E3D on Da Vinci (Page 3 of 9)

Hey Tom, Let me start by saying great work!
I must say that having the ability to reliably use other materials is a great thing..

I have been able to print with PLA on the stock setup after adding a heat sink to the barrel and additional cooling add-on's but to convert to the E3D is the best most sensible move for anyone that wants to maximize this machines potential.

Just to update:
I just about have all the parts printed to replace everything.
I need to bang out another extruder spacer and I should be ready to start building....

One question though...
I don't understand yet where the Z-Axis spacer comes into play.
Does that lower the Z homing tab to allow homed clearance for the new hot end ?

I'm not sure if it'll show But I have attached a photo of my printed parts and a spare motor standing in to showcase the components.

Ok I got my hot end in (Thanks Elmoret!)

The MK7 idler needed to be filed down dramatically to properly work with 1.75mm filament

It  was unable to engage the filament to the capstan wheel on the stepper because the bottom of the idler arm runs into the E3d Mount.

I had to take off a good 5mm just about up to the bearing itself to gain the appropriate clearance. to engage.

Even yet it still feels a touch loose for my liking..

(Noob) hey tforsythe51, with all the hotend mods you have done, is the e3d V6 still compatible? You have done so much work for us and thanks.

I'm not sure if anyone other than myself has completed or is completing the mod as tom designed..
Ajwoot's setup seems a bit rough, but it does have merits. Especially when it comes to ingenuity, low parts count and retained z-height.

But either way you do it...
The original feeder wheel/stepper motor is retained an reused on the new carriage.I
The mk7 idler as posted is used to keep traction on the filament and feed it into the E3D.

This is an amazing upgrade and although a bit eextreme, I feel its worth while.

There are a few tweaks to be made as I've run into a few snags, but overall its pretty much a direct swap.

You need to make a couple of trinkets as well..I.e. X-axis home flag... And remove the waste filament receptical.

I will be testing it tonight to get all the new z-offset settings down.

Im stoked and I'll hopefully be able to help contribute to the assembly insructions.

Hey tom! I'm really glad you're back!

Yeah I asked what the Z-extender was for.. then I figured it out..

I didn't install it.. Instead I just changed the Z-axis home in my machines eeprom to 0,
homed the machine and then jogged the Z to where it just cleared the tip of the hot end.
I then took the displayed value (20.23) and entered -20.23 into the eeprom Z-axis home and leveled the bed with the thumb screws to just rub a business card and called it good.

There were a few things that needed to be modded over the printed design.. one thing is that the MK7 bangs into the hot end mount.. I filed it down and then filed the peak of the mount down a bit too to allow more bearing contact with the drive wheel.

Assembled without filing anything I wasn't able to assemble the unit.. after filing the idler I was able to achieve a more positive grip, after I filed the peak on the mount down I was able to get full contact with the bearing when unloaded.

I also installed the second spring from the Dav1.0 extruder clip to get a little more pressure.
You may not need this, but I was testing with the extruder jog in repetier host and I realized after that I was using the fast jog and not the normal speed jog( that may have been why I was stripping and slipping when I tried to run 50mm) so it may actually be fine with only one spring.

I'm not sure what you intended but the hot end fan fits quite nicely off to the side and offers more room for the x-axis belt.
I found that if I installed it like you did on your previous version it left very little wiggle room.. this way gives you almost 5mm of adjustment fore or aft. But you probably designed it like that anyway and just didn't say anything yet.

Also for all you readers out there... the X axis does needs a flag to home with.

I temporarily used a little piece of black electrical tape because I ran out of crazy glue.

I also need the two washers and the screws to complete mounting, but zip ties worked quite well for my impatient tests.

One last thing to note.

Although I was able to print with ABS without issue during my test I did realize that this is a 12V fan on the new hot end.

It is all tidy to hook it to the original board and it does cool the cool end quite well but it's only running at 5V in this configuration.

I may try with PLA first to see if it jams but I was able to touch the cool end and it only felt warm should it be cold? ...

We'll have to see if that's an issue with cooler filament.

I have some pictures on photobucket that I will need to post up when I get a chance.

Thanks again for all the effort man.. I for one am all in.

Yeah, here is a photo of the mk7 before the workover..

it definately needed some help.. I think if the e3d mounts holes were raised a but it would give you the proper clearance.. of course at the cost of a little less Z-travel..

Nevermind trying to make this easy to load it's not going to happen with this setup so modding the mount for clearance is not going to hurt the prospect.

I even ran ptfe tube as far as I could.. There just isn't any way to corral the filament into the cold end unless the bearing had a groove in it.

Here is a photo of it before I finished assembling everything.. you can see that the fan sits happily to the side.

Please excuse the remains of the support material on the carriage. I think cleaned that off after this photo was taken...

it has plenty of room to breathe and the x belt is free and clear.
I actually moved it back a little too so the connector on the stepper wasn't right against the stepper mount.

Oh I know about heat creep... the old extruder used to test me regularly.

The new cold end on this is only slightly warm to the touch.. no where near the melting point of anything..

You can comfortably keep a finger on it as long as you want.. I just wasn't sure what your experiences were.

I'm trying some Jet PLA (some say it's crap)
I haven't figured out what the proper temps are yet (I'm slowly lowering them) and my cooling fan is overkill, but if I'm going to test things why not make it the hardest test possible with the most out of control conditions.

I ran into some curling so I upped the bed temp to 80... But the nozzle is still happliy-a squirting...

I have since this video removed the fans, turned off the bed and lowered the extruder to 215.. we'll see what we get this time around..

FOCUSSS!!!!!!

http://www.soliforum.com/misc.php?actio … mp;preview

so far so good...

Thanks!

