Don't underestimate the weight of hardware. Mazda famously saved 100s of lbs using 'gram strategy'. That included using smaller fasterners and smaller heads on this fasteners, and ones only as long as needed. I bet the steel bolts are 1/2 the weight.
I was wondering if mounting the linear guide on the side of the carbon fiber beam was a better solution to increase the resonant frequency of the y axis than mounting it above / below. Have you done this type of experiment?
@@Vez3D WOW, wow, you are evolving your 3d printer very quickly! Just love it! I hope you have kept the accelerometer data of your current version, because it would be really interesting to compare it with your next iteration of the 3d printer
@@TheRealMrLaserCutter the steel used for linear guides usually has a hardness of 55/65 HRC, which is a lot for HSS drill bit... it is a real challenge to drill holes in that steel... maybe you can be successful using tungsten carbide bits, but they require precise cutting speeds otherwise you risk throwing away an 80-100 € drill bit after, like, 10 holes
I really enjoyed this video, thanks for doing this. There's an old hot rodder's saying that goes "Speed costs money, how fast can you afford to go?". It applies here. The first changes to make things lighter or more powerful don't cost a lot of money and have large benefits, but the further you go the more you'll find you're spending greater sums of money for lesser results.
drill a larger hole on the back side of the tube, wide enough for the proper socket to just fit. for such a light duty application you can thin the walls of a socket by grinding it down to allow for a smaller hole reducing structure integrity loss.
Some lightness ideas: 1. Thinner side rails for whole X gantry - it looks like it's overlooked but when your printer is doing Y move it actually swings 3 linear rails carriages - one for the head and two for the whole x gantry. It could be worth looking for smaller Y axis rails as it lets you use lighter carriages (going from MGN12 to MGN9 drops something around 40 grams from the whole X gantry) 2. Lightness holes - drill holes the size of socket needed to install nuts on the opposite side of the beam, which will remove mass without impacting stiffness that much, with added bonus of simpler rail installation and added possibility on nondestructive removal. 3. Hollow bolts - used on racing bikes, half the weight of normal ones, don't know if obtainable at this size (can always drill it yourself). 4. Adhesive - use adhesive to bond rail with carbon fiber tube and reduce number of used fasteners only to critical ones.
If I may add to this... - Belts: switching from 10mm width to 6mm width will reduce the belt's mass by up to 40%. In so doing, you'd have to get shorter and thus lighter idlers, reducing moment of inertia and thus further increasing acceleration. - extruder type: I'm sure you've considered it already but it is worth pointing out the significant reduction of mass by implementing a bowden setup for the extruder. Use Capricorn tubing and an inline lubricator to minimise the compromise on flow.
@@jacobnassr-low7757 In addition to the low friction bowden setup, something simple could easily help the tube freely move too. Removing the slightest amount of drag on the gantry..
I don't think the lightness holes would be an efficient trick to use here, due to the way carbon fiber material is made. When it comes to metal construction, absolutely do use it and same for plywood, because the glue used in most plywood, chemically bonds the fibers together. I do though doubt that is the same for carbon fiber materials, as although they are layered and use epoxy, there are different strengths of epoxy and the stresses of higher acceleration could exceed the maximum limits of the epoxy used for the carbon fiber bonding. That means that lightness holes can cause cracking, which will first cause wobbling and eventually stop the gantry from printing straight. This is also why he used inside and outside blocks, plus added tape for support when drilling and cutting the material, as it would otherwise delaminate. A possible way around this, is to make the holes larger and add reinforcing material that doesn't increase the weight anymore than what it would be, if he went with the size of the holes you suggest. Any reinforced material should, of course, be epoxied in place. A potential work around without adding more material, is to seal the edges of the holes with epoxy to prevent delamination, but I'm not sure how much that would help, as it theory it should work, but potential variables are the lamination strength between the carbon fiber material surface and the added epoxy, as well as the stress capacity of the epoxy itself. Thinner side rails could be an option, if the friction induced by the increased speed, doesn't cause the rail to become skewed, due to uneven heating. If Titanium rail and carriages can be found however, then that would significantly increase the efficiency and same for hollow bolts. Titanium is already incredibly light, but making the existing bolts even lighter as you suggest, is just a plus and so for using adhesive for bonding the rail to the carbon fiber, if industrial grade epoxy is used (as that would make the tube break before the epoxy)
Weight saving ideas: 1) Replace aluminum end caps on the extruder stepper with machined CF. Easy enough with a mill and/or a laser cutter. Forged carbon with smaller fiber lengths is easier to machine than weaves 2) No clue if the shaft needs to be metal for function but could be replaced with carbon rods. The bearings can be downsized as well. (Life will be shorter but performance gains...) Lowering the weight of the rotor should directly enable faster change in acceleration. Extruder speed may not make a huge difference in the end but if the current setup does not meet the hot end ceiling (acceleration wise, might have to make a test for that) then there's some room to improve. 3) Remove the fasteners if its going to be a permanent thing. Loctite has Epoxy specifically for steel to carbon welds. The result is stronger than steel to steel welds. This may save good amount of weight. - Good work there, keep going!
I’d be concerned with heat buildup in the stepper. Those aluminum end caps are a main way to get heat out of them. This is particularly true on such a small motor where there isn’t much exposed steel laminations. Now this would be interesting to try on the mounting face of the motor, where it’s pressed against the plastic anyway.
BTW for any cutting with dust, cut inside a bag. I use regular trash bags for many things, when you need to see better get clear plastic drop cloth in the paint departments etc. Essentially think of it as making a fume hood to contain dust and go from there..
You midge want to fill any hollow parts with a lightweight, vibration-dampening material (such as a polynorbornene foam, perhaps?) This might also add a bit of additional rigidity.
Holy shit. Best content on youtube i’ve ever seen. Theory with calculus, practice and demonstrations, and finally the results, all that to achieve a goal. Fucking thank you.
You can try igus linear rails. They are aluminum and use plastic bushings. igus is pretty nice and can send you free sample kits and parts. Look into oriental motor 5-phase steppers for a MUCH higher torque at higher RPMs. They have servo rpm properties but with the responsiveness of steppers.
