tekkydave

Well thank you for saying so

Your description just reminded me of the Tom Hanks film 'BIG' Maybe you should call it 'Hanks' or 'Tom'

Designed and printed a couple of brackets to mount my ATX power supply on the V-slot frame. I will need to add another cross piece at the bottom level to bridge across to. I now need to design an enclosure for the electronics in a similar fashion to hold the Ramps, RPi3 plus any other electronics I need to incorporate. I've also bought a piece of ecocast aluminium plate 300x300x6mm to give me a larger print area. I've also ordered a 300x300mm silicone heater (750W @ 220V) and a solid-state relay to interface it to the Ramps o/p. Both on the slow-boat from China so will take a few weeks to arrive.

I think I've cured the issue with the Titan and 3mm filament. I replaced the stock tensioner spring with a similar one which I shortened to about 2/3 of its length. I now have a better range of adjustment and can slacken it off far enough so there isn't excessive pressure on 3mm filament. The white filament is now extruding happily at 220.

The Titan has been performing pretty well so far except when I use filament that is a true 3mm diameter. The 2.85mm filaments seem to be ok but 3mm causes the drive to skip steps. I have the tension spring all the way out. I suspect the pancake stepper motor doesn't have enough torque (21Ncm) to push the filament through the hot end. The latest batch of white filament I have bought from WeDo3DPrinting needs to be extruded at 240°C to be fluid enough to go through without skipping. I've checked the stepper driver volts and it is 0.55 which should be correct. I might try fitting the motor I was using on the Prusa extruder. It's heavier but should give me some more torque (36Ncm).

It is partially accessible but I tend to use the manual extrude button on Octoprint to push the filament through. There's not much scope to turn the extruder to face front due to the geometry of the printer. I am losing about 20mm in Y as it is by using the Titan over the stock DBot extruder which is a bowden. Another printer! I wish I had the space

Finally got round to printing an updated Titan bracket for the DBot. This pushes the extruder out by another 5mm so the front panel screws become accessible without removing the belt clamp. I also fitted the belt clamps I printed in PLA rather than PETG. The 'grippy' parts printed better on the DBot and grip the belt without relying on just the tie-wraps. I also fitted the low-profile M5 bolts all round. With everything installed and working I printed up some adapters to re-use the vibration dampers from my old Prusa on the DBot. Remember these? They cut down the vibration & noise through the desktop by a huge amount.

I have matched as many settings as possible but I always feel Cura is doing its own thing behind the scenes. It produces better support structures than Slic3r though

Printed some spare belt clamps. These strike me as the weakest item on the printer and most likely to render it inoperative if they broke.

Re-sliced using Slic3r instead of Cura and it printed fine. All dimensions are within 0.05mm of 20mm.

No fan yet but to be fair I didn't on the Prusa either. I'm currently experimenting with parameters. I mean there is a fan on the hotend but no part cooling fan yet

Today I connected up the Ramps for some initial testing. Basic motion seemed to be working fine so I transferred the 200x200mm heated bed from the Prusa. Then I could set up the x endstop position and bed y position to the correct location. Then the z endstop and bed levelling was set up using the usual piece of paper. The wiring looks a bit messy at the moment but once I've designed and printed an enclosure for all the electronics it will get run tidily via the vslot grooves. The black & orange thing sitting on top is an 80mm fan keeping the stepper drivers cool I felt confident so went for a first print; the usual 20mm cube. It started well but the corners get more rounded with z height so something not quite right. Maybe acceleration settings? Side view: I am very impressed with the Titan extruder. It's so easy to load filament.

I'm using the standard bolts. I haven't connected all the electronics up yet so I can't say how it performs so far. There are so many improvements people have made to this design it was hard to decide what to adopt. In the end I opted to build it 'as designed' and enjoy making the improvements myself. I found with PETG I had to increase the retraction from 1 to 2.5mm and use lots of tricks with the slicing to avoid retraction. Good look with your build. I haven't seen 30x30 extrusion anywhere. Can you adapt it to use 20x40?

Mine is 543mm wide x 453mm deep x 560mm high. That's for the 300mm x 300mm print area. The 300x200mm rail bundle will be 100mm less deep. I think the price difference is only a few quid though as the number of cuts is the same and there's only about 600mm linear length of v-slot difference between the two bundles. It's a good quality bundle - all the cuts are perfect and are pre-tapped for M5 bolts in the right places for the DBot build. They could be used, however for any corexy type build.

Yes, it was only an extra £8 on the cost of the Titan. It's also a 0.9deg step size. Looking forward to getting it all connected up.

Bit the bullet today and took the Prusa apart. It's looking a bit sad now Once I had liberated the motors I attached the new 500mm leadscrews and installed them in the Dbot frame Then I installed the other 2 motors to drive the gantry and fitted the belts Then the Titan extruder was fitted to the x carriage. It was a bit of a struggle as one of the wheel nuts and belt clamps blocks access to the lower right fixing screw on the Titan. I got round it by temporarily removing them while I fitted the Titan then put them back afterwards. Once I get the Dbot printing I think I'll design a better version of this bracket. Next steps are to connect up the Ramps, configure Marlin and do some testing. Haven't we been here before?....

Video of the x/y carriage movement: 2017-06-28 14.37.02.mp4

Today I fitted the x carriage. The rear half is PETG and the front half is PLA being a customisation for the Titan extruder. I have assembled the Titan but can't install it until I have put all the belts in place. It's time to start nicking bits off the Prusa I also fixed the issue of the y endstop not being triggered by adding this diameter extension from Thingiverse

Thanks Gina. It's getting closer to the point where I will have to start taking parts from the Prusa. I need 4 of the motors, the electronics and heated bed. I'm making sure I have everything I need printed.

Also, look what arrived in the post today. I printed a bracket this afternoon to fit it to the Dbot x carriage.

Some of the M5 x 40mm bolts I bought for this project weren't of the highest quality (LHS in image). The diameter is not consistent all the way to the head. When I used them for the z axis wheel guides they needed a washer in order for the head to sit square on the wheel. The problem with this was that the washer was too large causing the wheel bearing to bind against the washer when tightened. Fortunately I had enough in stock of better quality to use instead (RHS in image).

Managed to get the z and y axis built today. Its a bit fiddly geting all the wheels, spacers & shims in place but the result is worth it. The axes are very smooth with no play at all. Video of axes moving: 2017-06-27 15.26.12 z and y axes working.mp4

More progress today. Built the print bed support.

The cast metal corners arrived during the week so I fitted them to the frame. I also fitted four feet. They are actually rubber doorstops!

Yes, and also bigger than I imagined. Eventually it will take a 300x300mm bed but I'll be starting with the 200x200mm from the Prusa.