Large Format 2.4 (600x600x1000)

[Geodude]

My school recently bought 10 x1 carbons for the additive manufacturing course they are starting and the prof who is in charge of it wants me to set up the lab so he offered me a job for the summer. He said once the lab is done, I can do pretty much whatever I want in the shop for the rest of the summer. He also said he doesn't know what to do with the half dozen ender 3's they have now. I suggested I could use some of the components along with the stack of 4040 extrusions we have sitting in the shop to make the school a large format printer and he loved the idea and said the school would cover costs for any additional needed parts. I think the enders would give me enough steppers and I could use four of the beds as heaters. How feasible is a 2.4 of this size and what else could be used off the enders?

TLDR, I want to build a 600x600x1000 2.4 using spare parts from a bunch of old enders and 4040 extrusions.

 

[NoGuru]

Anything is possible but I don't know how determined you are.

One thing I would consider is the gantry will be massive and much heavier then say a 350mm so I don't know that the ender steppers have the driving torque to move it.
I think you are going to have to make a lot of custom parts and connectors as well. So I hope you are good at CAD.

 

[Dave32]

Sounds like a fun project! I would even say that it's perfect for an educational environment.

Why perfect? Because it's the exact opposite of the X1. It gives the opportunity to learn *everything*. And by pushing things to that size, some of the "this just works" things will no longer just work. It will be a fantastic learning experience, regardless of how well it prints. And with the parts you have and the support of your professor, it sounds like there is little to lose by trying.

For that size, and using the Ender 3 motors, I would do the AWD setup right from the start. The Z drives can be redesigned with a larger reduction ratio if needed for the gantry weight. Beyond that, resist the urge to redesign everything - a huge nozzle, thick layer heights, and a large helping of reasonableness on your accelerations and print speeds will go a long way toward successful printing.

 

[vinnycordeiro]

My school recently bought 10 x1 carbons for the additive manufacturing course they are starting and the prof who is in charge of it wants me to set up the lab so he offered me a job for the summer. He said once the lab is done, I can do pretty much whatever I want in the shop for the rest of the summer. He also said he doesn't know what to do with the half dozen ender 3's they have now. I suggested I could use some of the components along with the stack of 4040 extrusions we have sitting in the shop to make the school a large format printer and he loved the idea and said the school would cover costs for any additional needed parts. I think the enders would give me enough steppers and I could use four of the beds as heaters. How feasible is a 2.4 of this size and what else could be used off the enders?

TLDR, I want to build a 600x600x1000 2.4 using spare parts from a bunch of old enders and 4040 extrusions.

If the Voron Phoenix were already released I'd recommend using it as a base for such a printer. RCF said it'll be a 600x600x550-ish printer using 4 heaters for the bed, which is pretty much what you want (aside the Z height obviously).

 

[NoGuru]

Sounds like a fun project! I would even say that it's perfect for an educational environment.

Why perfect? Because it's the exact opposite of the X1. It gives the opportunity to learn *everything*. And by pushing things to that size, some of the "this just works" things will no longer just work. It will be a fantastic learning experience, regardless of how well it prints. And with the parts you have and the support of your professor, it sounds like there is little to lose by trying.

For that size, and using the Ender 3 motors, I would do the AWD setup right from the start. The Z drives can be redesigned with a larger reduction ratio if needed for the gantry weight. Beyond that, resist the urge to redesign everything - a huge nozzle, thick layer heights, and a large helping of reasonableness on your accelerations and print speeds will go a long way toward successful printing.

That is a really good idea on a printer of that size, to go AWD.

 

[Sanity Agathion]

Anything is possible but I don't know how determined you are.

One thing I would consider is the gantry will be massive and much heavier then say a 350mm so I don't know that the ender steppers have the driving torque to move it.
I think you are going to have to make a lot of custom parts and connectors as well. So I hope you are good at CAD.

Yeah there's a reason v24 rebuild and now Phoenix uses Nema23s. For that size, 3030 or 2040s rather than 2020 profiles, 12-15 mm rails, 9-12 mm belts.

 

[porcomaster]

hey man, i just released a project that will use 4040 profiles. take a look, and see if this works for you, it's not tested as i just released it and i will build it over the next few months.

keep in mind that my 4040 profile might be different from yours, i think mine is 10series.

my idea was exactly as yours, get a huge voron, but i just accepted that a 350x350x350 with 4040 would be good enough, my project is completely parametric you just need to change the values on the paramete, and it will calculate exactly what size everything should be, but a bigger voron will be a slow voron overrall.

VORON TOWER

Hello guys, i have 4040 profiles with me and i always wanted to build a voron, after so much discussion, and so many people telling me, that it would be feasible, possible or to hard, i just decided to do this whole project on fusion 360, before going to the real life project, and i finally...

forum.vorondesign.com

GitHub - PorcoMaster/VoronTower: A 4040 frame voron, with the possibility of a box and feet.

A 4040 frame voron, with the possibility of a box and feet. - PorcoMaster/VoronTower

github.com

 

[StevenB]

Ratrig might be a better base for a printer of this size. By default it already goes up to 500x500.

 

[ChrisA]

My school recently bought 10 x1 carbons for the additive manufacturing course they are starting and the prof who is in charge of it wants me to set up the lab so he offered me a job for the summer. He said once the lab is done, I can do pretty much whatever I want in the shop for the rest of the summer. He also said he doesn't know what to do with the half dozen ender 3's they have now. I suggested I could use some of the components along with the stack of 4040 extrusions we have sitting in the shop to make the school a large format printer and he loved the idea and said the school would cover costs for any additional needed parts. I think the enders would give me enough steppers and I could use four of the beds as heaters. How feasible is a 2.4 of this size and what else could be used off the enders?

TLDR, I want to build a 600x600x1000 2.4 using spare parts from a bunch of old enders and 4040 extrusions.

You will have to add up the masses of the parts, but I'm guessing the moving mass is 4X more than a normal V2.4. I think you will need motoers with 4X the torque. With steppers, torque is about the same as amps. Look for motors (and controler electronics) that run on 5 or 6 or more amps. I doubt the motors and controller in the Enders are that large.

Also you would need to create CAD files for EVERY part as none of the Voron V2 parts will work with a monster, 4-plate printer, and 4040 extrusions. You would be starting from zero. Can you do that much CAD design in only one summer? If you are like most of us, ever part will need to be designed, printed, tested and then redesigned and retested 3 or 4 times. And there is no ender parts that couild bne used.

A better plan, I think is to build one "''testbed" printer. It is a printer to keep in the lab for trying out stuff. If later, some other person needs to learn how to configure a (say) bed fan or chamber temperature controller. They have a test-printer to play with and not take down one used for production. So build one smaller coreXY printer and set it up with Klipper and set it up so it is easy to work on and easy to modify later. There are a million uses for a test printer, trying out new ideas or just learning how to get better time lapse videos or a better bed probinbg method or whatever.