I was coming to say the same thing. The majority of the weight in the gantry now is in the MGN9 carbon steel rail. I'm not sure how well the Igus linear guides will work in this application (positional accuracy), but they are worth testing out since the rail is aluminum and will shave a great deal of weight there.
Those carbon rods for weight savings are an amazing idea! I'm going to see if I can buy some of those. For further weight reductions you can look into aluminium fasteners. vs unhardened titanium they have a better strength to weight ratio but they are 40% lighter. There's also the option of using aluminium heat inserts instead of the brass ones. Compared to brass they're about 1/3th the weight. I'm currently designing a toolhead board with maximum weight reduction in mind so you have less cables running to the printhead. Finished product is still months away probably.
Aluminum M3 hardware is super picky! combined with the higher thermal expansion difference between CF and Alu, this was not a good choice to me since they could easily cross thread during install and loosen under heat and vibration.
@@MirageC that's a bit far fetched :) people choose titanium because its cool. not because of "heat expansion properties" :) people use aluminium bolts on freaking brake disks :) if it can withstand that, its probably fine for a 3d printer.
mixing aluminium with carbon fiber can (and will) cause galvanic corosion, unles using spetial coatings to insulate the two materials it is to be avoided if you want things to last. titanium is the go to metal for part in contact with carbon fiber, as it has both a decent specific strength, and low galvanic reaction with carbon fiber
@@ValsVirtuals - Yes that is true - but only in the presence of high humidity or direct water contact. So a big problem in a car, boat or plane - not so much in a normal house with 50-70% humidity
When I raced 1/10th scale R/C cars we had weight limits. We used titanium for things like the steering turnbuckles where strength was an issue but aluminum bolts in all other places. Those aluminum bolts are crazy light and still have decent shear strength. I use drill bits made for drilling for door hinges, they have a spring loaded center guide. Good quick way to get a centered pilot hole on things like linear rails where accuracy matters.
Yeah, Aluminum fasteners would be good to. The only reason I went with Titanium was to avoid galvanic corrosion between Carbon and Aluminum. I could coat the exposed carbon with some epoxy I guess.
Well - Remote extruder (Bent, flex rod, or a shaft that is basically a long gear) - More glue instead of fasteners if they are permanent anyway. - self made carbon parts by printing them and apply a carbon layer, so you get rid of some fasteners or extra connecting parts
This is awesome, and made me think about wether a triangular prism (I had to look up the name for a triangular shaped tube) would help with weight even further along with better rigidity through the hollow portions.
Yeah, I just finished converting my ender 5 to corexy. All the parts are carbon fibre nylon. Yes I annealed them before installing, and super fast accel, minimal vibration
Split washers, Belleville, rip lock etc. You could also look at the overall compression of a larger area at helping stop the nut from sinking into the plastic allowing the screw to come loose.
@@ChrisHarmon1 split washers don't do anything regular washers don't in regards to loosening from vibration, disc springs do nothing to lock the fasteners and the vibration damping effects aren't going to do a lot in this kind of of application. Serrated washers do work but you risk damaging the carbon fiber tube. Best thing to do here is to just torque them correctly, use thread locker and check on them regularly. Of course the washers here do increase the load area and reduce stress on the tube, so I am not saying not to use them, just pointing out that they do nothing to prevent loosening
I should have been more specific, I was referring to the increased load area of washers reducing the chances of having nuts eating through the material under vibration. Thanks for the feedback.
Without washers, the nuts will compress into the material and cause them to come loose. Washer are not used in things designed by real engineers for looks, they are there to increase load area and prevent compression (and thus loosening). Those screws are under a boatload of stress during rapid Y motions...
Bowden tube instead direct filament drive can save mass too And cooling solution - instead of fan on head you can use tube and stationary installed fan with high static pressure or air pump - maybe adding peltier cooling can reduce mass of radiator too (Radiator can be modified too, but adding vapor cha,ber cab be even harder and not be good enough)
This came up in my recommendations and I really enjoyed it, I like the way you explained everything in the intro before jumping in and showing it. Earned a new subscriber. Nice work!
@MirageC One of the most important things to me is dimensional accuracy of the finished part. To achieve that with higher performing materials (CF-Nylon to PEEK and beyond). Any of these are going to need heated enclosures. Once you go over 100*C in the enclosure, expansion of the all of the motion parts should be as similar as possible, or things could get out of spec during printing and over time deformation. Would seem that once we start talk heated enclosures (not 50-70*C, I'm talking 100*C and above), having different materials making up your motion system (carbon, titanium, aluminum, etc is going to affect overall part dimensional accuracy). I assume, by the title of this video, you mean 3D Printing without higher temp materials and heated enclosures in the 100*C and higher? Heat aside though, I'm a gram weenie at heart (I do wilderness backpacking and have started developing ultralight gear for that). So if open enclosure 3D printing, I think you are spot on here :-)
When you are using this high acc. you might have loss steps that you won't know about. Can you re-do the test and check if you have misssing steps after each test cycle? the right way to check for missing step will be adding dail indactor and checking the bridge postion against the dail indactor. It will also be intersting to see what prolong use with high acc. will do for the 3D printed part.
I agree this would give us a more accurate breaking point, but the overall curves would not look much different. I'll set a dial indicator with a routine to probe between each acceleration rate. Thanks for the suggestion.
@@MirageC From my exprince in motion it will give you diffrent stop point. In the current way you stop when the motor is failing make the move, normally you lose steps a lot before the motor stop moving. BTW, the drivers and microsteping setting also effect what the max power you can get from the motor, using lower microsteping will give you higer speed and tourqe preformance.
Duet2 can reliably run drivers at 2.4amps but you need forced air to the back side of the board, per the Duet wiki. It also helps to have the board set vertically too to encourage convection. I run my Duet2 at the max supported current of 2.4A without a sweat.
The only way to increase accelaration from now on is to run a moving table and y axis at the same time, with good adhesion you could double the performance. You could also use carbon for such a moving table
No unfortunately I did not have the chance. I am super happy with the Nova HotEnd which is a super tiny copper block with a 100W cartridge and M4 thread size nozzle.
