Thoughts on extending the Da Vinci Jr (Page 1 of 3)

I was able to improvise a gear puller to get the stepper gear off the shaft on my solidoodle (after first using a heat gun to get the loctite secured set screw out :-). Details about half the way down here:

http://tomhorsley.com/hardware/solidood … riage.html

Go check out my update to my conversion thread.   I just posted a massive update. I have full instructions up now for the build itself, the rest is just configuration and fine tuning.

@Anthem - If you want I have designed bracket for E3D v6 and Lite6. It's early version and it's haven't been refined yet but it is place to way to start.
Also I've printed 2x extruders of thingiverse to use as many existing parts as possible.
I quite like this one, but you certainly need to get good stiff 10mm x 30mm spring for it.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:711401
(Printed one with longer mounting bracket so I can mount it easily, but I'm not entirely sure how it would fit if you ar using those Jr cover plastics (I ditched them all, initially I thought they are limiting noise but in my case they just resonated the sound coming from printer while operating))
Hence I haven't had stiff enough spring in hand I've printed this one.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:767951
It's a remix of http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:275593 so you can use MK7 drive gear instead of MK8 (Jr uses MK7 drive gear)
It's simple, works very well but it's made to be mounted on right hand side.
You can either mount it in quite awkward position which still does the job or print it in mirror and reverse direction in Marlin or simply swap pins around (what I did hence I'm on stock firmware).

That'll save you a bit more cash if you have nuts and bolts at hand.

P.S.: Sorry I haven't hooked up another stepper to see if Jr PSU will handle the load...

Regards,
Kris M

Hey guys. So I've given a lot of thought to these ideas lately, and I'm in the process of executing a few.

Currently, I've upgraded my Da Vinci Jr hotend to an E3D Lite6 (thanks to kr15_uk who designed the bracket for this).

I'm now printing a derivation of his bracket to hold both the E3D Lite6 and the stock DVJR hotends, and I hope to be able to test that out tomorrow with a RAMPS dual-extruder setup (I'll be using a 3maker all-metal extruder for the second hotend). We've got a long weekend coming up in the 'States so I'm hoping to make some good progress.

I've also given a lot of thought to the Y-axis extension idea. I like the idea of extending the Y axis first for several reasons:

• It's dead simple to swap out, held in with only four screws (after you get the cover off, which has been my running state for months now ever since I changed out an idler pulley)

• The Z-axis isn't the most useful for extending. I still want to extend mine, but it's not worth it yet.

• The X-axis is most in need of a redesign, but is a complicated beast, and I expect a redesign of it is going to have the printer out of commission much longer, whereas I can remove and replace the Y axis as a single piece in just a few minutes.

I have two 8x600mm rails and some LM8UU bearings in hand. I've printed a bunch of 125mm V-slot pieces that I'm going to stitch together into a frame for the rails using some printed clamps, then I'll use printed clamps and some more V-slot to create a carriage.

I'm still debating how I want to go about supporting the glass, but I might try something like this solution first: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1320658

I had given a lot of thought to not using steel rails for this mod, and trying to go with a printable solution, using either printed Makerslide (20x40 extrusion with a V-wheel rail on the top edge) or something similar to what the RepRap Snappy does for a printed slide rail. I even got as far as designing a bracket for mounting V-slot where the stock Y-axis goes http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1745453) and a plate that was I was going to mount the V-wheels to (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1745457).

However, in the end I decided that my time would be better spent actually doing this thing instead of iterating with a bunch of designs that might not produce suitable results (I still wonder if V-wheels running on printed V-slot would significantly affect my print accuracy, or at the least be loud as hell).

So I'm going to be printing a ton of brackets, t-nuts, mounts, clamps, and possibly even more V-slot the next day or two to get all the stuff together that I need for this mod. Hopefully by Tuesday I'll have some news. (At the least I plan to have dual extruders! Yay!)

IMHO miking something like a davinci Jr into a a larger dual extruder printer is a bit crazy.
if you want a bigger printer   there  are many options like a regular davinci. Ot one of many kit builds,

the ft 5  Has a rather large build area
https://folgertech.com/products/folger- … rinter-kit

and iirc you can order a second extruder as an option

tin

@tin falcon - Yes it's much easier just to buy another printer which already has bigger build platform and option where you can simply buy dual extruder head makes it even more simpler... But that kind of a kills all the fun!

Some people get satisfaction from printing their designed organic looking game like characters, but some from printing brackets, mounts etc. There's a reason why some of us are classified as hackers, tinkerers etc...

