Friday, 12 April 2019

ColorFabb LW-PLA Expanding Foaming Plastic Filament for 3D Printing - Part 1 Testing and experimentation

ColorFabb LW-PLA (Expanding/Foaming PLA) Filament for FDM 3D Printing - Part 1

Hello everyone, Richard here - In this blog post I'll be looking at a new and unique 3D Printing material for the FDM/FFF process.

I have done a lot of testing and experimentation with this material, so if all you want to know is my opinion about using it for a few months, then a quick TL;DR overview summary is below, (and also just to the bottom of the blog for a summary and setting you will need) but I do hope you find the rest of the blog post interesting as it may give you some ideas of what you could do with a unique material like this.  

One of the very first test prints of the ColorFabb LW-PLA - to work out the 'puff-point'
TL;DR Overview Summary -

LW-PLA is a really unique material for 3D printing. It's somewhat challenging to initially set-up, but when calibrated to your 3D printer, it can produce great results and most importantly light weight 3D printed parts.

You can print in both it's natural state, just like solid PLA, and with increased temperature a foamed state, so the same part can contain solid and foamed layers or features, it's like having a multi-material in a single filament. Foaming and density can be controlled by temperature and flow.

These parts can be further processed and finished, painted or coated as required.
Don't use in a machine with a bowden extruder system.

You will probably need a bed adhesive, It's not quite as sticky as normal PLA, I found Magigoo worked well, and slow down your first layer about 20% lower than normal PLA speed.

Be careful with extruder retraction – too much will make the filament expand beyond the thermal break and block extrusion flow.

In it's non foamed state, it's very similar to PLA, maybe a little more impact resistant. In it's foamed state it can be sanded, painted and sealed, very easy to post-process.

The foamed printed parts look and feel fantastic !

Quick Jump Index - 
I have wanted a filament like this for many years, I have been doing a lot of material properties testing, experimentation and printing of parts. For that reason my blog post is going to be at least two posts, maybe more. 

  • Part 1 - (This post) - Experimentation, foaming calibration and initial strength / weight testing.
  • Part 2 - (Next post) - Printing more parts, further strength testing and post processing / painting etc.
  • Future More... - Mixing? / Colour? / Crazy settings and big nozzles...

LW-PLA Test Material - 
Much of the initial testing was completed on a Prusa i3 MK3, the beta material supplied by ColorFabb was a reel of 1.75mm ~750g 'Natural colour' it's also available in Black. Tolerance and roundness of the filament was good.
Note:- If you print at 50% flow, it's like having a 1.5kg spool of printed foamed objects 'by volume'.

Start settings and advice from ColorFabb -

ColorFabb included some guidelines and testing results with the Beta spool, showing how to calibrate a single wall cube line width so it is as per your slicer settings. This step is important if you wish to print parts that fit together and generally make accurate, repeatable foamed objects.


A primary focus in on the weight reduction of parts because of the foaming, but I was also very interested in the ability to make both hard and foamed features with just a single material.


Simple check to see what the foaming looked like – compared to normal ColorFabb PLA/PHA


My first test was to see the foaming in action – above is a cube printed with a low level of infill, you can see the outer walls, they were 3 x 0.44mm perimeters and the infill is a single wall and rectilinear infill causing the ridges every other layer.
After printing it was cut in half and the cut edge sanded so you can see the expansion above.

The Gcode started at 200 Degrees C and for each layer increase in temperature to 265 Degrees C.

Because this was printed with normal PLA settings and 100% flow rate, the material had no where to go, so both the outer perimeters and infill became many times wider as the temperature increased, eventually resulting in a temporary nozzle jam that corrected itself before being stopped at 265 Degrees C. This simple print told me a lot about what was going on with the material expansion due to just a temperature increase.

Checking the 'Puff-point' -

A simple change of temperature every 5mm layer height, shows the change from PLA to foamed PLA.


You can even change the temperature by just 3 Degrees C and trigger the foaming expansion point, showing this material has a good degree of control and repeat-ability.

At this point I have worked out various stable speed settings, so now to try and tune the extruder retraction and temperature I am happy to print the foamed material with - (spoiler alert – there is no magic extruder retraction distance that solves ooze).

After some testing with 'normal' PLA settings and just increasing temperature, you need to start matching an extrusion speed (stable as possible) with flow rate and also temperature. 