A few grams could be pulled out of the gantry tube by optimizing the stiffness for the loads. You shouldn’t have much dynamic z-loading, and with your extruded/hot-end you may not have much torsional loading as well. A bunch of holes on rail side and back of rail side may lighten the gantry further.
48v motors would avoid more current while giving you double the power. And the octopus pro will drive them (up to 60v if you can find them) Going to 4 ab motors which is now possible with klipper would probably also help because double the power and shorter belt lengths. Also Canbus head pcb would likely lighten the assembly significantly by eliminating a ton of wires in the chain. Not sure if you’ve done that already. And a 48v pancake extruded motor will probably help too because it should be lighter.
Unfortunately 48v does not double torque. It only enables the motor to exploit a bit more torque at higher speed. But it is far from double. This is what I am running now, XY and E. And yes, we asked the Klipper developpers for AWD last year (4 motor coreXY). It is now fully integrated in the main klipper fork. As for CAN bus goes, there seems to be a communication speed limitation with some boards that is creating issues. I evaluated the weight a while back and it was not worth it. The weight of board and connectors is more than the wires it removes. It is not the entire length of wire that consume acceleration and energy from the motors. The weight of a CAN bus board with connector would.
@@MirageC Must be something wrong with those 48V motors. While it won't be perfect, if anything I'd expect MORE than double the power out of them because you're line loss on the wire will be almost half at the same wattage. And given the same windings, unless there is a design flaw you'll also see more power because of less wire loss and the ability to use thinner wires for the same power. This is what you see with an ODrive with BLDC motors as an example. 60V is WAY more efficient than 24V or even 48V at the same wattage. Interesting about the canbus board. But I would assume that like unsprung weight on a car that the chain drag is a force equation based on the sine of the angle based on it's attachment point, so it's multiplying the weight which of course includes many wires instead of 4 and with only 4, you should be able to use significantly smaller chains which should save significant weight that is magnified because of the force equation like much like wheels and tire weight drastically affects performance in a car at like 5 to 1 per pound over sprung weight from the chassis. The speed issue is a speed issue in general with CAN. The idea board would be ethernet at 1 gbps with < 0.2 ms delay I would assume. Even 100 mbps over 2 pairs would be vastly better than CAN. Of course reality and math equations are 2 different things often, but in a perfect system these should show major improvements.
@@jameshancock Steppers are very different from BLDC. www.linearmotiontips.com/stepper-motor-performance-is-it-possible-to-get-high-torque-at-high-speeds/ I dont use drag chain they are too heavy and at those speed they would simply destroy themselves. ;) Qty2 AWG 20 and Qty9 AWG 24 wires in a sleeve aren't that much of a weight killer. ;)
I don't know if someone else pointed this out but to keep CF from fraying or delaminating after cutting use CA glue it will seal it and keep that strength to the end of the part . I use a medium gap filling formula. Interesting hope this helps and good luck in testing!
The next step seems to be air bearings with a hose running to the printhead -> better friction, less weight of the axis, slightly more mass to be moved and some more noise...
Very nice work for sure ! just a few suggestions/ideas... replace all but 2 (outer ends) of those bolts in the rail with carbon fiber bolts that would save a lot. Or you could also play with nylon bolts to keep the cost down a bit. or just epoxy the rail to the CF extrusion and remove all the bolts. There is probably also room to lighten that rail by drilling out the bolt holes to a much larger size and if epoxied together strength loss should not be an issue.
I have an idea for lighter extruders. I've been meaning to test it myself. But since I haven't had time, maybe I should just publish it. Then if it works, at least it can't be patented… Combine both a Bowden and direct extruder. The drive-gears before the Bowden tube will exert most of the force. Then the drive-gears on the extruder can have a much lighter motor, whose only job is to control the extrusion more precisely. Though obviously it wouldn't work with flexible filament. And I don't know whether the motors could simply be stepped in sync. Or whether a more complex control scheme would be needed to co-ordinate them.
Have you considered peek or pai fasteners for the rail? This would give another large weight reduction over titanium and they are great for fastening to composites.
Amazing Work. My question is why not delete the carbon fibre tube or any other support gantry. Could you not just use the Linear Guide Rail with some fancy 3d prints? the bending of solid steel for 55grams should be miniscule. Issue to get around could be the back pressure from the hotend when clearances are incorrect. But once the clearance is perfected, you can go all out.
Dig the vid.... id be curious to see a print time comparison on a real print. Since depending on print there are a combination of moves. Like what might you save over what would normally be a 2hr or 10hr print etc. Great job.
Great video! Well done and smart, as always. You could save a few grams and resistance by making an airtight printer enclosure, running a vacuum pump, and voiding the encloser of all air, but then everything would have to be water cooled...and the extruded plastic would ooze...the part cooling wouldn't work, etc...
It's hard for me to tell, but do you have your fan mounted to your extruder? Perhaps you could save weight by running an air hose from a remote air source. might save a few grams
I just got purchased a ender 3v2 a few ago and in love with printing now haha I'm already looking into get a better faster printer. Hopefully one day I can figure everything out and not feel so overwhelmed with all the technical parts of printing.
Excellent video, and thank you for much food for thought, I have ordered parts to convert my ender 5 pro into a mercury one, with an aluminium cross bar, now I want to do it in carbon fibre lol
E3D ditched the carbon plate on their tool changer due to issues with the difference in thermal expansion on carbon fiber and steel (bending of the gantry). Did you notice anything indicating this issue? Or is a carbonfiber tube simply just so much stiffer than a 6 mm plate that it neglects the bending/overpowers the rail?
@@Vez3D Ok thanks Vez3D! True, yours are also carbon now.. Yeah I expected it may simply be stiff enough for it not to be an issue. I will be reaching 80 degreees though. At first I was going for a 6 mm carbon plate, but then I saw that E3D blog post.. So now I was going with 6 mm aluminum plate, but seeing this I will see if my design can accomodate a tube like you guys. I am building a crossed gantry machine so it may not fit a 20x20 but maybe 20x15.
