Have I mentioned how much I love this printer? 9 hour, 20" tall reindeer last night, plus a timelapse:

300 micron, 90mm\sec, .6mm volcano
Surface quality is really nice.

 

Wowie Eric. That might just be the coolest thing printed yet.

 

That's so awesome.. I really like your "manual support" action when the belly bridge printed.. lol

 

That manual support system has got a lot of comments on the interwebs. I should try and patent it...
No wait, I think I'll go open source...

 

So it turns out that alot of my print artifacts were due to my extruder mount. I had been using extruded aluminum angle brackets, they turned out to be a little flimsy. There was too much deflection and at speeds, the extruder would resonate. I was getting these diagonal wavy defects as well as vertical banding.


I printed a big benchy, that came out pretty good. im using a .8mm nozzle with PLA.

@akeric did you play around with all the volcano nozzles and settle in on the .6? My first volcano runs were the 1.2, and I felt that it was just too large of a nozzle for doing anything remotely small. I have not installed the .6 yet, maybe next week or so. Anyone else using a volcano?

 

For anyone who has been waiting to pull the trigger on ordering parts for a cbot or looking to build another one, there is a sale on openbuilds parts tomorrow

 

I'm curious if anyone has tried the 0.4mm volcano nozzle-- I know, "Why would you do that?!?"-- But if it works as well as the regular E3D v6 with a 0.4mm, it means I could use one hot end for small stuff and big stuff-- and that would push me towards the volcano up front.

 

I have got most of the material that I need to build this printer. With the print size approximately 12 by 12 by 21 inches. I like the idea of using eccentric spacers and have looked over your pictures and have a question. Not trying to be critical or maybe I'm being too critical but when I look at how it is set up, it seems to me that if one side of the bolt is fixed and goes through the wheel and then the eccentric spacer, when the eccentric spacer is adjusted only one side moves up or down.
On the open builds website it basically shows the eccentric spacer being used with just one plate not two.
A movement of the eccentric spacer may be small but when tightened will put more pressure on that side of the wheel. Kind of making the wheel not level. Maybe using too eccentric spacers one on each side with solve this. That is if it even is a problem.
Am I being overly critical?

 

I didn't know they had a .4. When I bought mine a few weeks back that wasn't an option, it's also not listed on the identification table. I wonder what a melt zone that big would do on a nozzle that small.

 

That's how I would do it, an eccentric on each side of the extrusion. I plan on using them for the triple-c, but I think my gantry plates might be different size then Carl's. My extruder gantry is the same size as my Y ends. My buddy that builds funny printers modeled up a wrench that turned both at the same time, it was for his delta carriages, but 20mm spacing is 20mm. I will ask him about the wrench.

 

It's a pretty recent announcement, and that was the same thought I had. That's why I was hoping someone else would try it.

BTW - 4 marks. It's on the UK site.

 

Exactly that is was I was saying..
Hmm, thinking.. thanks for such a great build. There is so much to sift through on this forum. I would really like to have dual hot ends, would you even consider designing A dual direct drive for two hot ends? I would take a shot at it but my 3d design and skills or add a noob level, getting better everyday though.
Also would like to figure out how to enclose this printer. Two of the stepper motors are already on the outside the two for the the Z platform and the extruders would need to be cooled properly.
It is so crazy that I read quite a bit of the posts learn something that I want to do for the build and then forget where its at haha. Is the zip of the .stls pretty much the newest versions?
I am almost finished building a Griffin Delta that will print ceramic or clay that is. I have all the bits and pieces pretty much to begin this c-bot build and I'm excited. And this forum is great you guys are on top of your game with helping each other,,look forward to beginning this journey.

 

Hi Carl,

I've got my triple-c-bot humming along now, printing PLA pretty decent.

A recent customer of mine wanted a part printed in White PETG, so I ordered a spool off Amazon and it came in with that "textured" feel to it.

When I fed the new filament through your direct drive setup, into the PTFE tube clamped between the extruder stepper gear and the hot-end, I ran into trouble.

Apparently, the "textured" surface of this stuff gets deformed enough by the extruder gear that it won't fit inside the PTFE tube easily. The result is that the filament grabs the top of the tube and pushes it down past the clamp, and it curls up (with filament inside it) before it gets to the hotend.

Did this a number of times, all with the same result.

What do you think about extending the "clamp" farther down so that it supports the PTFE tube almost all the way to the hotend? This would prevent the tube from deforming, which cause the deformed filament to overcome the initial "grip". I've got a large order I'm printing for a customer right now (PLA) and will see if I can make the mod..

