Here you go.

 

My mount does work with the No ZProbe option of Carriage Generator: Hot End Mount Generator - Customizable for various carriages, hot ends and options. by croadfeldt

I had to modify the generator slightly to increase the width of the mount so that I could get it to fit without fouling the fan. It could also be mounted on the front of the carriage instead of the rear. My mount is mostly designed for the YL99 limit switch I am using. It is also height adjustable to accurately set the height of the BLTouch to 8.3mm above the nozzle tip, as specified in the BLTouch specs.

 

@Chris Roadfeldt; Thanks for the FFF file. It got me up and running again and worked fairly well for the most part. I had to change the nozzle diameter, comment out the G29 in the starting script as I don't have a probe installed yet and I think that I upped the extrusion multiplier a hair. I printed out 2 things in PLA. TechGirl_Mods BLTouch mount and a gCreate gMax LCD case. They were both sucessful prints and the LCD case looked rather nice, but were both failures in another way... lol. The BLTouch mount is not for the direct drive mount and LCD case is for 30mm extrusion, not 20mm .... lol. Ahh well; They looked great though! One thing I noticed is that it still does excessive retracts at some points. Enough to suck air into the nozzle, yet I only have the retract set to 1.0mm
Also, is the carriage generator compatible with direct drive now? It wasn't the last time I looked.


@akneipp; Thanks for sending your file too. I haven't had a chance to try it but I will at some point. Build looks great btw. The rat's nest of wires always means you're getting close.

@AK Eric; Your page has always been a wealth of knowledge and I check it often; perhaps it's time for me to heed some of it's advice ... lol

 

The C-Bot is live on ABC News Live Video right now.

 

Holy crapballs! That's amazing! Oh, and it's cool it's on TV too

 

That's awesome!! You're famous! lol

 

Ha! Infamous more like it....

 

@trublu832 : An amazing job on the build guide, great work!

 

They are picking it up from youtube. They contacted me last week asking if they could restream it on their live site and run it during some anchored coverage.



Oops, that was just supposed to be the youtube stream link, I see it got embedded... Right click on it and you can get the URL or just search for me or the C-Bot live stream on youtube.

 

thanks, any ideas for improvement are always welcome too

 

Congratulations @trublu832 for completing the build guide. It seems like a lot of work and it will help many.

For those who remember, or you might not, it was a long time ago and I fell off the face of the 3D printing planet. Got back recently, I had wrongfully ordered the solid V-Wheels instead of the mini and could in no way send them back. So I edited the files that needed changing and printed them out, and it seems like it will all work. Haven't actually tested it yet, the final parts are still printing.

I don't see a lot of demand, because people are not as dumb as I am, but if anyone wants the files, I could upload them. Hoping to get mine done soon.

 

Super. I''l post them here as soon as I assemble a carriage and check the tolerances.

 

Alright, I tested one carriage and it seems just a hair tight. I need to see if it is my printer or my calculations. Could anyone verify this for me?

In the original design, the holes are spaced apart 51.9mm. Seeing from the image below, for a 2020 the distance is 31.9mm, add 20mm for a 2040 and it all works.


Now, for solid V-Wheels, from the image below, the distance should be 59.7mm. So, I just increased the distance by 59.7 - 51.9 = 7.8mm.


All good?

P.s. Sorry, I don't know how to resize hyperlinked images.

 

So I have another (probably dumb) idea and was hoping to get some feedback on..

I printed a test piece last night for some changes in my bracket generator (basically just a V-slot shaped sleeve), and noticed that it was just barely too big, but slid *really* well -- so well that I was thinking a nylon version might work for a hot-end carriage in lieu of wheels. I looked it up and others have done this for delta carriages, but I hadn't seen any for C-Bot family designs. I'm thinking a solid block just barely big enough to fit might reduce twisting to effectively zero, and might help with backlash..

Anyone know why it wouldn't work as well as I'm thinking? If so please let me know.. I promise I won't be offended if you call it a stupid idea -- I'll gladly sacrifice a little pride if it means that I don't waste time and money trying it out

 

That sounds really interesting. I suppose you'll have to try it out, I can't say anything definitive about how much wear you'll see. But then again, in a delta, you are saving money by not buying any wheels at all. You already have to buy 16 wheels for a C-Bot (without the hot-end carriage), why wouldn't you just buy 4 more?

On another note, I was looking at your C-Bot brackets and had a query. I haven't looked at the SCAD files yet, but can it generate a bracket which takes a vertical 2040 but the horizontal slots are 2020?