I have not noticed any issue while printing ABS with enclosure temps of 55C. But yes, this may be an issue at higher temps. Materials used in speed printing usually don't require high enclosure temperatures.
@@MirageC Thanks Mirage! No I am not really aiming to beat you guys in a speedboat xD I prefer the best possible quality at higher than average speeds. The lighter, the less ringing at higher speeds :) I will be happy with 10k acc and 100 mm/s speeds. I just want as little rigning as possible :)
If you can get your yaxis in between instead on top you will reduce the mass rotation across the axis modern laser tech is using this ie eagle Fiber Laser
You did a perfect approach. I came around Your very fine video not by looking for speed, but more for reducing vibration on a given speed by reducing mass on the X-carrier. Since you explained so nice the Newton Law I do not need to go further - It's only to remark that Your approach as also a second effect, that is reducing acceleration induced vibration to the printer. Thank You so much for Your nice and also funny video 🙂🙂👍👍
this seems really cool! keep in mind that 3d printing using filament is low impact but not no impact. there still is resistance from the nozzle drag (it can be alleviated from a higher temp during run and lower temp during slow down for control. i would suggest first 3 layers ramp up speed and temp to work from a stable surface , and last layers slow down temp and speed. travel moves will likely be quick on this machine. also i have seen designs that just use the rails themselves as the x-bar. i would imaging a head crash would be expensive for those designs...
Yes, head crash are bad at those speeds. Luckily, using springs on the bed helps a lot. I totally get your point with nozzle drag. The speed profile needs to be adapted to the part being printed. Good point.
Wow, that was an amazing improvement. So much added lightness. I can still see one small hanging fruit though: the bltouch. Surely a dockable probe would be a few grams lighter? Sure its not much in the grand scheme of things, but you did replace all the fasteners with titanium ones.... Using tape to stop the carbon fiber from fraying was brilliant, but you might still want to cut the CF wet. It will help keep any fibers out of the air and then settling on other surfaces, or your skin.
At 500g, a 15g improvement is still -3%. and isn't negligible, because it's additive, if you manage to reduce the weight to like 150g, reducing by 15g is 10% then.
Current needs time to build up in the motor, at those high speeds you may not be reaching the set limits. You need to reduce motor inductance and/or increase the stepper driver supply voltage to maintain a decent torque at high rotational speeds.
You can use less screws if rail be attached to carbon by glue - it's fine for sportcar too) Plastic parts can be replaced with fiberglass or carbonfiber- you can print blank for it or modelling parts with slots for fiberglass cloth
We can confidently say that it is people like you who actually drive printer technology. Not the big companies that later make the claims and reap the profits. Thank you for this video. Do you remember who came up with the ideas of input shaper and linear advance?
Thank you! Over the years I found that by sharing what I know, I receive much more knowledge via comments and encorragements than what I give. Open source community is full of good people with a lot of knowledge :) . Unfortunately I dont have the exact name of the people you are referring. I always assumed that the father of Input Shaper was from the Klipper community. I think I know who but not 100% sure. As for linear advance I believe this was from the Rep Rap community.
@@MirageC, again the open source community. Keep up the great work, you have no idea how uplifting your videos are for me and many other. Exploring the outer fringes of what can be done. So much fun.
@@MirageC, I am on the same bandwagon. My main education was through the internet from forums to TH-cam. In case you want to print faster and more reliable and much cleaner, here my 5 cents worth" Z axis: air bearings. For Y and X you must try linear servo motors. A quantum leap ahead of your Clearpath motors as you will have super speeds and a lot less motor noise. You will then open a can of worms as you will need the same quality of plastic delivery. We are so lucky to live in these times where we still can make a difference.
Impressive improvement. You can use aluminum alloy screws also. They're strong enough, lighter and cost less than titanium ones. Its also safe to use threadlockers with carbon parts. Loctite 273, or 638 if you don't want to take it apart anymore.
At this size (M3) aluminum hardware is easy to cross thread or strip the head. Comming from aerospace background I also wanted to avoid risk of galvanic corrosion.
@@MirageC You could use PEEK fasteners, they don't cost so much, if you need so few anyway. Edit:also pulltruded Carbon tubes are more rigid for what you want.
Did you run some tests on temperature resistance of the CF tube? The epoxy used for those tubes is supposed to soften between 60-100C… I have only seen people using these without enclosures, would be very helpful to get some information about this. Maybe do a follow up and put the left over piece on the bed or in the oven at different temperatures? Also heat expansion and contraction of CF could decrease print quality because CF shrinks while steel expands when heated. You could also place a dial indicator on the rail while running the bed at certain temps. Would be a really interesting video imo.
Yes, you are spot on! Although this works right now, we need more data. I run this in a 55C enclosure, but most of print are high speed ABS or PLA without enclosure.
there are epoxies for CF which can withstand 150 or even 230 degrees C, typical Chinese ones are rated at 80C max if i remember it correctly, about thermal expansion - agree, having steel-titanium-carbon hard locked will definitely create points of thermal deformation for rails(yet steel-aluminium is kinda the same shit, so it won't decrease print quality but possibility to increase is not used)
@@SergeiSugaroverdoseShuykov I have a 500mm Vcore-3, and the gantry definitely warps when my chamber gets over 45C or so. Takes a good 2 hours of soak before the whole printer is stable. In practice, it is not a problem since the gantry remains (mostly) straight during the first layer, and the warp is not too huge to muck up the final layer. Causes issues if I start another print with out doing a bed mesh to compensate for the gantry warp
Have you seen the new BTT Octopus Pro? It has support for up to 60V for the motor power separately from the board/heaters etc. Since the steppers also can be pulled it might be cheaper to replace if you blow one.
Interesting. Acceleration and speed are nice in a test like this, but can the extruder keep up, and will the plastic cool fast enough to let you print at high speeds?
Way late to the party on this but would it be possible to lap the carbon fiber tube on one side to make it flat? Of course you would need a known flat surface to compare it too but wonder the results on this idea.
You could probably do it very lightly. I guess that at some point, if you reach too deep in the fibre coth it may delaminate if the impregnation of resin is not uniform. Somebody else mentionned glueing the rail in place, so this would deal with surface irregularities as well.
