Hello Openbuilds Community. I'm new, This is my First Post! Colin Quinn here. I'm a cinema robotics visual engineer guy in Atlanta for a film & technology collective called RiteMediaGroup. I do a lot of tabletop projects. We have a high speed Phantom Flex4K camera that we use in house to do a lot of super slow motion food shots. I build all the rigs that fling food around, blast fireballs, shoot liquids and stuff like that. When the pandemic hit, I dove into getting all sorts of new rigs ready for once things picked back up again. I have this very large Arco rig built up with a Nema 17 Lead Screw Driven Paste Extruder. The concept for this rig is to be able to write with mustard on sausages and burger patties. Everything is hooked up and working through the Black Box controller. The Paste extruder is connected to the Z Axis port on the Black Box. Limit/home switch is working. I'm very familiar with 3D printing, however, I'm having trouble figuring out the best way to make gcode for this setup. Its kind of like a 2D 3D printer, or a pancake printer, but for mustard. Its not a typical CNC toolhead though, so I'm not finding a simple solution - probably just a case of being a noob. Does anyone have any software tips and tricks? Is there a way for it to be easy as that Pancake Printer bot? Is it possible to use something like Cura or Slic3r with Blackbox Grbl? Help me bring Mustardo to Life!
Cool build @Quinnthouzand ! The BlackBox was designed to be used for 3 axis CNC milling/routing so I think you could hack it of sorts to make it work by maybe removing all the Z axis retractions and then every new depth of cut could be used as the extrusion process, this is all I can think of as a quick solution off the top of my head, but maybe some of the guys here have an idea for a more elegant solution. However to be honest if I was building this project I may look into a simple 3d printer driver board and maybe some software like the Pancake Bot which is based on the Reprap Marlin firmware. This will give you plenty of flexibility to tweak your system into the ultimate Mustardo Bot! (Please share videos, gotta see this in action! )
Thanks @Mark Carew for taking a gander. Is there a way to put Marlin on the Black Box controller? I don't need all the fancy temperature and fan controls that come on a printer board. I'm working on some alternative solutions in the meantime such as a pneumatic pump method that could be controlled via solenoid valve connected to the BB's relay. - However, It's not going to be as precise as the lead screw driven syringe method. If I was going to get a 3D printer board to drive this thing, do you know off hand which one would be Ideal?
I assume that as Z drives 'down' the mustard is extruded? so the tool path you need is a continuous down movement in Z during each X/Y movement. but the Z distance is dependent on the X/Y distance, ie if X moves 1 inch you need f(1) amount of Z movement, and if X moves 1.5 inches you need f(1.5) amount of Z, so for each line segment the length has to be calculated so a corresponding Z feed can be calculated. it may also need a short retract to make a clean stop and a corresponding 'feed back to previous position' on restart. ergo, what you need is a software guy (-: Generating Gcode for a standard 'engrave the letters' is easy enough using Fusion/Sketchup/many others. Make sure that the gcode cuts the letters in the order you want, and direction you want, etc. Then reading that Gcode in and converting it to mustardcode is what the software guy can do for you. In fact it can probably all be done inside a custom Fusion360 postprocessor (-: (for that you need a Gcode and Javascript savvy programmer). So, show this message to a local software guy and carry on (-: (yes I could do it but not from 8000 miles away, seeing what the machine is doing in realtime is vital)
Negative, all the bloat in Marlin needs a bigger MCU David's idea is not a bad one... To a degree, you can calibrate Z-axis steps per mm to give you "steps per mm of extruded material" (instead of mm of plunger movement) - then the 3D printing slicer's E output (nozzle * length) would work. Find/replace the E-moves to Z moves... Depends how much "hacking" you want to do, if not, a 3D printer controller might just be easier
UPDATE: I got an SKR1.4, TFT24 & TMC5160 Stepper Drivers Swapped out X and Y axis motors to larger 2.2 amp motors Added a Linear Lead-Screw Z-Axis Swapped out Plunger Lead Extruder to 1.68amp motor Made a custom Marlin 2x Firmware. Added a relay output to an unused pin to trigger motion control camera system. Printed some parts to house the new controller. And now it's working great! I'm using Simplify3D for creating the Toolpaths. Man I love Mustard!
