick up is an option.

1. 3dhubs.com – Crowd Sourcing Website for 3D printing. Over 13,000 printers world wide on the site at the time of posting with over 40 printers in 25 km of Denver, Co. There is two local hubs there with formlabs form1 printers which is one the higher end for desktop 3D printing. There are also a few local printers with the b9 creator. I’ve head 3 parts printed so far with local hubs with turn around times as quick as next day & pick up so I don’t have to wait for shipping.

2. The 3D Printing Store – Up by I-70 and Monaco (Denver, Co). I found them through google and they were the first people to 3D print a design for me. This was a alignment plate they did on an extrusion based 3D printer. Cost was $10 for 3 parts. I had the parts within 2 hours which was amazing. Lately I’ve been working with them to do higher resolution more intricate designs on their b9 creator.