tale of the 3d printer

There had been nothing like this before. No machine or invention would have greater an impact. This is the world of 3d printing.

With computers becoming smaller yet more powerful the average person is able to design, plan and build products faster and cheaper than some of the most successful companies and the most efficient factories.

An entire mini computer can now fit inside a packet connected to a motor driven machine giving the power to anyone - something that seemed impossible 10 years ago can now be a reality for the anyone,

This innovative technology and manufacturing called Additive Manufacturing creates a new rule book of how you can design and make products. Not only do these machines give the average person the power and skills to produce products and parts it also provides the manufacturing industry a new way to take advantage of this uncharted technology. It will increase the production rate and improve and enhance the products they can produce.

A year ago I built a 3D printer. During the last year I have gained a working experience of how this interesting and incredible piece of technology behaves.

This printer is a build it yourself kit from a well know open source design. Due to the open-source nature the designer has allowed and published it's design to the internet free to download and build from.

The machine is a prusa mendel i3 but with a slight modification. Instead of a flimsy and fragile acrylic plastic, this machine frame is made out of extruded aluminum beams similar to how some cnc (computer numerical controlled) basically a computer controlled machine.

upgrades for my 3d printer

I just recently got a new upgrade for my 3d printer as my 3d printer is being used more often. I have noticed that my control board which controls the entire machine is beginning to have limitations of how I can use my machine. The processor that runs the machine is an 8 bit processor.

Another issue is that when my machine goes wrong and these machines do go wrong the crude processor has very little ways of debugging and fixing the machine.

Say you want to change a setting when you install a component or you are trying to calibrate the machine. The main issue is you have to plug in a computer by using a USB cable and mainly update the firmware. What is the problem is that my machine needs a certain software to update and it needs to be a certain version of the software. If you try to use the latest version it will not work.

I decided to upgrade to a new more modern control board. This board is a 32bit 120mhz CPU which already is much faster than the old boards 16Mhz.

One of the reasons I wanted to upgrade is that the new board supports wi-fi which is great news. Because the new board supports wi-fi, if something goes wrong with my machine I can control my machine with my smartphone. With this ability I can remotely control and if needed can update the firmware to my machine.

another great thing about my new board is that it can support alot of modles so i can add avanced features so my machine can be more realable and not waste filament when things go wrong.

building the enclosure

I needed to make an enclosure so the main control board and screen can be protected and away form anything loose that can short anything delicate and destroy the board or screen. I needed the precise dimensions of the control board and screen so I could construct an enclosure around the board and screen.

I first tried to just take a photo of my control board and the screen to make an outline of the major parts for the enclosure but I realized that the main issue of just photographing the boards is that to get an accurate scale you need to photograph you subjects at a perfect 90 degree angle. Anything outside of perfect will produce a perspective distortion. Another problem is that I have a lighting issue. My room is just too dark to photograph the parts clearly and I have to use harsh lighting that is included in my phone which produced a bright spot.

I found out that the manufacturing included a 2D drawing of both my control board and the screen with measurement rulers of how big the board and screen is. This was perfect because I needed only one dimension and the rest I could scale the parts to it.

I opened a photo editing software and imported the 2D drawing of my board and started to convert the PDF drawing into an image so I could turn it in to a texture for my 3D modelling software.

Flashing the firmwware

Before I could use the new control board I needed to create and upload a software called Firmware.

Firmware is a special software that basically runs the machine. It is like an operating system for hardware. The main issue was that because I was installing a brand new control board that uses a very new and modern firmware, I had to install a brand new software on my computer that is required to upload the firmware to my new control board.

I needed to download a Microsoft Visual Studio Code - a software that is made to build software for any electronic product and computers.

I started the process by downloading a firmware that matches the control board I was going to use. When I downloaded the firmware and launched Visual Studio I then had to uploaded the firmware file ready to modified the code so it could work for the machine I have.

When I looked at the firmware inside visual studio it was already finding it complicated and the length of the code was crazy. The firmware had a ton of settings each one scattered around all over the place. Firmware also split different settings into groups of tabs.

One of my main issues was that while I was modifying the firmware for machine. I made a mistake that was small at the start but cost me a lot of time and effort.

I did not load a folder the first time I tried to build my firmware and as such the compiler started to throw a lot of crazy errors and crashed the building process. I then looked online for some answers and the solution was very confusing. As I had never used Visual Studio before it would be a nightmare just to fix the issue so I decided it would be easier to modify a fresh new firmware and just start again this time making sure I loaded the folder in first.

My advice - Before you start modifying your firmware to be loaded on your machine or any project make sure that the folder that contains the project you are using is loaded into the software first before you start changing your firmware.

ironing out the bugs

I finally finished modifying the firmware and had uploaded it to my control board. I was happy the machine was working but I had a small issue with what was happening inside my machine. The main screen was having a communication issues with the main control board also it was struggling to read from my SD card. Another issue is that I had set my steps per revolution on one axis far too high and my motor was stalling and failing to turn. Also when I turned on my machine and tried to move the motors it had a weird issue that the motors were freezing in place. I checked the motor drivers and the drivers were really hot and pulling too much current. To fix the issue I tried to turn down the current limit to keep the temperature down.

3d printed objects

55 gallon Oil drum and pallet in 1/20 scale.

I wanted to make a miniature model in a scale of 1/20 for a balance size that is best for ease of printing but big enough for any detail to show.

I decided to print these oil drums and pallets because they are used so many times in sci-fi settings. These are used for filler objects to make the environment feel lived in. It is used so many time in computer game scenes as generic objects. the main issue is when you are working in a place that is doing projects that is on a tight deadline, you need to just make something that does the job and just get on with the job. you can make the most amazing content but if it takes a really long time it just really not wourf your time.

I decided to print these generic objects as minutue because I had a really small nozzle diameter and wanted to test how small i can print tiny details.

Some of the challenges were to find the correct scale for the models and the delicate nature of the objects once they have been scaled down. The pallets on the printer for example are so thin so it can be difficult to remove the support material.