As ColorFabb stated in the guidelines, you need to calibrate both flow rate and temperature to get a known and predictable rate of foaming expansion (rates of material deposition volume is also a critical factor). So that's what I set out to calibrate next.



The above is a test object, with hex infill and 100% flow rate.


Below is the same object, but a 50% flow, slightly lower temperature and greater extruder retraction


As with all material testing, you end up printing out a lot of test objects with various settings to test the limits of the material and the machine.


I spent some time trying to get a perfect extruder retraction setting, but it didn't take too long to come to the conclusion that it's almost always going to ooze if you are doing travel moves and not just 'vase mode' printing. Bu tit was very interesting to get a feel for the material, and experiment with line width settings, flow rates and temperatures.

It's also very tempting to change multiple things because you think you understand what's going on - it's often much better to change just one thing, then you will start to understand what's going on.



The final 'puff-point' test for me was to settle on a temperature I wanted to use for more adventurous printing, I decided that 225 Degrees C gave me a good level of foaming, and also minimal ooze. Again with 100% flow rate, but in 5 Degrees C steps (Image below).


This 'puff-point' will depend on your print speed settings, so you may well find that you see similar results as above, but at a different temperature range. I was running at around 40mm/sec for most print settings, and I found that to me quite optimal for using this material as it helps keep the puff-point temperature low (225) and that also keeps ooze to a minimum.
You can go crazy with high speed, high temperatures (250+) and you may get a 3x expansion or more, but I didn't find that to be useful when printing more complex objects with infill and islands - read on below to see more on that aspect.

With the above tests and more shown below I worked out that too much extruder retraction can cause nozzle jams and also does not stop the material from oozing - more about oozing later, as it's really not as big of a problem as it first sounds with this particular material.

After the 'test cube stage' - (Nozzle Jam #1) - 


At some point you need to print more than test cubes, and for me the real test was going to be complex objects that had a lot of islands, long travel moves and a lot of start-stop retractions.



A good test object is a quad-copter (drone) body (design by DV0001) – it needs to be light, strong and has a lot of individual islands, large print area and plenty of extruder retractions. To test my theory of extruder retraction distance and high temperature, the above image shows an early nozzle jam failure. 

This model proved to be a perfect (difficult) test for the foaming material, if I had started printing with an easier model I would not have learned so much about the 'viable window of usage' and I bet I would have ended up having a lot more frustrating failures later on without understanding why I was seeing jamming etc.

This was also the first indication that a high flow rate flow rate, combined with higher temperature (giving a high expansion rate) and low layer height could be making nozzle jams more likely (when you also have long extruder retractions) - so I set out to discover what were bad combinations and what were better.

Nozzle Jam #2 – (Learning all the time...)

After a tweak to the settings (see above in image), lower temperature(230 degrees C), increased layer height (0.25mm) and lower extruder retraction (3.0mm) and a lower flow rate (50%) - The print made it much longer into the print process, but still caused a nozzle jam before the print was completed.


Print success (No nozzle jams) – 
Also don't be alarmed by the strings & loops - I will explain why that's not a problem.
Critical print success settings for me were – 
  1. Low extruder retraction (under 2.8mm) - I now use 2.6mm extruder retraction on all foaming prints.
  2. 225 Degrees C with a matched 45% flow rate 
  3. ~44mm/sec Print speed on as many settings as possible (32mm/sec for small perimeters)
  4. Higher layer heights (0.25mm to 0.35mm) worked better for the foaming process without causing nozzle jamming.

After I decided on these settings, along with a print speed of around 44mm/sec and going no lower than 32mm/sec (apart from layer 1 – that's also printed slightly cooler), I had no further problems at all with nozzle jamming or print failures. Every other print from now on was a first time success.

Foamed Benchy - Success!


MasterSpool Success ! (Again, don't worry about the ooze-hairs on the print – they rub off)


Both the drone body and a two part MasterSpool print are significant sized object, with a lot of features, islands and travel moves.




You can see some bumps and spots, but they just brush off. A little nozzle ooze is the one aspect of this material that is going to be almost impossible to eliminate, but in reality it does not seem to cause any problems for the printed object or the final finish after a little post processing.



A little bit of clean up -


The internal stringing 'hairs' and excess material looks to be a problem, but it's surprisingly easy to remove with just your fingernail, scraper or a blade. Removal does not leave missing areas of print or significant blemishes on the printed part.


