Dude
Another DOSTATECH production
Behind the scene
Class act 3D printer
The art of hacking the hell out of a 3D printer
Description
The Solidoodle-2 3D printer is an entry level low-cost personal printer, one of the first personal 3D printer under $1000. More precisely a 2012 printer, even though, compared to today's printers technology, feels more like Christopher Columbus personal 3D printer
The printed parts are not of high quality, resulting with significant amount of post-processing. To improve parts quality and acceptability, the printer has been severely hacked (modified) through the life of Dude, including the main controller board. With all the mods, it now prints as well as high-end printers, and is the favorite for ABS prints.
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Modifications
The art of hacking the hell out of your 3D printer.
What could be expected from the Solidoodle-2 3D printer ? The answer really depends on the part you are printing. If you want a small to medium size decorative piece of art or sculpture, no problem, you will get exactly that; a piece of art. As an example, let's say you want to print the Yoda from Star-War. What you get is a nice Yoda sculpture. That's great, you are a happy camper, and that concludes this article.
But on the next day, with full confidence, you decide to print another sculpture, this time you pick one with high fine details. Surprise, the print is highly distorted, deformed, or won't even print. Talk about deception.
Further down the road, you discover more and more difficulties and challenges with your printing processes, each resulting with different inadequate prints. The list of 3D printing problems is way too long to mention here. A long story short, the vast majority of correcting the most dominant print failures was by modifying the printer itself. Each modification aimed at correcting one unique print anomaly, so many modifications was required to finally get high quality prints.
Here's a brief list of the major corrections to the Solidoodle-2 printer:
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Addition of a layer cooling fan (extruder cooling fan)
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Replacing nylon bushing for ball-bearing on X and Y axis.
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Replaced surface bed from Kapton tape to glass plate.
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Replacing extruder assembly from acrylic to ABS print part (the acrylic broke to pieces)
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Stabilizing the rods in all axis
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Major improvement on Z-axis stability with the addition of anti-backlash device.
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Enclosing the printer inside a primitive home made chamber.
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Hot-end extruder (nozzle) replacement.
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Power supply replacement
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Replacing the control board with much higher quality (see details below).
- Redesign the home made chamber with professional look acrylic chamber.
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Addition of remote controlled LED lighting
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Cooling fan in action
Side view of cooling fan
Damaged kapton tape on plate surface.
Experimenting with 3D printed plastic bushing before finalizing with ball-bearing sleeves.
Kapton tape replaced with glass plate.
Former acrylic extruder replaced with one of the 3D printed extruder
Part of acrylic extruder
broken down to pieces
One of the anti-backslash device to improve print quality
The primitive home made chamber and home made plastic filament spool rack.
The more modern looking acrylic chamber with color remote LED lighting.
The final and current 3D printers setup, all enclosed inside a mainframe rack.
Highly modified Solidoodle-2 printer on the bottom, Prusa i3 Mk3 printer on center, and plastic filament spool racks on top
Both printers in action
Controller board
One of the modification worth outlining is the main controller board replacement. Following an unfortunate accident where the former controller board got fried (I'm sure you would love details ...), it was decided to replace with the most high-tech board available, with Wifi and touch screen panel. This new controller board added many new features to the printer:
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Significantly higher printing quality, accuracy, and speed
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Much quieter printing process
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Full remote control via wifi. Most convenient for files transfer.
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Layer controlled cooling fan (extruder cooling fan).
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Support numerous optional modules
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The completely fried original controller board
Installation of the new high-tech Wifi controller board
Calibration
Get it straight
Half way through the 3D printer modification and half way through printing Dude, It was time to start printing matching gears and gear boxes. Those required printing with accurate precision for precise fitting between parts. The resulted prints were catastrophic. When rotating the matching gears inside their gear box, depending on the rotation, it would be way too sloppy are so tight that rotation was not possible.
Further experimentation revealed that the printer was not printing symmetrically between the X and Y axis.
That would explain why such intensive post-processing was required to all the parts to assemble the head. Rigorous filing and sanding was required to each of the thirteen parts that makes the head just to fit them together. And still, there was no way to eliminate the unattractive gaps between most of the parts. Now we know it was because of the X and Y axis asymmetry.
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The G-Code protocol (standard programming language used for 3D printers and CNC machines) was studied and analyzed, disclosing improper printer configuration withing the printer itself. The configuration was corrected and the resulting prints were perfectly symmetrical.
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That fixed the asymmetrical X and Y axis issue, but matching parts together was still barely acceptable due the inexact matching part sizes. Using the G-Code again, the printer was calibrated with the highest possible precision for the X, Y and Z axis, as well as the filament feed rate.
Wish list
All in a good time
With all the modification that this printer went thought, including the new controller board, this printer can no longer be called a Solidoodle-2 anymore. Whatever it is called, this "new" highly modified printer is now a class-act printer.
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But that doesn't mean there is no room for more improvement. Here's a list of modification that would be nice to accomplish at some time or another
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Improved layer cooling fan (extruder fan)
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Replace Z-axis rod with Lead-Screw
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Replace aging X and Y axis rods and bearings
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Redesign and replace the platform for improved stability
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Replace the extruder with higher temperature capable unit for compatibility with newer exotic plastic filament type.