Ender 3 Upgrade: Dual Extrusion with SKR 1.3

Endurance ready to print

      Time for the reveal of a long-term project that's been around in various forms for a couple years, Duel-extrusion. Back in Febuary I'd started to experiment with converting my Ender 3 to dual-colour extrusion using a spare Lite6 hot-end and V6 clone that I found on Amazon.

Thing:3516409 mount

     Mounting the hot-ends for initial testing of the idea was fairly simple, there's lots of good mounts for V6 series hot-ends on Thingiverse, I specifically went with thing:3516409 to start with since it allows for reconfiguring from single to dual extrusion with only a couple printed parts as mounts. The next issue to tackle was electronics.

Ramps stack on Ender 3

     Now, the Ender 3 default electronics are fairly good for a basic single extrusion printer, but don't allow for duel nozzles, so I swapped the silent 1.1.4 board from my last upgrade out for a spare Ramps/Mega2560 stack that I normally use on my MPCNC. The Mega2560 isn't rated for 24V power but there is a fairly old work-around that solves this problem on the RepRap wiki, I then wired a spare LM2596 buck converter to provide the needed 12V power for the processor board's onboard regulator and the hardware side was ready for inital testing.

BigTreeTech SKR 1.3 with stepper drivers partially installed

    Unfortunately, this was right at the start of April 2020, so testing things out got put on hold until June since all of my printers were fabricating PPE gear as part of BCC3D.ca's efforts. This showed that Ramps at 24V is ok for short-term use, but I had one of my extruder stepper drivers blow out, so a better solution was needed for long-term usage. Some research on newer 32-bit boards showed that the BigTreeTech SKR 1.3 board fit the needs of this upgrade perfectly.

Custom dual hot-end mounts

    The other short-coming that was revealed was the dificulty in aligning the duel hot-ends correctly since this type of dual-extrusion setup needs the nozzles in the exact same horizontal plane or close enough to make no difference with the intended layer-height. The Thingiverse mount had both hot-ends locked at the same height at the top but not at the bottom, so I pulled a copy of the Ender 3 source-file into Fusion 360 and started drawing up a custom mount pair to fix the issue. 

Design in progress

     My solution to the problem has the right-hand hot-end at a fixed height bolted to the stock hot-end mount posts since that's the zero reference point for the entire printer coordinate system. The left hot-end is tucked into a dead-space on the side of the tool-plate that's normally used for mounting optional auto-levelling probes but is the exact right size to fit a V6 heat-sink while allowing both nozzles to reach the full width of the bed. With all that sorted out it was finally time to calibrate and try this out.

First Duel-extrusion print straight off the bed

     Now, obviously there's a fair bit of slicer tinkering needed to get a custom duel-extrusion system setup, so I loaded a couple lengths of scrap filament into the extruders and printed several test objects (thing:2388496, dual block object) to get the horizontal offsets correct in the firmware, then created a custom version of the Ender 3 profile in Prusa Slicer v22 with some custom startup gcode to get things heated correctly. Other than that I just turned the 'ooze shield' settings on, drew up a simple vase as a test part and turned it loose.

First dual-colour print after inital cleanup

     Clearly things aren't perfect, still some tuning with the retraction settings given the blobs all over the surface, but I'm quite pleased with how it turned out for a first print after all the work that's gone into this upgrade. The SKR board has proven quite robust and reliable, been running it non-stop for about 4-months now without issue so they're now my first choice for new printer controllers going forward.

Design Study: Castor wheels from scratch

PLA Wheel

      While working on another workspace upgrade project, I decided to try making my own castor wheels from scratch using some leftover bearings that were floating around in the parts bin. I started off from the known dimensions the castors that are on the bottom of my main workbench, about 1.5 inch tall, and the specs of the 625 bearings that I was planning to use.

Castor wheel parts version 1

     A bit of drafting in Fusion 360 ended up with the version 1 parts, they worked fairly well once assembled since I've done rotating parts with 625 bearings before, but they weren't rotating around the vertical pivot like I was expecting them to when turning, so what was going on? 

Castor wheel mounts version 3

     I pulled up some example of high-end castor wheels online and quickly found the two issues with my design that were causing the rotation to jam under load. First up is that commercial castors actually have the centre of mass/vertical rotation shaft centred over the outermost 25% of the wheel rim area. This means that the wheel is constantly trying and failing to escape from under the load, manifesting as the sideways force that makes the wheels rotate to the point of least resistance relative to where you're trying to move them. 

Castor wheel version 3 with bearing collar installed

     The second detail is a simple mechanical part choice to make sure the wheels don't bind or stick under the load they're rated for, a simple ring of ball bearings around the vertical shaft between the wheel bracket and mounting plate. It's sort of a knock-off 'thrust bearing' more than anything else, so I drew some modifications into the parts to create a 3D printable version for testing and light load applications. Current plans are to use these for a small storage cart for around my workshop, so more to come later this summer.

Finished castor wheel version 3

Yearly Overhaul: Mega Kossel

Mega Kossel

       One year after building the Mega 2.0, some of the reused components started to wear out and cause issues, so this is an overview of what's been updated and replaced over the past couple of months, primarily the print-bed and its related wiring along with some worn out cables in a couple areas.

