Upgrading to E3D Revo

Ender 3 undergoing upgrades

    Over the last year and a bit, I've been involved in beta-testing E3D's new Revo series hot-end, this is the process of upgrading my two mainline printers to run on it. One is getting my final beta hot-end, the other is getting a Revo6 I won in one of the contests E3D was running earlier this year.

 

Revo Micro on Voron Afterburner mount

    My Ender 3 got the beta Revo Micro, mostly since it was due for an overhaul anyway. Mount is the Voron Afterburner AB-BN variant, mostly since that was the only version that had proper support for the Revo Micro heat-sink in February, the current Stealth Burner had yet to be released at that point. Installation was fairly straightforward, I mostly followed the extruder assembly section in the Voron 2.4 manual, then it was just some calibration for the new tool-head and it was up and running.

 

#ShamrockE3D

     After getting it fired up, I was completely shocked by how good the print quality was, the image above is done with the 0.25mm nozzle, and aside from some light stringing, the print is basically perfect other than some ringing artifacts that are more to do with the printer frame than anything else. Incidentally, this print also won the random draw in #ShamrockE3D contest, netting a second Revo Six hot-end, so it was time to refit the Sculptor.

 

Revo Six on Bear Extruder

     The Sculptor had been overdue for a rebuild on its tool-head for about 6-months now, so I decided to make the conversion over to using the BearEXXA project, the same as what I'd fitted the Mendel90 with last year. Once the new printed parts where assembled, the Revo Six was a snap-in upgrade, it fits the old V6 mount design perfectly. One thing that I changed from normal assembly was adding a length of M3 rod-stock to extend the x-axis cable management tail, mainly to protect the Revo electrical quick connects, the Molex Micro-Fit 3 connectors are a known weak-point for stress failures if bent by gantry movement. The other tweak I made was installing BearEXXA Delta P v2 Fanduct, mainly due to the BearEXXA stock ducting being rather overdue for an update.

Revo 6 with Delta-P ducting

     Once I'd gotten the updates fully dialed in, the jump in quality was frankly night and day, probably a combination of the high-performance heat-break on the Revo systems along with substantial upgrades to the part-cooling setup on both printers. And with the new high-flow and hardened nozzle-cores that have just been announced, I'm looking forward to years worth of fantastic prints out of both machines.

 

Ender 3 on left, Sculptor on right

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

Sculptor i3 Upgrade: Magnetic Sheet Topped Heated Bed

Sculptor i3MK2.3

     This fall has been completely crazy for weather, November was partially frozen solid with heavy frost everywhere. I spent the month upgrading the Sculptor with a heated build plate on the y-axis, something I'd planned for since June 2018. I had been using a 65W laptop power brick for it's electrical harness, but that's only enough to power the hot-end and motors, not all that plus a heated bed, so my first step was to upgrade to the same 350W power module that I've been using on the Mega Kossel. Actually installing the power block was simple and straightforward, mostly just removing the old connecting wires and installing the new ones for the upgraded power supply.

Upgraded Y-axis bed support plate on Sculptor

     As for installing the heated bed, it was a bit more involved since I didn't have a standard i3 bed support plate installed already, so mounting one of those was the first step. I got mine from Spool3D here in Canada, it's made of 3mm aluminum with cut-outs for both 3 and 4 bearing setups, so I just had to install the appropriate printed connector for the drive belt and it was almost ready to mount the bed. For holding the bearings on I decided to take a page out of the old i3MK2 build manual and use zip-ties, one at each end of the bearings, it's surprisingly sturdy when the bearings are locked into their slots like that. Bonus is this form of mounting allows just enough flex to compensate for any slight misalignment that might get into the rails during re-installation.

Build Plate assembly with zip-ties

90W MK3 Heat-bed with Wanhao branding

       For the headed bed, I went with the classic MK3 PCB/Aluminum combo that most i3 variations are fitted with, in this case a pre-wired version that I'm fairly sure was meant as a spare part for Wanhao Duplicator i3 models, again from Spool3D. For my purposes, having the wiring pre-installed is one less step to sort out. I only needed to connect them to the control board and the electrical side of things is finished. For mounting screws I happened to have some countersunk head M3s in the parts bin, so the bed got reamed out to accept them.

M3 bolt with Countersink

Magnetic surface sheet kit

    For the actual working surface, I picked up the Wanhao Duplicator i3 Magnetic Sheet kit since I've been interested to see how one of the 'buildtak clone with magnet sheet backing' systems actually worked in practice. What's included is a sheet of thin, mirror polished steel with coated with adhesive on one side and a sheet of build surface material backed with what looks like an overgrown fridge magnet at first glance. Actually installing the system is fairly simple, just peel off the backing from the steel and stick it down to the build-plate like you would with regular sticker-sheet, then there's a protective blue film that needs to come off the front. And finally it's just align and drop on the magnet sheet to finish off installation.

Fully installed heat-bed with Magnetic surface kit

    After using it for 2 months, I can safely say that this kind of magnetic mount has become my absolute favourite, it has all the ease of removal that the spring-steel based ones are supposed to have with much simpler installation. I've tested it at upto 60C on a regular basis and it's held up nicely so far, I've only managed to put some minor cosmetic scratches on it from the nozzle during leveling, it's flexible enough that even the most stubbornly stuck bits of PLA can be removed without tools, just bend it at the right point and they come straight off, much safer than the sharp-edged scrapers conventional beds require.

Finished Sculptor i3MK2.3 with new heat-bed installed

     Overall, I'm happy with how the heated bed update has worked out, it's certainly proven perfect for running in cold weather, cranked up to 60°C it holds PLA  and TPE filaments down just fine even with the ambient temperature hovering around -5°C.