Regarding the cutting of carbon fiber composite: used a cheap tile cutting saw. The water handles all the dust, and the diamond wheel leaves a smooth, precise cut without pulling any fiber. Use CA glue to closeup the end grain of the fiber.
The next one heaviest part is the head, IMHO. It would be interesting to have a full ceramics hotend, or a non-moving laser head, where you have to only move the material feeder and melt it. It can be interesting to compare this new carbon fiber setup with the fastest delta printers - maybe the next move will be that you turn your printer to a delta printer.
I wonder if you could use machined aluminium nuts/fasteners. If you form tap the nuts, instead of cutting them, they get really strong, especially if you use a 7XXX-series alloy. Not as strong as titanium, but lighter.
Perhaps its my aerospace experience speaking, but Alu and CF are usually to be seperated by surface protection or intermediary material to avoid galvanic corrosion. could be feasible, but Ti is more straight forward in that respect i think. Now.. is it truly important for our applications?
@@MirageC Never thought about them reaction with eachother. All I know is I've used aluminium washers for CF parts with success on car parts. I machine a lot of 6- and 7XXX- alloy, but I work very little with CF. I guess also galvanic corrosion is most problematic in a humid environment? Not really my field haha
i wonder if you could get the linear rail to be made out of titanium. or even using ceramic bearings. and using a flex drive to remove the motor from the extruder.
You asked for Ideas: 1. You could do topology optimization for the 3d printed parts, if you can calculate the forces for that part, a titaniom build topology otimized rod might also be lighter than carbon fiber, but the carbon fiber tube might be aleady the best and will be much cheaper.
It could be possible to build a new solution with two carbon fiber shafts and some plastic bearings.. Could also change the pulleys to ones in plastic. That would eliminate the heavy rail. Guessing that is the heavy part that need to be altered to achieve a lighter solution. There is some nice hollow carbon shafts from igus.
Don't underestimate the weight of hardware. Mazda famously saved 100s of lbs using 'gram strategy'. That included using smaller fasterners and smaller heads on this fasteners, and ones only as long as needed. I bet the steel bolts are 1/2 the weight.
steel is twice the weight of titanium, and titanium is twice the weight of aluminium bolts
@@Nobody-Nowhere I think they meant that the steel hardware is accounting for half the weight of the whole assembly.
It was Colin Chapman, the founder of Lotus, who was the pioneer. “Simplify and add lightness” was his mantra.
I'm sure nylon hardware is strong enough for holding down the rail, I bet aluminum pop rivets would work too.
@@BrianBoniMakes probably bad for heated chamber, maybe peek or PEI screws would be better. just pricey.
Not only are your engineering skills awesome but your videography abilities are shining through as well! Very cool.
that rail is probably the heaviest thing on there. This week ill be playing with something to replace it. Ill keep you posted :)
I was wondering if mounting the linear guide on the side of the carbon fiber beam was a better solution to increase the resonant frequency of the y axis than mounting it above / below. Have you done this type of experiment?
@@librasd8087 my next iteration of the printhead will be like that
Could you mill or bore holes in the rail to remove weight?
@@Vez3D WOW, wow, you are evolving your 3d printer very quickly! Just love it!
I hope you have kept the accelerometer data of your current version, because it would be really interesting to compare it with your next iteration of the 3d printer
@@TheRealMrLaserCutter the steel used for linear guides usually has a hardness of 55/65 HRC, which is a lot for HSS drill bit... it is a real challenge to drill holes in that steel... maybe you can be successful using tungsten carbide bits, but they require precise cutting speeds otherwise you risk throwing away an 80-100 € drill bit after, like, 10 holes
The use of dremel sand paper cylinders to keep the tool in position is genius.
I agree, when I saw that I was like : WTF why didn't I think of that! 😂
@@GT_213 took me a few scratch behind the head before this idea pops! :)
genius?!
I really enjoyed this video, thanks for doing this. There's an old hot rodder's saying that goes "Speed costs money, how fast can you afford to go?". It applies here. The first changes to make things lighter or more powerful don't cost a lot of money and have large benefits, but the further you go the more you'll find you're spending greater sums of money for lesser results.
drill a larger hole on the back side of the tube, wide enough for the proper socket to just fit. for such a light duty application you can thin the walls of a socket by grinding it down to allow for a smaller hole reducing structure integrity loss.
Finally a new video! Very well done🤩
Some lightness ideas:
1. Thinner side rails for whole X gantry - it looks like it's overlooked but when your printer is doing Y move it actually swings 3 linear rails carriages - one for the head and two for the whole x gantry. It could be worth looking for smaller Y axis rails as it lets you use lighter carriages (going from MGN12 to MGN9 drops something around 40 grams from the whole X gantry)
2. Lightness holes - drill holes the size of socket needed to install nuts on the opposite side of the beam, which will remove mass without impacting stiffness that much, with added bonus of simpler rail installation and added possibility on nondestructive removal.
3. Hollow bolts - used on racing bikes, half the weight of normal ones, don't know if obtainable at this size (can always drill it yourself).
4. Adhesive - use adhesive to bond rail with carbon fiber tube and reduce number of used fasteners only to critical ones.
smart man :) yes I agree!
If I may add to this...
- Belts: switching from 10mm width to 6mm width will reduce the belt's mass by up to 40%. In so doing, you'd have to get shorter and thus lighter idlers, reducing moment of inertia and thus further increasing acceleration.
- extruder type: I'm sure you've considered it already but it is worth pointing out the significant reduction of mass by implementing a bowden setup for the extruder. Use Capricorn tubing and an inline lubricator to minimise the compromise on flow.
@@jacobnassr-low7757 In addition to the low friction bowden setup, something simple could easily help the tube freely move too. Removing the slightest amount of drag on the gantry..
I don't think the lightness holes would be an efficient trick to use here, due to the way carbon fiber material is made. When it comes to metal construction, absolutely do use it and same for plywood, because the glue used in most plywood, chemically bonds the fibers together. I do though doubt that is the same for carbon fiber materials, as although they are layered and use epoxy, there are different strengths of epoxy and the stresses of higher acceleration could exceed the maximum limits of the epoxy used for the carbon fiber bonding. That means that lightness holes can cause cracking, which will first cause wobbling and eventually stop the gantry from printing straight.