The drone model and MasterSpool prints had quite a few hairs due to travel moves and oozing. But they clear off the model really quickly, most with just a brush of your finger or finger nail.

Straight off the printer, you are going to see some hairs and stringing, these are easily removed.
Easy to see the 'hairs' on the Easter Egg model above - (Model designed by Jooxoe3i )

A light sanding will remove most surface imperfections and you won;t even be able to tell it's been sanded because it all feels the same as a very slightly textured surface. It's hard to describe, but I going to say that most people will really like the feel of the finish using this material.

At this point you may be thinking that you don't want to print at 'big 0.35mm layers', but the printed objects do not in any way look like models printed at 0.35mm layer heights...

You really need to see it in person to appreciate how nice a 0.35mm layer height can look on a model -
Very impressive bonding of layers and to the naked eye a large layer height like 0.35mm looks more like a printed object with 0.15mm layers.


Weight compare - 


Above shows the drone (quad-copter) body printed in both ColorFabb Natural PLA/PHA and the LW-PLA foamed at 45% flow.

PLA/PHA (Above left) @ 56.7g LW-PLA 45% flow (Above right) 26.3g

Both the Benchy prints above were printed using LW-PLA – Left it's non-foamed @205 Degrees C and Right it's foamed @225 Degrees C with a 45% material flow. Now a Benchy can actually float!

Significant weight reduction for the MasterSpool – and it's completely functional in it's lighter and foamed form.



1cm3 printed at '100%' but foamed @ 45% flow is around 0.6g

Bend, twist and strength testing (Materials and laminates)-

For some bend testing I printed a number of combinations of PLA/PHA and various laminates of LW-PLA.



Simple bend test setup shown below -



 Bend Test results - 

Clearly a fully foamed print will have more bend and flexibility than a normally solid print.

Compared to the weight, the strength of a 45% flow foamed object is really impressive.

Test D laminate shows a lighter weight object with less bend than a solid (Test B) object.



More strength and layer bond testing - 

To test layer bonding, some single wall 'vase' prints were used - 

Single perimeter 0.35mm layers printed with a 0.4mm nozzle


PLA/PHA test snapped cleanly across a layer.

LW-PLA (not foamed) also snapped across a layer, but required more force to make it snap.

LW-PLA (foamed) did not snap, but folded – it was not possible to break it by hand across a layer line, instead it required tools to rip it apart. The foamed print tends to tear in whatever direction stress is being applied. Layer bonding strength is very good indeed.

I don't want to make it sound like it's the strongest thing ever, a foamed print will have some level of strength, and will be much more impact resistant You can throw it on the floor - a PLA part would break, and the foamed part will just dent and bounce off the floor) It also will have better layer bonding, but it's not a highly 'strong' material in it's foamed state, it's just really impressive indeed for it's weight. That said it's not easy to snap or break by hand either.

To get some idea of comparative strength, just try printing an object in PLA with flow set to 45% - it may just about print, but it will be incredibly weak and will most likely buckle, de-laminate and fall apart.

Doing the same with the LW-PLA at a foamed 45% flow rate produces a remarkably well layer bonded part with a surprising strength to weight ratio, it can be post processed and it looks great too.

Summary so far - 

Okay, so I have done a lot more testing of flexibility, post processing, priming, sanding, destruction testing, printing lots of different models - so far used almost two complete 750g reels of the filament (remember that's like printing 2.5k to 3kg of parts).

Below images are just a little preview of what ill include in the next blog post for foaming PLA - 

I'll save a lot more of of that for the next (Part 2) blog post on foamed printing, but I also want to give you some more advice and conclusions about using the material for the last few months.

My guidelines for successful use of ColorFabb expanding PLA-

Don't use this material on a bowden tube extruder system! - It's just does not work well.

A direct drive extruder like the Prusa i3 MK2/3 or the Taz5/6 etc. is ideal.

If you are using a glass or PEI print surface, I would strongly recommend using a surface treatment – I tested glue stick, various sprays and lacquers - then found that standard Magigoo for PLA worked the best for me.