But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that you are wrong or so, it's simply based on your needs.
For example I have Ultimaker 2 and Original for my "print for money" side business, they work great, consistent result and nearly zero maintenance - they are perfect for the job and I'm not planning to tinker with them or modify anything, they just work.
But for my geeky satisfaction I'm constantly building and rebuilding my custom 3d printer and Jr was so cheap back then that I couldn't say no.

I'm not disagreeing with you here. Definitely if your goal is to be able to print more stuff and have more options at your disposal, it makes sense to upgrade by buying a new printer.

In my case, I actually didn't set out down this path intentionally. I was messing with the software one day and bricked my machine by accident. That led me to convert my board to RAMPS (see related RAMPS conversion thread).

But now that I've done that much tinkering and my original machine is no more, I am intentionally working toward frankensteining my machine to the point that basically nothing is left of it I find joy in finding ways to make it do things it was never intended to do.

Progress with the dual extruder! Not quite printing yet, but I'm very close. The wiring is done and each component is working individually. I have the height of the hotends set, and some new home offsets entered into Marlin, so the hardest parts are done. Tonight I might have time to finish calibrations and perform a first test print.

I attached the STL I'm using for the bracket. When I sliced this, I eliminated the legs at the bottom of the model since they're functionally unnecessary. I haven't decided whether to keep the legs in the model or not.

I'm using M3x16 screws for the mounting clips, and M3x20 with nuts dropped into the DVJr supports from above (since the whole thing is deeper than 20m).

I'm still considering making a V2 of this model that mounts the hotend from above using the nut, which would close the gap between the E3D and DVJr hotends even further and allow both hotends to reach the entire bed. But this would mean making the mount a little more complicated, and having to change the cooling situation as the 40x40mm fan is practically touching the E3D fan already.

In the setup shown, the E3D can reach the entire bed except the last 8mm at the right while the DVJr can reach the entire bed. It might be possible to shift the whole thing right a little so that both hotends share the center of the bed to even this out, but the tricky part is that would push the bottom quick-release clip further into the E3D negative space.

@anthem - good job!!!
About PSU. I've bought so called "Flex ATX" PC PSU. They are fairly small, smaller than LED PSU's so easily can be mounted sideways on 2020 extrusion. Also some of them has a AC plug which isn't inbuilt so can be relocated to more convenient spot. I've got used one of eBay very cheap.

And about that dual head mount. Do you mind posting scad file as well?! I just want to make single stock Jr extruder mount. Or you can edit it and post STL instead.

I posted the file in your other E3D thread: http://www.soliforum.com/topic/15392/jr-e3d-v6lite6/

Since my power supply isn't due until tomorrow, I went back to my system to make sure everything I was encountering was actually a power problem. I attempted to do a single-head print of something this afternoon (which I expected to work fine), and still nothing extruded from the primary extruder.

So after a couple hours of debugging I figured out I had a loose crimp in one of my extruder connectors (thanks to Tin Falcon via this thread: http://www.soliforum.com/topic/15200/so … extrude/).

Still no dual extrusion for power reasons. Once the fans kick on while trying to heat both extruders at the same time, the power supply cuts in and out (and it's extra weird to experience that, because since I have my RAMPS plugged into an RPi for OctoPrint, the RAMPS CPU stays powered and the display and accessories just cut out, so the whole system "blinks" on and off every couple seconds).

Oh -- and I'm really pissed that the stock push fitting on the DVJr extruder broke. Just like in that other thread from a few weeks ago, the guide tube just kept popping out and I couldn't get it to reseat firmly. I removed it, and there were only two metal teeth left in the thing. Weak, XYZprinting. Just weak.

I had a spare from the 3maker extruder I just bought, but that one is M6 threaded instead of M5 like the DVJr's, and I can't fit an M6 nut into the slot. So currently, my guide tube is shamefully being held on with gobs and gobs of tape until I can also replace THAT part

Here it is, my first real print with two colors, in all its messy glory. This was sliced with Slic3r and the wipe towers were added in post-processing.

The white wipe tower tipped over halfway through, hence the giant mess to the left, but things still printed decently all things considered. There was a lot of ooze, which I attribute to maybe using too high a temp (195) and also the lengthy travel between the towers (which were all the way in the back corner).

There's still a slight offset between the two colors, mainly in Y (by 0.1 or 0.2mm), and I need to readjust my Z offsets, as I think the E3D is just slightly higher -- this is probably why the tower fell over, and the bottom white stripe started to separate from the orange base when removing it from the bed.

Cleaned up a little (well, sort of...):

All in all I think it's a decent start for my first significant dual-color print using a hacked machine that was never intended for it

Now to play around with my settings and improve the quality...