This is also why he used inside and outside blocks, plus added tape for support when drilling and cutting the material, as it would otherwise delaminate. A possible way around this, is to make the holes larger and add reinforcing material that doesn't increase the weight anymore than what it would be, if he went with the size of the holes you suggest. Any reinforced material should, of course, be epoxied in place. A potential work around without adding more material, is to seal the edges of the holes with epoxy to prevent delamination, but I'm not sure how much that would help, as it theory it should work, but potential variables are the lamination strength between the carbon fiber material surface and the added epoxy, as well as the stress capacity of the epoxy itself.
Thinner side rails could be an option, if the friction induced by the increased speed, doesn't cause the rail to become skewed, due to uneven heating. If Titanium rail and carriages can be found however, then that would significantly increase the efficiency and same for hollow bolts. Titanium is already incredibly light, but making the existing bolts even lighter as you suggest, is just a plus and so for using adhesive for bonding the rail to the carbon fiber, if industrial grade epoxy is used (as that would make the tube break before the epoxy)
Might be impossible to manufacture but a titanium linear rail?
I love the way you use 3d printd tooling to hild the rails and mount the nuts and washers!
I can’t help but think of using rivets instead of all that hardware. Nobody stresses lightweight and reliability like airplanes
Fokker used glue for ages...
Weight saving ideas: 1) Replace aluminum end caps on the extruder stepper with machined CF. Easy enough with a mill and/or a laser cutter. Forged carbon with smaller fiber lengths is easier to machine than weaves 2) No clue if the shaft needs to be metal for function but could be replaced with carbon rods. The bearings can be downsized as well. (Life will be shorter but performance gains...) Lowering the weight of the rotor should directly enable faster change in acceleration. Extruder speed may not make a huge difference in the end but if the current setup does not meet the hot end ceiling (acceleration wise, might have to make a test for that) then there's some room to improve. 3) Remove the fasteners if its going to be a permanent thing. Loctite has Epoxy specifically for steel to carbon welds. The result is stronger than steel to steel welds. This may save good amount of weight. - Good work there, keep going!
I’d be concerned with heat buildup in the stepper. Those aluminum end caps are a main way to get heat out of them. This is particularly true on such a small motor where there isn’t much exposed steel laminations.
Now this would be interesting to try on the mounting face of the motor, where it’s pressed against the plastic anyway.
BTW for any cutting with dust, cut inside a bag. I use regular trash bags for many things, when you need to see better get clear plastic drop cloth in the paint departments etc. Essentially think of it as making a fume hood to contain dust and go from there..
You midge want to fill any hollow parts with a lightweight, vibration-dampening material (such as a polynorbornene foam, perhaps?)
This might also add a bit of additional rigidity.
Great video,
really wish someone would make some 2020 rails made of carbon
Holy shit. Best content on youtube i’ve ever seen. Theory with calculus, practice and demonstrations, and finally the results, all that to achieve a goal. Fucking thank you.
5:32 Carbon dust also conducts electricity so you don't want it in your power supply or motherboard.
Ramping up that production quality my guy!
You can try igus linear rails. They are aluminum and use plastic bushings. igus is pretty nice and can send you free sample kits and parts.
Look into oriental motor 5-phase steppers for a MUCH higher torque at higher RPMs.
They have servo rpm properties but with the responsiveness of steppers.
I was coming to say the same thing. The majority of the weight in the gantry now is in the MGN9 carbon steel rail. I'm not sure how well the Igus linear guides will work in this application (positional accuracy), but they are worth testing out since the rail is aluminum and will shave a great deal of weight there.
Those carbon rods for weight savings are an amazing idea! I'm going to see if I can buy some of those.
For further weight reductions you can look into aluminium fasteners. vs unhardened titanium they have a better strength to weight ratio but they are 40% lighter.
There's also the option of using aluminium heat inserts instead of the brass ones. Compared to brass they're about 1/3th the weight.
I'm currently designing a toolhead board with maximum weight reduction in mind so you have less cables running to the printhead. Finished product is still months away probably.
Aluminum M3 hardware is super picky! combined with the higher thermal expansion difference between CF and Alu, this was not a good choice to me since they could easily cross thread during install and loosen under heat and vibration.
@@MirageC that's a bit far fetched :) people choose titanium because its cool. not because of "heat expansion properties" :) people use aluminium bolts on freaking brake disks :) if it can withstand that, its probably fine for a 3d printer.
Also just use red loctite. It will never come apart with aluminum fasteners.
mixing aluminium with carbon fiber can (and will) cause galvanic corosion, unles using spetial coatings to insulate the two materials it is to be avoided if you want things to last. titanium is the go to metal for part in contact with carbon fiber, as it has both a decent specific strength, and low galvanic reaction with carbon fiber
@@ValsVirtuals - Yes that is true - but only in the presence of high humidity or direct water contact. So a big problem in a car, boat or plane - not so much in a normal house with 50-70% humidity
This is awesome Oliver, this R&D information is incredibly valuable. Can't wait to see what you come up with next!
Thank you my friend! You material is super impressive too! :)
When I raced 1/10th scale R/C cars we had weight limits. We used titanium for things like the steering turnbuckles where strength was an issue but aluminum bolts in all other places. Those aluminum bolts are crazy light and still have decent shear strength.
I use drill bits made for drilling for door hinges, they have a spring loaded center guide. Good quick way to get a centered pilot hole on things like linear rails where accuracy matters.
Yeah, Aluminum fasteners would be good to. The only reason I went with Titanium was to avoid galvanic corrosion between Carbon and Aluminum. I could coat the exposed carbon with some epoxy I guess.
Well
- Remote extruder (Bent, flex rod, or a shaft that is basically a long gear)
- More glue instead of fasteners if they are permanent anyway.