DO NOT adjust your flow rate by modifying the filament diameter or extrusion ratio in your slicing program, you should be using the following Gcode command in your starting script - 
Examples - (Just use one of these at the end of your starting Gcode script) - 
M221 S45 ; sets a 45 percent flow rate in the firmware for the ColorFabb Expand PLA
M221 S55 ; sets a 55 percent flow rate in the firmware for the ColorFabb Expand PLA
M221 S95 ; sets a 95 percent flow rate in the firmware for the ColorFabb Expand PLA

If you use the M221 command, you can then do nice things like set areas of your model to be printed solid (not foamed with 100% flow) and other parts to be foamed at 45% - You will not be able to do that if you mess about with the filament diameter of extrusion ratio.

All the testing / tuning and experimentation below were done with a E3D V6 hot-end and 0.4mm nozzle. (I will be testing it out with other extrusion / hot-end systems too).

I intend to do some further testing on the TAZ6 Moarstruder (Volcano 1.2mm Nozzle) if I can get some of this filament in 2.85mm. I think the large nozzle and a ~>2mm layer height may be possible and very interesting to see !

Make printing speeds for different moves as similar as possible (where appropriate) – basically try to avoid sudden changes in print speed / flow (other than extruder retraction).

Do not chase a magical value for extruder retraction – there is not a setting that will eliminate ooze using this material – but you can minimise problems, more importantly you need to tune the extruder reversal to avoid chances of hot-end & nozzle jamming...

I can't stress how important this next comment is – you WILL have an nozzle jam during any significant testing and experimentation of this material. It's not all that hard to clear a foamed blockage on an E3D V6, but it may be more difficult on other machines / nozzles out there. You have been warned!

Trigger point for expansion 'puff-point' is dependent on print speed, temperature and material flow percentage. - The instantaneous energy that's being transferred into the material as it passes through the nozzle. Extrusion volume, 'speed' and dwell in the nozzle plays a really big part in getting a controlled expansion and repeatable material flow for printing different types of objects.

In the past I have experimented with printing PLA very fast indeed, it's not unusual to bump up the extrusion temperature to 260+ Degrees C just to be able to get enough thermal energy into the material at very rapid flow rates.

When testing out the Volcano and a Bondtech extruder on the Hangprinter with a 1.65mm Nozzle the 1.75mm PLA feed needed to be well over 270 Degrees C – just to get it melting and printing, and even that showed a slightly matt finish, where the PLA being used would normally have been shiny. You could slow things down but who wants to print big things slow :)

If however you let that PLA material sit in the hot-end at that temperature during non extrusion events for too long it will quickly turn to the consistency of honey and start to degrade and eventually burn.

The Expanding PLA can handle very high temperatures quite well, but you also do have to consider the energy, flow rate (deposition of material rate) and thermal expansion rate of the filament carefully, so that means tuning your slicing program so you get optimal conditions.

For a stock Prusa i3 MK2/3 I did not need to change any firmware settings, but did tune Slic3r settings for more consistent results, especially with regards to changes in print speed for different model features.

I found it best to determine the ideal 'puff-point' with as consistent speed settings as possible. This means smoothing out the changes in print acceleration, for example inner and outer perimeter should be similar, infill and even small islands need to be closer to all other printing speeds, rather than very fast or very slow as you may have them when printing PLA.

You can use fan cooling – but only around half of 'normal' PLA settings. If you use more cooling it will change the puff-point and limit expansion of the material. You can even set cooling and extrusion temperatures to be just a few degrees or percentage different per layer and see the foaming form or not.

I used no fan for the first layer and also a slightly lower extrusion temperature (222) to compensate for a slower first layer speed.

Interestingly if you print at around 195 to 205 Degrees C, this material will behave just like 'normal' PLA. There is no real reason to do this unless you want a more solid/hard feature in your expanded model or a multi-density laminate like I tested above.

Trigger points with hot-end jamming for me were -

Too much extruder reversal – >2.8mm and it would jam every time at some point in a 'real life model' print where travel moves and island printing were frequent.
I experimented to over 3.5mm extruder reversal – trying to eliminate ooze on travel moves, but it just caused more problems (it's better to lower the temperature to help combat oozing – see below).

If you pull the semi-expanded filament back too far into the thermal break or cool-zone it will jam.
Tune this to failure mode and then back off – I have had 100% reliable printing of many different types of objects after I lowered extruder reversal length to 2.6mm for the V6 nozzle.
Every print would always fail at over 3.0mm extruder reversal.

Generally the higher heat you go, the more you will need to reduce the flow rate – if you don't you will get very wide extrusion traces and that will be much more likely to block the nozzle at some point during your print.

