tekkydave

The build so far. Can't proceed any further till the corner brackets I ordered arrived. There are still quite a few parts to print so lots to do.

Thanks for the info. I'm planning to build it vanilla and make improvements later.

Still printing parts. In the meantime I inserted all the bearings & shims into the v-slot wheels. Also unpacked and sorted all the v-slot sections into order ready for assembly.

Now printing the right rear idler. This may take a while......

Another tip for Cura users: If you use the 'Concentric 3D' infill pattern it reduces vibrations a lot (on my Prusa it does anyway!). You also get less retractions as a consequence too I'm forging ahead with the part production and currently printing the 1-Rear_Idler_Right part which is 2.5 hrs into a 5.5hr print. Cura Parameters: Layer Height = 0.28mm 3 shells on all sides Z Seam Alignment = Random Infill = 70% Infill Pattern = Concentric 3D Printing temperature = 250°C (PETG filament) Bed temperature = 80°C Retraction = 2.5mm @ 25mm/s All speeds = 30mm/s Combing Mode = No Skin Build Plate Adhesion = Brim (4mm wide) Mesh Fixes: All disabled

The first two useable prints using PETG. The retraction is now set to 2mm @ 20mm/s. I think I'll try pushing it a bit further even though E3D dont recommend it. I have also decided to print the parts individually to keep retraction to a minimum.

First part I printed wasn't great so made a few changes. Increased hotend temperature from 240°C to 250°C. Reduced the speed from 60 to 30mm/s. Increased the retraction from 1 to 1.2mm (at 25mm/s). Changed infill from 85% to 70% which is good enough and uses less filament. These changes have got rid of most of the stringing and are producing nicer prints, at least on parts that are flat to the bed with vertical holes. Now printing some Z-wheel guides which have holes going parallel to the bed - we'll see how they turn out

Yes, I'm still getting stringing. I need to calibrate the temperature and retraction before I print any more parts.

I've started printing the parts for the DBot on my Prusa. Using PETG at 240C with the print bed at 80C. I'm printing at 85% infill to ensure I get solid, durable parts. This may take some time BTW I've abandoned the bowden setup on the Prusa and put the extruder back how it was. I can do 50-60mm/s no problem with only mild vibration effects in the prints.

At the moment I only plan to use PETG for the DBot build as PLA is considered too weak/brittle. I may as well build it properly to start with rather than be reprinting bits later.

Agree totally. The reason Im abandoning my Prusa and switching to a corexy design is stability & rigidity of the frame. I also chose the D-Bot as it uses only v-slot extrusion and wheels. No rods & linear bearings in sight.

The PETG filament should be arriving today so I can get on with printing the parts. I might go back to using a direct extruder for this as the bowden setup on my Prusa seems to be more trouble than its worth. At the speed I normally print 40-60mm/s the Prusa doesn't benefit much from bowden. Faster speeds cause too much shaking/vibration either way. I need a decent set of prints for the D-Bot then the Prusa will be giving up it's motors, electronics plus a few other small parts for the D-Bot.

Thanks for the link. Sadly I know what you mean about dwindling memberships. A movie-making club my father is a lifetime member of is on the brink of winding up as they are unable to attract younger members. I have sort-of lost interest in astronomy and spend most of my time & money on 3D printers these days. I doubt if the focuser will get any future development or support as I have no personal use for it at the moment.

Interesting: http://ascom-standards.org/Developer/DevFor32And64Bits.htm

I'll look into developing a 64 bit driver. It may take a while as I don't have Win10 environments to develop and test with. I have been developing in Win7 64-bit Virtualbox VMs with Visual Studio 12. It may be that the limitation is with the Ascom environment or development templates. Please also be mindful that this project is a hobbyist endeavor intended to get people developing their own solutions based upon it. If it was a commercial offering it wouldn't be on SGL for free as I would be selling kits and offering full support. If you are using this in a commercial environment and depend on it in some way then consider using a commercial product instead.

The D-Bot Rail Bundle was £106 + p&p (£113.85 total). Pretty good value and no cutting to do. They do a Motion Bundle too but I have some components already so will just buy what I need.

The v-slot arrived today from Ooznest. All nicely cut to length, tapped where required and labelled with the D-Bot part ids. I have started printing the plastic parts on the Prusa in PLA. I can reprint any I want to replace on the D-Bot later.

Sorry you're having issues. It's the Ascom Driver causing the issues I think, not the Arduino code. I have tried creating a driver for 64 bit but can never get it to compile on my Win7 64-bit VM which is all I have to work on. If anyone with the right knowledge to do this can fork the project on SourceForge and recompile for Win10 I would appreciate.

Yes, I was thinking about looking at better electronics at some point. Thanks for the link.

This topic will describe the build of my D-Bot CoreXY 3D Printer. I have already built a Prusa i3 3D Printer but have realised as I have modified and improved it that I have pushed it as far as it will go. This new build is based around the D-Bot printer by spauda01 and will have a print volume of 300x300x375mm. I will be proceeding as funds allow as the total estimated cost is about £500. I will be re-purposing as much as I can from the Prusa e.g. motors, electronics, hot-end. I will probably re-use the 200x200mm print bed initially until I get a 300x300mm to replace it. I have found the funds to make a start and have ordered the D-Bot Rail Bundle from Ooznest. This will give me all the required v-slot extrusions, cut to length and ready-tapped where required. I'll be printing the plastic parts needed on the Prusa in order to assemble the basic frame. If the quality is not 100% I can always re-print them once the D-Bot is functional.

Not sure. I'll investigate when I get a spare minute

The temperature probe only measures the temperature. Any compensation is usually done by the Ascom client program, although there are probably exceptions to that.

When I built the first version it had 8 steps. Later I changed the code to allow values from 1 upwards. The default value is 8 for backward compatibility but you can change it to any value that suits your hardware.

No problem, hope you find it useful.

I use these buck converters. They are very cheap and compact and also generate no waste heat. Just supply 12v to the input pins and adjust the output to whatever you need for the nano. You can feed the full 12v to the motor driver.