- self made carbon parts by printing them and apply a carbon layer, so you get rid of some fasteners or extra connecting parts
There's so much cleverness and know how in what he's doing. This guy should own a 3D printer company. We'd be 5 years ahead in only a couple of months
Yeah we need this guy to do a kickstarter in a year or so when he's finalized the design (not that any design is ever final... lol).
Titanium fasteners?! That's nuts!
Edit: Whoa! that's a much bigger difference than i thought.
This is awesome, and made me think about wether a triangular prism (I had to look up the name for a triangular shaped tube) would help with weight even further along with better rigidity through the hollow portions.
Yeah, I just finished converting my ender 5 to corexy. All the parts are carbon fibre nylon. Yes I annealed them before installing, and super fast accel, minimal vibration
at 7:20 you say something about washers preventing the assembly coming loose with vibration. That's not a function washers perform.
Split washers, Belleville, rip lock etc. You could also look at the overall compression of a larger area at helping stop the nut from sinking into the plastic allowing the screw to come loose.
@@ChrisHarmon1 split washers don't do anything regular washers don't in regards to loosening from vibration, disc springs do nothing to lock the fasteners and the vibration damping effects aren't going to do a lot in this kind of of application. Serrated washers do work but you risk damaging the carbon fiber tube. Best thing to do here is to just torque them correctly, use thread locker and check on them regularly.
Of course the washers here do increase the load area and reduce stress on the tube, so I am not saying not to use them, just pointing out that they do nothing to prevent loosening
@@AlexusMaximusDE I bet a nord lock style would work fine.
I should have been more specific, I was referring to the increased load area of washers reducing the chances of having nuts eating through the material under vibration. Thanks for the feedback.
Without washers, the nuts will compress into the material and cause them to come loose.
Washer are not used in things designed by real engineers for looks, they are there to increase load area and prevent compression (and thus loosening). Those screws are under a boatload of stress during rapid Y motions...
Bowden tube instead direct filament drive can save mass too
And cooling solution - instead of fan on head you can use tube and stationary installed fan with high static pressure or air pump - maybe adding peltier cooling can reduce mass of radiator too
(Radiator can be modified too, but adding vapor cha,ber cab be even harder and not be good enough)
This came up in my recommendations and I really enjoyed it, I like the way you explained everything in the intro before jumping in and showing it.
Earned a new subscriber. Nice work!
Glad you enjoyed! thank you :)
I had an attempt at that and failed but this teaches me new things... I want to try again now, thanks!
Glad to hear that! Hit me up if you need more details ;)
@MirageC One of the most important things to me is dimensional accuracy of the finished part. To achieve that with higher performing materials (CF-Nylon to PEEK and beyond). Any of these are going to need heated enclosures. Once you go over 100*C in the enclosure, expansion of the all of the motion parts should be as similar as possible, or things could get out of spec during printing and over time deformation. Would seem that once we start talk heated enclosures (not 50-70*C, I'm talking 100*C and above), having different materials making up your motion system (carbon, titanium, aluminum, etc is going to affect overall part dimensional accuracy). I assume, by the title of this video, you mean 3D Printing without higher temp materials and heated enclosures in the 100*C and higher? Heat aside though, I'm a gram weenie at heart (I do wilderness backpacking and have started developing ultralight gear for that). So if open enclosure 3D printing, I think you are spot on here :-)
Good video. Every time I see that you upload something I have to look at it immediately
Thank you for your visit and loyalty :)
I'm not sure if I'm more impressed by your 3D printer or your video production skills.
Either way, BRAVO!!
When you are using this high acc. you might have loss steps that you won't know about.
Can you re-do the test and check if you have misssing steps after each test cycle?
the right way to check for missing step will be adding dail indactor and checking the bridge postion against the dail indactor.
It will also be intersting to see what prolong use with high acc. will do for the 3D printed part.
I agree this would give us a more accurate breaking point, but the overall curves would not look much different. I'll set a dial indicator with a routine to probe between each acceleration rate. Thanks for the suggestion.
@@MirageC From my exprince in motion it will give you diffrent stop point.
In the current way you stop when the motor is failing make the move, normally you lose steps a lot before the motor stop moving.
BTW, the drivers and microsteping setting also effect what the max power you can get from the motor, using lower microsteping will give you higer speed and tourqe preformance.
carbide burr style endmills work good in the milling machine for carbon fiber and G10, do it wet.
Duet2 can reliably run drivers at 2.4amps but you need forced air to the back side of the board, per the Duet wiki. It also helps to have the board set vertically too to encourage convection. I run my Duet2 at the max supported current of 2.4A without a sweat.
yes, I though I was doing a 30 second test, but I forgot motors were idling at full power and left for some family matters... ooops..
@@MirageC I forgot to mention, Duet3D or your reseller might be able to repair the board for you.
@@JeffDM Thank you, will look into that!
The only way to increase accelaration from now on is to run a moving table and y axis at the same time, with good adhesion you could double the performance. You could also use carbon for such a moving table
that would be absolutely insane speeds
Have you had a chance to check out the E3D Revo head with their new light weight toroidal heater block?
No unfortunately I did not have the chance. I am super happy with the Nova HotEnd which is a super tiny copper block with a 100W cartridge and M4 thread size nozzle.
Nice video and great idea for performance improvement! Keep it going!
A few grams could be pulled out of the gantry tube by optimizing the stiffness for the loads. You shouldn’t have much dynamic z-loading, and with your extruded/hot-end you may not have much torsional loading as well. A bunch of holes on rail side and back of rail side may lighten the gantry further.
48v motors would avoid more current while giving you double the power. And the octopus pro will drive them (up to 60v if you can find them)
Going to 4 ab motors which is now possible with klipper would probably also help because double the power and shorter belt lengths.
Also Canbus head pcb would likely lighten the assembly significantly by eliminating a ton of wires in the chain. Not sure if you’ve done that already. And a 48v pancake extruded motor will probably help too because it should be lighter.
Unfortunately 48v does not double torque. It only enables the motor to exploit a bit more torque at higher speed. But it is far from double. This is what I am running now, XY and E.
And yes, we asked the Klipper developpers for AWD last year (4 motor coreXY). It is now fully integrated in the main klipper fork.