I'm using the one that came with the E3d V6. I believe it's the around the same 100k as the Dav1.0
I'm not sure what the curve looks like but for all intents and purposes it seems to be hitting the temps around where they need / should be.

Here is one more quick video of the last print in PLA..

you even get a nice view of the retract operation.

It's a key chain for a truck at the shop.

With some pretty small detailed letters as well..

It ended up with some not terrible fairly clean layers.

A little shutter in this axis.. Probably because I forgot to re-install the screw that secures the belt tensioner.

Other than the top surface finish it came out pretty good for a first hack run..
I was just testing the temps at 215c and sliced it with Cura to see if it would save some time.

Next time I'll try something bigger and I'll increase the thickness of the top and bottom shells As well as increase the infill.
I ran it at 20% and I guess some of the surface texture is due to the bridging over the infill structures..

Not too bad.... I'm happy with the results so far.

Hi sigmaz_1,

I was wondering where did you get the stl files for the 3d printed parts of your mounting system? Are they in thingiverse?

Well, I ordered my e3D v6 today and some extra parts. I really want to use the 0.25mm head, so of course I ordered one of these as well.

I guess the biggest question right now is if there is any 'guide' anywhere for doing this? If anyone has created one of those yet. If not, maybe I'll take my hand at doing it just for the hell of it.

I'm more interested in what materials I'll need that aren't included with the 'kit' and aren't printed.

Also, not that it probably matters, but I ordered the bowden adapter part. Is this really needed? I don't care if I don't necessarily need it, but I figured it can't hurt.

Sounds good. I'm an electrical design engineer by trade, so I've got all those things and skills to do what you described. It's just a matter of getting it and doing it at this point.

I'm actually printing out the last piece of the files you placed on thingiverse right now. All of them actually turned out VERY good, much better than I expected them to turn out when I first printed them.

I haven't installed repetier yet, but I have everything I need to do it. I've just been putting it off because it's a different process and I want to finish what I'm doing here first.

I'm really happy with the calibration that I have right now as well. It's printing out some awesome prints and I'm happy with what it can do right now, but I would like better (hence the hot end replacement).

One thing I should mention, is that I mainly bought this to go with my cosplay builds, so I can print out parts, props, etc... to go along with the costumes I make. And while I was somewhat happy with what it could do originally, the lack of x and y fine printing ability really put me off at first. Knowing that the z axis had much finer control than the x and y really made some prints look kinda bad. This hot end brings those printing abilities much closer together.

I'm sure I'll actually document HOW I do everything and WHAT I did to get it work.

So I was attempting to assemble the heatsink to the heatbreak and was having a terrible time getting it to go on further. Right now, as it stands, there is still 0.25" of threads showing below the heatsink on the heatbreak. I couldn't turn it far enough to the point that it was covering all the threads on the heatbreak. Am I just doing something wrong or what? It seems like all the threads are just wrong or just slightly off and need to be cut down maybe 1 more size in order to actually be workable.
NOTE: I actually cut my finger on the fin while attempting to turn the heatsink onto the heatbreak. A surface abrasion, but it's not like I wasn't using enough force. It is just an incredibly tight fit. And I'm not over-tightening it either, as I can still easily remove it. But it's almost as if I'm re-tapping the threads on the heatsink itself.

Ok, So today I addressed two issues that were bugging me..

One issue I encountered is that depending on the position of the hot end in the travels of the print, the stresses on the filament would cause it to walk back and forth on the bearing, sometimes causing it to walk off the edge and stop feeding.

This was very annoying after thinking a job would be done only to come in and see the head printing 10mm in mid air above a partial print.

So I added a small guide to keep the filament tube from wandering around.
I think I saw in one of toms photos that he did the same. Although I'm not sure if he had the same issue.

This little tab is all I needed to keep the filament centered in the feeder..
It's amazing how something so tiny could make such a difference.

Another issue I had .. well it was my concern from the start that the fan on the v6 is a 12v fan and when connected to the original board it's only fed 5v effectively reducing it's cooling potential by more than 50%.

Well my concerns became a reality when last night I had a complete jam which required a total dis-assembly of the hot end to clear it.

What I did was removed the feed lines to the fan from the main board and applied them to a 12v source.
The fan is now always on, until I build a control circuit but it's really not a big deal because when the printer is powered on I usually intend on printing and since leaving it on doesn't affect the hot end heat up times at all its not a bother to me in any way.

Should you chose to go this route the two wires you need to work with are the green and blue wires in the 6 pin connector marked J31, beneath it is printed FAN.

Unplug the connector and on the one side you can see the retaining clips. with a small knife or other sharp tool gently lift the clip and slide the wire and connector out from the plastic holder.

Once they have been removed plug the connector back into the board.

I then attached black and red wires to them in the following polarity.

Green -> Positive (+)
Blue -> Negative(-)

I didn't solder them in case I wanted to put them back in the connector. I stripped about 1" of insulation and tightly wrapped them around the metal connector end.

I then covered them in heat shrink and then stripped and snuck the other ends into the 12v feed on the board from the power supply.

That application is temporary until I'm able to harvest some connectors out of some old machines I have in a pile at work.

After the two mods I am happy to report that I have a 4 hour PLA print running and it's moving along pretty well as of this writing and it has experienced no issue AT ALL! <knock> <knock>.

______ LATER THAT DAY_________

Ok the print finished.. looks pretty darn good except for a few surface finish errors on the top..
But thats ok, I'm using this as part of a lost PLA model so the final product in aluminum will be easy to polish out any defects.

I may have to play with the feed rate to get the top and bottom layers to properly fill..
It seems to be a touch light on material which causes the minor lows between paths.

The Z is pretty darn tight and this is only at .2.. I'm happy with these results for sure!