3D Printers/Ender 3000
Status
- Work In Progress
- Klipper UI at ender3000.in.hacklab.to
Ender3000 is a custom printer, built out of the carcasses of two unused Ender3s. It's an IDEX (Independent Dual EXtruder) printer, allowing for printing with multiple materials, for example dual colour, support material, etc.
The build
Hardware
The printer started by replacing 3 extrusions along the X axis - the top, bottom, and x gantry. They were replaced with rail machined an extra 6" wide - For 3" per side overlap beyond the bed. This allows room for each x carriage to park out of the way, and lets the other operate over the full area of the bed.
To run two separate belts to the separate X carriages, a custom motor + tensioner mount was used. They were based closely off this printables design, but were re-implemented from scratch to accommodate the specific offsets and differences for our printers. The first belt reuses the stock location, running through the linear rail and reusing the stock belt clamps. The 2nd motor runs above the rail, offset by 20mm, and runs through the perfect gap between the plate of the carriage and the rollers themselves.
Using the leftover parts from the old printer, the Z axis was transplanted to provide dual independent Z. (This is important as the extra long width means there's a ton of cantilever from the single Z motor on the left.) one of the old printer's vertical rails was added on the right side of the printer both as a brace, and as a place to mount the power supply.
TODO -> Upload and link to custom files.
Electronics
This build has dual X and Z motors, for a total of 7 steppers. The stock ender boards only have 4 drivers, so both boards are used in parallel. The boards are configured as:
- MCU 1
- Motors: X0, X1, Y
- Endstops: X0, X1, Y
- Thermal: HB0 and TB0.
- Part fan for hotend 0
- MCU 2
- Motors: Z0, Z1, E0, E1
- Endstops: BLTouch (Z)
- Thermal: HE0, HE1, TE0, TE1
- Part fan for hotend 1
- Misc: Original Ender screen is reused. Two endstop inputs are free, and may eventually be re-purposed for filament run-out.
A raspberry Pi 3A is used to run klipper. It connects to the MCUs via a USB Hub and two modified USB cables (with the power pin removed to prevent back-feeding the MCUs ). A Webcam is also included.
All of the original electronics and wiring were reused, and the only additional components are the raspberry pi and webcam. The power wire to MCU1 was extended so it could reach the power supply, and other wires may eventually be extended to allow for better cable management.
Software
This part is still in progress.
The Ender3000 is running klipper, with a custom config for our machine. It was installed using kiauh. It significantly references:
- https://github.com/Klipper3d/klipper/blob/master/config/sample-idex.cfg
- https://github.com/Klipper3d/klipper/blob/master/config/printer-creality-ender3-2018.cfg
Once complete, our klipper config will be uploaded to github for reference.
The ender3 v1.1.4 boards use a CH340G; which is a cheap USB to serial adapter. These do not have a serial number associated with them, so they appear identical to the host computer. For this reason, it's important to keep them in the same USB ports in the same order, as /dev/serial/by-path/ is the only good way to consistently send the commands to the right MCU. (If the MCUs get swapped, it will try to home the wrong motors as X, which could be very bad. )