You will end up with a combination of temperature, print speed and flow, that gives you a 'normal' extrusion width for your nozzle size, and then you can print foamed objects with a similar accuracy and (often better) print quality than you get with 'normal' PLA.

Observations for finish and post processing -


Don't worry about the ooze / stringing / whiskers – they rub off easily and for whatever reason you don't actually see any real defects in the finished model – like missing sections of outlines or indents or bumps. You should be 'loosing some volume' from your printed object, but due to the foaming and general ability to blend layers together you don't see these strings or bumps translate into lasting defects on the printed model with just a little post processing clean-up.

Should you try this material? - 

Do you need light weight printed objects?

As long as you are prepared to tweak and tinker with the settings to tune temperature, speed and flow with your specific 3D Printer, it is a really interesting material that can give unique optical, mechanical and weight related properties to 3D printed objects.

You can print 2 x as many things with a 750g coil of filament...

You can actually print parts out faster – even with slower print speeds... (Because you can break the 'normal' slicing rules using the the same sized nozzle - you can use a higher layer height and line width and even less perimeters and infill for an object and it will still have well bonded layers and a 'solid' finished form.


For me, once I had my settings tuned in – I found I could print almost anything I would print with regular PLA in the LW-PLA (Light weight expand PLA).

If you make lot of cosplay parts, props, models, buildings, prototypes and almost anything you would want to show off to a client (either with just a light sanding or full paint finish) I would say you have to at least try this material.

I have really enjoyed using it, and I find more uses for it every day - I can only hope one day ColorFabb decides to release #MasterSpool compatible refill coils of their filament, but if you can live with the fact it comes on a single use polycarbonate plastic spool... then I can strongly recommend trying out the material for 3D Printing.

Final thoughts – 
And a message to 3DP material manufacturers - 

I'm excited about this, not just the foaming filament, but the fact we are still seeing research, development and advancements in filament's and materials designed exclusively for the 3D printing process.

The other aspect is that we need 3D printing filament (and resin) manufacturers to actually release these materials to users. I say this because I have tested many pre-release materials that were somewhat challenging to use, and unfortunately this can mean that a manufacturer decided not to release the product into the market.

We need challenging materials, we need to work with or find ways around the limitations and allow more people to experiment with exciting developments like this foaming PLA.

I'm please that ColorFabb have not only developed this material, but they have decided to release it. It's not a totally 'simple' material to use, and it will challenge some machines and users. But my message to all materials developers and filament manufacturers is to let more of your 'test materials' out for use. Even if that's with a lot of warnings, 'alpha or beta status' or as E3D have done in recent years, marked challenging materials with a 'here be dragons' labels.

Thanks for making this a reality ColorFabb – I'm looking forward to seeing many more materials like this. For me this is one of the materials I have been waiting for since I started 3D printing.

That's all for now, I hope you enjoyed the (rather long) Part 1 Blog post about this material.

Edit*  - Looks like I just got this blog post finished in time - ColorFabb have just announced on Twitter the release date and details for this material - find out more here - *Edit

See you next time, and if you have a new and interesting 3D printing material you want me to take a look at, do get in contact.

Rich.

Please join me on Twitter @RichRap3D if you want to discuss more about 3D printing.

My Youtube channel is here, all 3D Printing and Hi-Def video content.


Thursday, 28 February 2019

The ToolChanger - Part 2 - Assembly of the Reference design multi-tool 3D Printer

The E3D #ToolChanger - Part 2

Hello everyone, In part 1 I introduced the concept of a ToolChanger as a 3D printer. In this post, I'm going to be building up the E3D Beta30 reference kit.

In part 3 we will be looking at how to setup ToolChange scripting and the RepRap firmware on the Duet 2 electronics. (And doing some actual 3D printing).

Quick Jump Index 
I'll update this list as I post more blogs and video's about the ToolChanger adventures.
Lets dive straight it -


This is what we are aiming for when complete - Wiring (image above) and completed assembly with tool heads (image below) -


This blog post will cover the assembly and wiring of the ToolChanger.

Assembly documentation for the Beta30 machines was produced by Greg at E3D, this consisted of five separate documents for the various stages of the assembly and wiring.

I will loosely follow the five different sections as it also makes sense to focus on these areas when showing how the ToolChanger has been designed.

