Twigets Enderwire IDEX Printer

[twiget]

Printer Model

EnderWire IDEX

Extruder Type

Galileo

Cooling Type

Stealthburner

I've been feeling (overly?) ambitious and I decided that instead of the relatively easy task of converting my E3 Pro to a Switchwire using boubounokefalos resources, I'd complicate things by making an IDEX Enderwire. Why? I've got a Raise 3D E2 that is IDEX and being able to print with dual materials or having disolvable supports has been a game changer. The problem with the E2 is it's sllllloooooowwwww and IdeaMaker, while a good slicer, doesn't get nearly as much love as Prusa Slicer or Cura. So I thought "Lets do this!" That being said, all the printed parts will be done on the E2 in ASA.

Anyway, I've been researching the EW IDEX conversion for awhile and I've come across a couple helpful git's (ankurv2k6's and cabhinlab's) that where enough to get me started, but neither git has been updated in over 2 years. The Cabinlab blog did help with one key problem, kenematics for an EW IDEX.

Design Goals:

• Use as many parts from my E3 Pro as possible
• Core XZ'ish
• Stealthburners with Gallaleo 2 extruders, hotends are TBD
• CANBUS on both extruders
• I want to experiment with Nylon's and glass and CF blends, so fully enclosable and maybe active heating?
• Nevermore or some other air circulation system (possibly integrate a heater into this?)

Major Changes to Meet those Goals:

• Widened printer by 110mm to 440mm
• Remixed the Z-axis motor mounts (botom motors) so that they clamp on the inside of the frame instead of the outside. This allows for smooth outter pannels with fewer protrusions.
  • 
• For the X gantry I'm going to use a 350mm rail along with a 350mm extrusion.
• Still need to remix the XZ blocks for IDEX, these will probably be unique for each side.
• Remixed the Stealthburner brackets so that the belt channels are wider on one side than the other to allow for minimial interfearance with the belt as the other extruder moves.
  • 
• The eagle eyed may have noticed that I removed the belt tensioner off the Z motor mounts. With the new mounting location, tensioning the belts would have been a PITA. Instead, I took inspiration from my V0.1 and designed a tensioner mechanisim around the x-axis motors. They are mostly the same from one side to the other but I did integrate the counterweight pulley into the left motor mount (not shown).
  • 
• The big milled 40 x 40 extrusion that the y-axis rests on will be reused. I think the plan for that is going to be getting another 40 x 40 extrusion and cutting it down to size and then printing some parts to stitch it together into one piece. Alternatively, I can print one big piece and use an M5x100mm bolt to hold everything together. This will take a bit more thought.
• Pannels, I need to remix the pannels, covers, extensions and grills. though they are low priority.
• Electronics. I doubt the stock E3 Pro power supply can handle double the motors and extruders, so I'll gonna to have to source a more robust one. For the MCU, I'm thinking about the BTT Octopus, and I'll likely use a Raspberry Pi 4b and a 5VDC buck converter to power it.

 

[twiget]

And here's the current status of my IDEX EW.

I hope to be printing parts in a week or so. I want to figure out the XZ blocks before I start making parts.

 

[ther4nd0moo]

Thanks for sharing your design and some resources!!

I'm hoping you continue to share more updates on this build, but for now I have some questions.

• Did you keep the same print volume as the original Ender 3 Pro?
  • I'm planning to increase my volume to maybe around 300mm on x and y, but I don't see many folks doing that out there.. I'm wondering if there's a concern with moving a heavier bed and such.
• For the Kinematics of the dual x axes, is that something klipper already supports? Or is it something you're planning to implement with klipper?
  • I haven't done too much research into IDEX stuff. Your post is the first time I came across this term

Thanks!

 

[twiget]

You know what they say, "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans."

I was hoping to have the Galileo extruders put together this weekend and have some progress pics to post, but things didn't go according to plan. In stead of using ASA as I originally planned, I decided to use some old ABS that I've had for a couple of years. Between the old ABS (which was thoroughly dried), and not taking the time to accurately calibrate the x & y offset between the extruders on my E2, none of the parts I printed fit together like they should have. So it's back to square 1 with the printing. This time I really am going to use ASA and the extruders will be properly calibrated.

On the plus side, I'm a lot poorer and the guys at West3D are doing pretty well. My (hopefully) last order for this printer is supposed to arrive today. I decided to go with the the BTT Kraken since it supports IDEX tool heads, including CANBUS support. I also went with the BTT Pi, which I can power straight from the 24vdc power supply instead of having to get a separate PSU for the Pi.

To answer your questions @ther4nd0moo, I'm using the standard E3P bed. I had to widen it by 110mm on the x to fit both extruders, so it's already going to be a huge printer once it's fully enclosed. Having to source a new bed, heater and longer rails would have been a lot more expensive too. If you're interested, check out the Ender Extender.

Klipper does support IDEX. When I started this, I thought building the printer was going to be the easy part and figuring out the control side of things was going to be the hard part. It looks like I may have had it backwards. The more I research how to make IDEX work, the less daunting it becomes.

I'll post some pics of parts and assembly, once I get them. Hopefully this weekend, maybe next.

 

[twiget]

I got my E2 dialed in earlier this week and I started printing mirrored Stealthburner and Galileo 2 parts. The SB on the left is the regular one, and the mirrored one is on the right. I'm pretty happy with how they came out, they have to be the sexiest hot glue guns I've ever seen. Plus, the front covers look like Spiderman.