Mini Kossel Power Switch after overload surge

     The first issue that came up was the original power switch overheated and partially melted due to an improperly matched circuit breaker from an old refit allowing sustained over-current during the heat-up cycle at the start of a print, I think that's what happened anyway. Fortunately the fix was very simple, one of these IEC Socket with Switch and Fuse Holder units and a 5A glass fuse from the local electronics store, and some wire from an inexpensive extension cord covered the electrical side. Mounting the new plug was mostly a matter of designing a custom bracket for it to sit in and bolting that to the underside of the frame, then connecting everything to the power supply and that issue was fixed.

New power socket wired up and ready for mounting shell

Power Socket installed in printed housing for safety

      With the power input repaired, the second and more critical issue that came up was a mechanical failure of the original heat-bed power input cable where it was soldered to the Kapton heater disk. Re-soldering it worked temporarily but it broke a second time in the exact same spot and the second break ripped a hole in the copper layer of the circuitry, so it was time to retire the old thing and get a more solid MK3 bed variant to do the job.

New heat-bed stack components, from left to right:
spare aluminum, cotton insulation, 300mm MK3 bed, and Creality magnet kit

     Parts used in the new bed are basically the larger versions of the ones installed on the Sculptor and Ender 3. A 300mm MK3 aluminum bed is the electrical and structural core, with a sheet of cotton insulation to protect the electronics bay taped on the back. Upper surface is coated with the magnet sheet out of a Creality magnetic bed kit to mount the existing spring-steel sheet bed surface. I'm not using the Creality upper surface since they have a tendency to crack and breakdown after a fairly short usage lifetime.

New bed supports installed on Mega

     Of course, the change in bed shape means that a new set of bed supports are needed, some quick CAD work with the design files had the relevant parts drawn out and sent off to the Ender 3 and Sculptor for fabrication. Once that was done and bolted down, it was time to solder the electrical cables onto the new bed since it didn't come with the wires pre-installed, so here's some soldering in low-temperatures 101.

MK3 bed positioned on Ender 3 print surface for easy soldering.

     It was freezing cold out when this refit was done, workshop was just under 5°C average temperature, so the solder wasn't heating up correctly on the workbench or iron. Seems that solder needs about 20°C to work correctly, so I flipped the bed I was working on upside-down on my Ender 3's build-plate after cranking it up to 60°C. This managed to transmit enough heat into the parts being worked on to get things flowing correctly and it was fairly simple to finish installing after that.

Upgrading the Sculptor: Bondtech BMG gearing, Silent fans, and Thermistor replacement

Sculptor ready to print

    Time for some 3D printer upgrades! This time it's the Sculptor i3MK2.3 under revision, specifically the print-head assembly. After refitting my Ender 3 with Bondtech gears during the early fall. I was quite impressed with how reliable they after a couple hundred hours of printing. So when a decent quality clone of the BMG turned up on Amazon, it was time for a much needed upgrade and overhaul for my second oldest printer.

E3D Thermistor and Capricorn XS PTFE tubing.

New (top) and old (bottom) E3D thermistors

   First step of the upgrade process was to strip down the existing tool-head and check the electrical parts for any issues that may have come up over the last year or two of use. One issue that I'd been aware of going into this refit was a bad bearing in the hot-end fan, but as soon as I removed the part fan it became clear that there was a major safety issue with the thermistor cartridge, specifically that part of the insulation had frayed away from the wires it was supposed to protect, that could cause a fire if the control board glitched at the same time, so getting a replacement became the top priority for this upgrade cycle. Fortunately it turns out that E3D had already fixed the manufacturing fault that caused the issue, so I ordered a couple of the updated version, one as a replacement and one spare for future repairs.

Secondary extruder gear installed on idler arm

    Bondtech actually has a specific kit of the BMG that is meant for refitting an i3MK2, so there are SLS optimized source files to work from for the printed parts, fortunately I found an FDM optimized remix on Thingiverse (thing:3347150), so it was just loading the parts into a batch on one of the other printers, cleaning off supports and starting assembly using the online instructions from the official kit as a guide on what goes where.

Gearing system half installed on motor

Assembled Tool-head bolted onto gantry

    Once the mechanical assembly was done, it was time to sort out the electrical issues that had cropped up. Since I had the tool-head apart anyway, the hot-end got stripped down to components and refitted with new parts, Capricorn XS PTFE for the barrel lining, a fresh nozzle and the replacement thermistor, all fairly simple refits but you do have to dismantle the lite6 hot-end to do them. With that side of things done, it was time to deal with the worn out fan.

Fractal Designs Silent Series R3 4010 12V fan

     My local computer store turned out to have some nice 4010 fans from Fractal Designs in stock, so I picked one up to test it out and see how it compared to the Noctua model on the Mega Kossel. Visually, they're quite different, the Noctua has a smaller core with larger blades whereas the Fractal looks more standard, but sound-wise they're about the same when powered up, so I'm fairly happy with the Fractal Designs model and I'll probably be using them in future refits.

Fractal Designs fan installed and ready

     Once all the fans were mounted, it was time to calibrate the extruder and do a test print. Instead of the usual 3DBenchy, I decided to try the Lattice Cube by Lazerlord (thing:1850320) and see how it turned out. 6 hours of overnight printing later, I was greeted by a nearly perfect print when I came into the workshop to check on it. Overall I'm expecting this upgrade to keep the Sculptor running reliably for several years to come.

Lattice Cube freshly printed