Thanks much,
-Joe

 

What are people using for direct drive motors? I keep looking at the PG35L from ultibots.

 

Hey all,

Just pulled the trigger on a couple orders for my very own cbot. Hopefully everything will arrive in time for the holidays to hunker down and build.

Just wanted to write in with a big thank you for all the time and energy you have all taken to make this seem so accessible. I'm aiming big and looking to do something around the size of akeric's awesome machine.


Wish me luck. I'm sure I'll pop in for a bit of advice soon.

Cheers

 

@Carl Feniak " How are you liking your modified Z axis locations? Recommend for others with large beds? " : It seems so much (visibly) more stable now (less shake\bounce on the bed), and I've had no issues using it: It was used on my latest 'big' Eiffel Tower & Reindeer prints. Basically the same parts for the build (other than the extra front cross-member across the font of the build plate, which may exist for the builder already based on cutoffs, like what I had). IMO:

• Upside it technically has more lifting power than a triple-leadscrew with a single stepper (right?) and uses fewer parts. Although the only thing that should ever be lifted is an empty bed, after the print is done & removed... unless you've enabled bed drop in your slicer during head travel, in which cases there will be a lot of little tiny up-down motions going on. I've experimented with this in the past, but didn't like the bounce happening on the cantilevered platform. Haven't tried it since the update, may actually be viable now.
• Downside is the two steppers can go slightly out of sync over time (maybe over many, many prints, which is fine by me). But another bonus is you can just twist that front leadscrew to help level your bed super easy.

@adamcooks : "@akeric did you play around with all the volcano nozzles and settle in on the .6? ..." : I started with a 1.0, but was getting frustrated with all the stringing and zits caused by the bowden, so I switched to the .6 to see if that would help. Which it did, but the issues were still present. With the conversion to the direct drive (and the dramamtic quality improvements I've seen), I'm actually considering giving the 1.2 a try, just to see how it behaves. I still use my Replicator1 for any detail work (.4mm nozzle), and use the volcano\c-bot for all the 'big' stuff.

@grat : "I'm curious if anyone has tried the 0.4mm volcano nozzle-- " : From what I understand (from a lot of forum reading) you actually want the smallest melt-zone possible to help with good retraction. The volcano makes that melt-zone way bigger than a standard .4mm hotend, specifically to melt larger volumes of plastic. The only reason I could consider putting a .4mm nozzle on a volcano would be to crank up the print speed super high, and still know you'er melting the plastic at the right temp (if you extrude too fast, your hotend can't keep up and extruded temp will fall). But I'm wondering if stringing\blobbing would suffer?
All just theory, 2c.

 

Sounds like you'll have a good time making a great gift for yourself

Speaking of holiday builds, I just ordered the 1000mm X-Carve kit as my holiday gift to myself Already thinking about what I can use the X-Carve for to improve the C-Bot, and vice versa: First thing may be some milled aluminum stiffeners I can run diagonally from the front Z-verticals to the bottom Y-horizontals..., and the cbot can print out a nice dust-shoe for xcarve's spindle.

So excited to have both additive and subtractive manufacturing on my desktop.

 

Sounds like a plan. I definitely think it would be wise to get it running good with one hot end and then maybe trying to get something designed for two of them. When this printer is getting closer to becoming a reality and I can see the frame and everything built I will start considering an enclosure and maybe some other modifications.

 

Ditto on the support assist. Here's my go at this Eric's model.


I'm just at the tricky part (head and antlers). We'll see how it goes.

Carl, I'm one of the guys who've missed the spacers inside the wheels. I'm glad you mentioned that.
I couldn't for the life of me figure why I couldn't get the wheels to spin freely without leaving the bolts just loose enough.
I've ordered a boatload of the 1x5x8 shims and can't wait to see if it smooths out some of my ringing.

 

Thanks!

I, too, took advantage of the openbuilds black friday sale and ordered all the extrusion and such. I think I have almost everything else I need except electronics+hotend. And the printed parts. It will probably be sometime after the new year before I have time to really dedicate to assembly anyways, so that gives me time to do the printing and order the remaining bits. Can't wait!

 

I'm having a hard time to find anyone local to print parts for my build of this. Anyone know a good place online that I can get a full set of parts printed and shipped within the US? Also Anyone have a list of exactly what parts and how many of each to print? I'm having a hard time figuring out all of the parts needed. Thanks!

Mine will be with the 2040 openbuild Vslot and print bed will be 500mm ^3

Thanks in advance everyone!