Topic: E3D Titan + V6 Direct Drive "Coyote" Carriage BETA
I printed, assembled, and set up the latest iteration of my carriage design today, and while there are a few things I'd still like to tweak, it's entirely functional. It has a few benefits:
- cool totally random name
- extruder and hotend are accessible from the front
- lots of space for assembly
- lightweight (I don't have numbers for this specific iteration - last I checked it was ~300g assembled with a pancake stepper, and it's definitely lost weight since that iteration)
- reuses factory bushings
- built-in cable chain mount (although I'm happy to revise it to have a bar at the top for zipties instead)
- good airflow through the v6 heatsink (I'm not sure how this compares to the adapter for the factory carriage as I haven't built it)
... and probably a few others I don't recall because I've been slowly iterating on this for a while now.
It's worthy of note that I don't have a layer fan design for this. It's on the list to happen at some point, but it's definitely going to be a different design iteration.
This design should be printed in ABS or similar with high infill. Mine is printed in E3D Edge with 90% infill (not 100% to reduce plastic buildup on the nozzle), and I did 90% and ABS for most of the earlier iterations. DO NOT USE PLA - IT WILL WARP OVER TIME.
Thingiverse page here: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1634298
Fusion 360 design here: http://a360.co/29WxhqY
I'm putting this up now because it's become clear that the next iteration is going to take a while. I design using Autodesk Fusion 360, which represents the design as a series of operations that can be edited. This is tremendously powerful because it means I can essentially take the model backwards in time and edit some early step, then jump back forwards to see the results after later operations. It also means that if I don't design carefully, the model becomes a several-hundred-step monstrosity. That's the stage I'm at now, and I'm probably going to redesign the same part from scratch so it goes back to being something I can edit.
I haven't figured out how to get Fusion 360 to give me a public link to the source files, but I know there's a way in there somewhere. If you want to take a look and don't mind wading through the mess, feel free to ask.
Normal warnings apply: I can't promise this won't break your printer, insult your mother, or cause you to break out in a nasty rash. It works for me, though.