1 - Motion System Assembly
2 - Tool-Changer Assembly
3 - V6 Dock Assembly
4 - V6 Bowden Tool Assembly
5 - Motion System Electronics

Motion System - 
I followed them in the above order, you can do them in almost any order you like, but it's well worth reading all of the documentation first before you begin any assembly.

You will need to gather tools, some materials (like metal banding) and other fixings, super glue and a bunch of other things.

Firstly if you build up a machine like this, be aware you probably need to buy some thread-lock fluid. Many steps are using metal parts, nuts and bolts that require a smear of thread-lock to stop them coming loose in use. Don't skip this advice, it's going to save you a lot of trouble down the road when you have your machine running.

Quite a few different things need to be thread-locked, so it's well worth trying to do as much as possible all at the same time. You need to leave 8+ hours for the thread-lock to set, so it's highly frustrating to complete some steps, then wait and then find you need to do more and have to wait again before you can finish the assembly. Give yourself a few days to complete the assembly, and another day at least to do the wiring.

You do get (almost) all the fixings you need to build up the ToolChanger - some (like 50mm M3 bolts) need to be sourced yourself, and a few E3D have already decided to add into the next round of kits to make it easier for people.

The frame construction is easy, you just bolt four vertical 30mm x 60mm aluminium extrusions - one in each corner to the base sheet of 4mm aluminium plate.

The back acrylic sheet is supplied - and E3D are considering also supplying the side panels in future ToolChanger Kits as they add a lot of strength and rigidity to the machine when built. Most of the Beta30 testers needed to get their own side panels cut locally. I was very kindly sent a set by Greg cut by E3D.

Fix on the back acrylic sheet - all the electronics, extruder motors and wiring mount onto that.

The motion system plate can be mounted on top of the four vertical extrusions, and bolted down - not to tightly at this point.


The Z axis module is next to be fitted - in between the top and bottom aluminium plates.

 It's securely fixed with the Z drive motor at the bottom.

The build platform is is fixed to the Z axis carriage next - again it feels nice and solid.

Tool-Changer Assembly - 

Next to be assembled was the main tool dock for the ToolChanger X/Y carriage -

The tool head consists of a Z-probe switch, high quality (metal geared) micro-servo and a rotating rod with locking pin to clamp down (as it rotates) gripping a tool on the kinematic coupling plate (far right plate in the picture above).

The servo is small but mighty, and it's geared achieving even more pulling power - the grub-screw is just too small - that's one thing E3D are going to change in the next batch.

You just fit some M4 metal spacers on the motion system carriage, add the servo, Z-switch and locking pin with thrust bearing etc.

A few early builders had some issues with the servo wires getting pinched and shorting out on the aluminium parts - so I added shrink-wrap around the servo cable.


Before adding the cover, I also routed the cables and wrapped the servo wires to the servo body with kapton tape.

The front and back parts of the pick-up head are mounted - and a drop of superglue holds in the locking pin as the grub-screw felt a little inadequate for my liking.


A simple printed safety cover fits on the the back to hide the wiring and cable entry point.

V6 Dock Assembly - 

The tool docks are fitted on to the back of the machine, they hold the tool ready for a pick-up by the tool head we just assembled above.


Not too many parts for this section - just a matter of following the assembly instructions - easy.

Easy to assemble - but again need a drop of threadlock.

A pack of thin shims were provided to help vertically align  the tool docks. It's very unlikely they will be needed for the next batch as machining and alignment was so good for this batch.

That's it.

V6 Bowden Tool Assembly - 

The tool assembly is a little more involved, and for the initial machine setup I'm using 4 x E3D V6 hot-ends - Configured in a bowden Titan arrangement.

Get everything you need for all the tools you are building.

And build them all up together - it's quite a few steps, and you will need to also check on the normal hot-end assembly instructions.

Some cables will need to be cut - (if you cut down your heater cartridge, make them slightly longer then shown above - I found 150mm was a better length - after cutting the first one to 130mm)


Each tool head has a small PCB (that may not be the case in future ToolChanger kits - so do check).


You are then just building up V6 hot-ends and adding them onto the supplied coupling plate (fitted with 8mm steel ball bearings)

The connector PCB gets clamped in between two 3D printed parts and bolted down.

Here I found it very useful to use longer then specified bolts so you can remove the cable clamp - easier to install and essential if you want to remove a tool-head.