 

Sweet! Is this in OpenSCAD? If so, it would be relatively easy to add it to the hotend generator to make a complete integrated package.

As for how well it would work, it would interesting to see. My concerns would be dust, resistence to movement from a dead stop and of course ensuring the rails are smooth.

EDIT: Nevermind, I see they are in OpenSCAD. If you don't mind I will add it to the generator along with @Elmo Clarity's Titan extruder, @Carl Feniak's Direct extruder and @TechGirl's BLtouch. It can be a big ole party on the XY carriage train!

 

Sure thing, I look forward to seeing it and trying it out! You might want to spilt the extrusion and have bolts to hold it in place so you don't have to disassemble the Y carriage though. I'd recommend splitting diagonally so that you can get as close a fit as possible without having to remove any of the indents.

Are we license-compatible? My OpenSCAD stuff is all GPL, but I'm planning on using CC Share Alike for the STLs. Although since I'm the only copyright holder on my OpenSCAD files I could always split off the necessary parts into LGPL, if that will make it easier.

 

Who says I'm building just one? I haven't created a formal page for it yet, but I'm building a parametric CoreXY generator with the C-Bot as a reference design. The idea is to automatically generate plans/plastic/BoM for any variation you might want. So far I have only been building for variations in extrusion profiles, but I plan on allowing customization of the belt sizes, wheel/slider types and sizes, extrusion slot type, Z carriage design, etc. I'm looking for guinea pigs though, so if you want to alpha test some crazy designs, PM me.

This is all a long way off.. After I finish my X and Y motor brackets I'm going to start re-implementing in a higher level language and generate the OpenSCAD files. OpenSCAD is just too limited as a language to facilitate reasonable software engineering principles, but it's a good "assembly language" for 3D modeling.

Yes. The one on Thingiverse is outdated though, and their customizer doesn't detect all the parameters anyway. My latest code will always be available at GitHub - spiffcow/r-bot: R-Bot is a collection of modifications for Carl Feniak's C-Bot 3D printer

Please try not to laugh at it. It's all going to get cleaned up when I switch to generating the code

 

Re: License, you bring up a good point.

My stuff is all GPL v2, so no issues there. IANAL But since the STL's are produced by it, I assume then they are a derivative and would inherit the GPL. More research is needed I think.

Re: OpenSCAD limited language, it is and it isn't. Putting that aside though, take a look at this: SolidPython. Using Python as the higher level language to build the entire machine would be a clear winner in my book. Glad to hear someone is taking this on! Let me know how I can help out.

 

I've been considering that one.. I'm not a huge fan of python because it uses dynamic typing (part of my beef with OpenSCAD). I've been leaning toward this: Graphics.OpenSCAD.

That said, if you or anyone else is looking to actively collaborate and feel more comfortable with SolidPython, I'll find a way to deal

 

I'd be glad to collaborate, I might just go the python route regardless with the generator as python provides the functionality I need do the more advanced stuff I've been wanting to do for a while. I really like the idea of separating out the design / logic from the modeling. Let python do it's thing and same goes for OpenSCAD.

Graphics.OpenSCAD looks good if you want to stay in the OpenSCAD arena only.

IMHO: I would go the python route as I know it already, it's widely used and can integrate nicely with the logic needed to build out the entire system.

Another +1 for python is there are modules that will read autocad, modules that let autocad do python and it appears the same holds true for solid works. So there is a remote possibility that integrating the work others have done is a bit easier. This is all speculation as I have not done a POC to prove it out.

You do you though man, this is your party as it were.

 

Hold on to your money for now. Initial results are worse than my generic A4988s, when the motors are running and stationary. The only thing I might try is a temporary boost circuit to run the motors at 24v to try and cut down on the noise.

 

Great. I'll take a look at it. I think they'll work great.

I like Python too. I agree that it does not have the most "structured" structure (no private class members? What?) and in a large project it could get difficult to not make it look like a massacre, but for this particular project, I think it'll be a good choice.

 

Alright, so it does sound like SolidPython is the way to go. Features and the potential for more collaboration outweight the horrible type system. I'll create an official build project for it sometime this weekend and get started porting stuff.

 

oooohhh... I code in Python all day. Never heard of SolidPython... I never got into openscad since I didn't want to have to learn yet another syntax. I'll have to poke at it.

BTW I loooove Python's super flexible type system. To each their own right? Just don't abuse the system