I do have a few things to fix though. I'm using Phaetus neXt G hotends, which are supposed to be the same form factor as the Dragon hotend. That may be true, but the cable strain relief seems to be different. On the normal SB, even with the strain relief on the thermistor, there is way too sharp of a bend for my liking. The heater and thermister cables almost do a 180 on the mirrored one, no surprise there. So it looks like remixing and reprinting the Dragon mounts is in order.


I've also got the X & Z axis motor mounts printed and I've designed the parts needed to widen the frame 110mm, I just need to print them. I aslo need to extend the wires for the LED's as they are not long enough to reach the EBB36 board I'm mounting on the back of the extruder motor. And I need to print the diffuser for the logo LED, I've got some translucent red PETG that I think will look nice. I just need to create a profile on my V0.1 to print that. Next week is a 3-day work week, which means 4 whole days to focus on getting this thing put together!

 

[twiget]

Progress is being made.

I printed out my original X-axis motor mounts, and as I was getting ready to assemble them I realized that having the x & z axis motors on the same belt won't work. It seems pretty obvious now, but I got pretty far into it before I realized it wouldn't work. Oh well. Since the original plan is out, I did a bit of research and I came across the Dual MakerForge Belt Routing and proceeded to fix the belt routing so it would actually work.


Here's the new routing for the left SB on the x-axis (the right side is mirrored). It doesn't look like the image above, but it's effectively the same, an independent motor for each SB, plus independent motors for both sides of the z-axis.


The z-axis motors now live on the bottom frame rail, behind the vertical 2040 piece. Each motor is independent of the other, I did consider running a single belt along the back of the gantry to link both motors, but I decided against it. It would have required a longer belt and more parts for very little (if any) gain. The belt routing for the z-axis doesn't get much easier than this:


The printed piece that links everything together is a huge piece of plastic. It needs to be because it does a lot of things:

• 4 M3 bolts to connect it to the z-axis linear rail guides
• 2 M5 bolts to connect it to the 2020 gantry piece
• Clamps the z-belt so the gantry can be raised and lowered
• I also integrated the KeyBak end into it. It's not shown below (but you can see it in the pic above), there is a through hole to insert an M5 bolt through the eyelet on the KeyBak end to lock it in place. There's not enough room in the back for a proper M5 nut (it would hit the linear guide). So I have the hole slightly undersized so that the M5 bolt will thread into the plastic.
• With an extra SB, longer 2020 extrusion and rail, the gantry is pretty heavy. As a result, I may need to use 2 KeyBack's to help the motors, so the mirrored version has a provisions for a 2nd KeyBak on the other side of the printer.

Here's where the design stands currently.


Scope creep is a thing, and instead of doing the standard SW style plexiglass enclosure, I've decided to build a Lack enclosure. I plan on heating and insulating it, and I'll also have some sort of filtration system (haven't decided on Nevermore or a home brew solution yet). My target temp is 70C, so I'll probably have to add some sort of active heating and a way to control said heater.

Since the enclosure will be heated, I've decided to move all the electronics outside the enclosure. I'll mount them on a side wall for easy access. My motors are only rated to 60C, so they may not last long in that environment, we'll see. LDO does have some motors that are rated for 70C, but like I said, scope creep is a thing and I decided to do this enclosure after I had bought my current motors. If they burn out, I'll look into the LDO ones.

 

[twiget]

Enough Fusion screen caps, here's some pics I took while testing the fit of things:




It looks like each SB will be able to cover ~198mm of the bed on the x-axis, which is roughly 85% of a 235mm bed. I didn't do the math ahead of time, but I was hoping for at least 90% coverage. I could get a 400mm, or 450mm rail and stretch the frame another 50mm or 100mm, but having a 500mm wide printer with a print surface of 235mm is crazy. This project has been more expensive and time consuming than I had hoped, so I'm going to live with the limitation for now. I may look into narrower print heads, or maybe a Bowden setup if it bothers me too much.




Things are coming along well, but I've still got a lot of stuff to do before this thing is making anything. Fortunately, I just took my last final for the semester and school doesn't start again until the end of August. So I've got the next 4'ish weeks to put some serious time into this thing.

 

[LukasM]

Hell of a cool project Twiget! I have an old Ender 3 V2 that is sitting around in an old closet, and this would be a very good use for it.

How are you going progress-wise, did you get a lot done this summer or did you end up just chilling instead?

 

[twiget]

Thanks @LukasM, I made good progress during my break, but I'm not done, yet. I think I've got all the necessary printer parts designed, tweaked and printed, I just need to install them and test them, and probably tweak them again...

I think I mentioned somewhere above, that I'm going to put this printer in a Lack based enclosure so I can heat it up to make the more engineering grade filaments easier to print. That means I need to relocate the electronics outside of the enclosure. I've got the Lack table and 1/2" MDF that I need to cut to size, which is towards the top of my list of things to do this weekend.

I also need to print the mounting brackets for the electronics and print a slightly modified version of the Nevermore StealthMax S that will mount to the 1/2" MDF I'm using for my enclosure. I have to do the small version because my E2's bed size isn't wide enough to accommodate the full size StealthMax. I ordered the parts kit today, and I'll start printing parts for it once I get further along with the enclosure.

I should have pics and a more in depth update sometime next week.

 

[Chaos]

hi

did you managed to finish this?

 

[twiget]

Sadly, no, I haven't finished this project. Yet. Finals week starts on Monday, then I'm done with school until January. I hope to have some time over the holidays to work on this and get everything sorted out. I'll post a reply (for reals this time, promise!), once I make some progress on this.