Repeat 3 x times

And that's a set of V6 tools ready for the machine. (These are still missing heater blocks in the image above).


The tools just slide on to the docks we assembled in the previous section, and can be connected up up to the Titan extruders with a length of 4mm PTFE tube and wiring to the duet motor drives.


The Titan extruders are easy to build - just be aware you need 2 x normal and 2 x mirrored Titan's for the ToolChanger. (1.75mm - were used in this machine)


Another thing to be aware of is that the acrylic back panel is 5mm thick, so all Titan screws need to be +5mm longer to reach the NEMA17 motor holes.

 Because of the acrylic panel thickness you can set the extruder gear to 13mm distance from the motor shaft end (as long as you are using a 0.9 degree NEMA17 Titan motor as supplied by E3D).


Do them all at once, and I always put a drop of superglue on to my gears and the grub-screw to keep things securely fixed.

Check the fit (before you superglue !) and then mount on the acrylic back panel.

 Done.

Motion System Electronics - 

The final area of assembly and wiring are the electronics and connecting cables.

This is probably the most tricky part for most people. But take your time and check everything at least twice.


The Duet2electronics have a lot of different options, so not all the decisions below need to be followed, it will depend on how you want your machine to be configured, these are the choices I made -





I'm using PT100 temperature sensors (instead of thermistors or thermo-couples). To use PT100 temperature sensors on the Duet 2 you need two daughter boards that expand the temperature sensing capability to four channels of PT100 thermal amplification. These are simple to install, but a little tricky to wire to the supplied screw-terminal connections.

The PT100 sensors allow higher temperatures than the normal glass bead thermistors usually fitted to V6 hot-ends.

I used just two of the four wires for the connection to the daughter-boards. Leaving all four of the 0.1” option jumpers in place.

It's not immediately obvious how to wire up the PT100 sensors to the Duet PT100 daughter-boards, but just as before, follow the extra instructions on the Duet3D website and you will quickly see how to wire up either 4 wire or 2 wire types.

They mount on the Duet 2 (above) and Duex5 (below) easily, and you can stack another set to get even more channels of PT100 (or Thermocouple) sensing on the Duet electronics.


You can wire these differently for different types of PT100 sensor and also if you remove the option jumpers – As always check the latest advice from the manufacturer as you may have a different revision of a PCB or assembly – Duet Documentation is really good, do check itout here -  

The Duet2 and the Duex5 expansion are fitted to the back of the acrylic panel - then you can start wiring.

 You get a big coil of ready-made cables for the ToolChanger, most just need to be connected to the right connection on the electronics, a few need to be screwed or cut.


Following the instructions for connection, it does not take long to get the tool-heads connected up.


After most of the cable are connected to a tool, carriage or motor, you will end up with cables hanging down the back of your machine.




You can then start routing them nicely along the back, and zip-tie as required.

 The next job is to mount the power supply.

And fix the solid state relay - if you are using the mains powered heated bed option (it's amazing).


A little bit of mains wiring is required, so take your time and check everything twice.


Then you need to fit the heated bed. 


 And make sure everything it correctly earthed.









If you are using the mains powered heated bed - do make really sure you have a good earth connection the the metal plate.



If in doubt - check with the latest wiring diagrams available at the time - I used the above as a useful guide for the Beta 30 kits.


After a lot more checking - double-checking and a a night of sleep - I decided to turn it on the the first time... And yes! it powered up.

I'll finish this blog post, but will be back again for part 3 where we look at the firmware setup, scripting, slicing profiles and the all important calibration stage.

Then we finally start printing.


That's all for part 2, join me next time and I'll start to work through the software and firmware setup, scripting and calibration.

And don't forget to check out some of the other Beta30 ToolChanger builds - some are already built and printing out multi-tool 3D Prints.

These links below are borrowed from the Recent E3D ToolChanger blog post - if you are building up an E3D ToolChanger and want to be listed on my Blog, just let me know and I'll add you into the adventure.

YouTube:
Instagram:
Joe - @nemesis.robotics
Nikolai - @nikolai.py
Twitter:
Ezra - @EandEDesign
Keith - @_Tinkerz
Tyler - @TstarkEngineer
Tony - @kraegar
Rich - @RichRap3D
Blogs: 
Romain Grangier Blog - https://www.facebook.com/additmtl/ 
Thanks for reading, see you all next time.

Cheers,

Rich.