1 Topic by bnj (edited by bnj 2014-04-15 16:19:07)

  • bnj
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Topic: Solidoodle 3 housing, custom WAF proof!

Good morning everybody ! I figured I could share my experience here, to consolidate our knowledge ! I did use a lot of you guys ideas when I started with my little solidoodle, and I thank everyone on this board for it !

Well, I have a SD3  a old one with the sanguinololu and resistor heater bed.

I tried to find the best setup to integrate it and get more women acceptance factor of it...

I couldn't fit it in any of my existing furniture, so I just had some sheets of 1/2inch birch plywood laying in the garage, and I used one of my glass bed for the window !! It cost me close to nothing, but a thumb smashed by a table saw kick back...

The front door has a framed glass window, and printed hinges found on thingiverse, and is sealed all around with weather tape.

Problem I got directly was the stepper overheating, and lot of Y slipping. So I cut a hole on the back, and put a computer fan blowing on the board, with an exhaust on the bottom.

The drawer on the bottom is used to put the hobby knife, hair spray, and supplies, and the ATX power supply is right behind the drawer, with an opening on the back for the fans as well.

The printer fits with 1/8 inch on each side of play, had to move the board to plug the USB cable more safely, but every thing came out very good !!

Temperatures are more stable, I can now reach 95 degrees C with the original bed (no silicone, the original resistor heater!) helps a lot not to have the parts warping bad. The box is all airtight, exept for the hole on top to feed the filament.

machine is a lot quieter as well, and no more plastic smell when printing, which was important considering that our bedroom is on the upstair of my office, and I like to print at night to have the santa surprise in the morning !!

All in all, the complete build took me half a day, and I was printing in the afternoon ! The thumb story took me the other half of the day.. But it was worth it.

See the result on picture, I still have to taint it and smooth the edges... But I was so in a rush to be back printing, I have a quadcopter with a arm broke, and can't fly before printing a new one !!

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SD3, early 2013. Silicon 200W 8x8 heater bed, lawsy carriage on 8 mm hardened chrome shafts, E3D V6 and lawsy MK5 extruder, ATX 350 W PSU, Custom build plywood enclosure, azteeg x5 mini smothie firmware, with vikki 2 screen, fishing line conversion and pulley conversion, M5 Z rod. Calling it Gran'ma, going strong ! <3

2 Reply by bnj

  • bnj
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  • Registered: 2014-02-07
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Re: Solidoodle 3 housing, custom WAF proof!

Also, I just wanted to share my experience on this :

The resistor heater bed is really bad, the high temperature in the middle of the bed not only doesnt make a uniform heat, it also dilates the aluminium in the middle, ending up with a .1 to .2 mm warp of the bed itself, so impossible to calibrate it properly.

I just bought a silicone 200 x 200 mm bed from one of the forum friend here, that ordered them from china with custom holes to match the 3 adjusting screws, and I hope it will be better with that.

Also, I was at first using repetier, and was pretty happy with it, lot of settings you can adjust, and very flexible. But I found Cura was more user friendly, and was performing very well for me.

Cura did tell me that layer height is not to be more that 3/4 of the nozzle size when I input all my settings... So now I'm printing at .25 instead of .30, and I can see a very big improvement on the finishing of my parts.

The temperature inside the box stabilizes around 55°C, not enough to cook a pizza unfortunately !!

Also, I did leave like 4 inches on the box on top of the solidoodle so the filament can move around with less friction and bending.

SD3, early 2013. Silicon 200W 8x8 heater bed, lawsy carriage on 8 mm hardened chrome shafts, E3D V6 and lawsy MK5 extruder, ATX 350 W PSU, Custom build plywood enclosure, azteeg x5 mini smothie firmware, with vikki 2 screen, fishing line conversion and pulley conversion, M5 Z rod. Calling it Gran'ma, going strong ! <3