As for CAN bus goes, there seems to be a communication speed limitation with some boards that is creating issues. I evaluated the weight a while back and it was not worth it. The weight of board and connectors is more than the wires it removes. It is not the entire length of wire that consume acceleration and energy from the motors. The weight of a CAN bus board with connector would.
@@MirageC Must be something wrong with those 48V motors. While it won't be perfect, if anything I'd expect MORE than double the power out of them because you're line loss on the wire will be almost half at the same wattage. And given the same windings, unless there is a design flaw you'll also see more power because of less wire loss and the ability to use thinner wires for the same power. This is what you see with an ODrive with BLDC motors as an example. 60V is WAY more efficient than 24V or even 48V at the same wattage.
Interesting about the canbus board. But I would assume that like unsprung weight on a car that the chain drag is a force equation based on the sine of the angle based on it's attachment point, so it's multiplying the weight which of course includes many wires instead of 4 and with only 4, you should be able to use significantly smaller chains which should save significant weight that is magnified because of the force equation like much like wheels and tire weight drastically affects performance in a car at like 5 to 1 per pound over sprung weight from the chassis. The speed issue is a speed issue in general with CAN. The idea board would be ethernet at 1 gbps with < 0.2 ms delay I would assume. Even 100 mbps over 2 pairs would be vastly better than CAN.
Of course reality and math equations are 2 different things often, but in a perfect system these should show major improvements.
@@jameshancock Steppers are very different from BLDC.
www.linearmotiontips.com/stepper-motor-performance-is-it-possible-to-get-high-torque-at-high-speeds/
I dont use drag chain they are too heavy and at those speed they would simply destroy themselves. ;) Qty2 AWG 20 and Qty9 AWG 24 wires in a sleeve aren't that much of a weight killer. ;)
I don't know if someone else pointed this out but to keep CF from fraying or delaminating after cutting use CA glue it will seal it and keep that strength to the end of the part . I use a medium gap filling formula. Interesting hope this helps and good luck in testing!
Your 3D printed tools to help you build this is awesome!
The next step seems to be air bearings with a hose running to the printhead -> better friction, less weight of the axis, slightly more mass to be moved and some more noise...
Your tips and tricks are obviously all from experience! absolutely genius. I could watch your work all day
Excellent progress! Love the video! 👏😎
Man I love the quality of this content! I will be building a full spec HevORT in the near future, cannot wait for it!
Very nice work for sure ! just a few suggestions/ideas... replace all but 2 (outer ends) of those bolts in the rail with carbon fiber bolts that would save a lot. Or you could also play with nylon bolts to keep the cost down a bit. or just epoxy the rail to the CF extrusion and remove all the bolts. There is probably also room to lighten that rail by drilling out the bolt holes to a much larger size and if epoxied together strength loss should not be an issue.
Love it when physics and good design allows you to do great engineering.
I have an idea for lighter extruders. I've been meaning to test it myself. But since I haven't had time, maybe I should just publish it. Then if it works, at least it can't be patented…
Combine both a Bowden and direct extruder. The drive-gears before the Bowden tube will exert most of the force. Then the drive-gears on the extruder can have a much lighter motor, whose only job is to control the extrusion more precisely.
Though obviously it wouldn't work with flexible filament. And I don't know whether the motors could simply be stepped in sync. Or whether a more complex control scheme would be needed to co-ordinate them.
dude. what quality. great video! really enjoyed the approach. always looking for content like this.
So many great ideas and techniques packed into a single video. Thanks for sharing your great ideas.
Have you considered peek or pai fasteners for the rail? This would give another large weight reduction over titanium and they are great for fastening to composites.
Amazing Work. My question is why not delete the carbon fibre tube or any other support gantry. Could you not just use the Linear Guide Rail with some fancy 3d prints? the bending of solid steel for 55grams should be miniscule. Issue to get around could be the back pressure from the hotend when clearances are incorrect. But once the clearance is perfected, you can go all out.
Dont forget: 55g grams at 56m/s² is a different story :D
Dig the vid.... id be curious to see a print time comparison on a real print. Since depending on print there are a combination of moves. Like what might you save over what would normally be a 2hr or 10hr print etc. Great job.
Great suggestion!
Great video! Well done and smart, as always.
You could save a few grams and resistance by making an airtight printer enclosure, running a vacuum pump, and voiding the encloser of all air, but then everything would have to be water cooled...and the extruded plastic would ooze...the part cooling wouldn't work, etc...
I dont the air drag would play a significant role in performance. Definitely not worth the investment.
i wonder if the opposite would be better, increased pressure for better cooling
That was a LOT more detail than I expected! Very well done, this will help a lot of people reach insane speeds I'm sure :D
It's hard for me to tell, but do you have your fan mounted to your extruder? Perhaps you could save weight by running an air hose from a remote air source. might save a few grams
I just got purchased a ender 3v2 a few ago and in love with printing now haha I'm already looking into get a better faster printer. Hopefully one day I can figure everything out and not feel so overwhelmed with all the technical parts of printing.
Excellent video, and thank you for much food for thought, I have ordered parts to convert my ender 5 pro into a mercury one, with an aluminium cross bar, now I want to do it in carbon fibre lol
Awesome brother!! Nicely done. First time we see your pretty face 😉 xxx
Well, a portion of it! :)
@@MirageC its honestly enough... hahah jk
@@Vez3D lol! :P
5:30 Cutting the carbon fiber under water will reduce or even eliminate air pollution. Nice video btw, sub earned!
What about replacing some of the printed plastic parts with hollow/slimmer resin printed parts?
good Idea! might give this a try! thank you
resin is usually weaker than filament prints and/or heavier
E3D ditched the carbon plate on their tool changer due to issues with the difference in thermal expansion on carbon fiber and steel (bending of the gantry).
Did you notice anything indicating this issue? Or is a carbonfiber tube simply just so much stiffer than a 6 mm plate that it neglects the bending/overpowers the rail?
They used a cf plate. The tube is stiffer. I didn't see any issue yet but my enclosure never goes above 45c
@@Vez3D Ok thanks Vez3D! True, yours are also carbon now..
Yeah I expected it may simply be stiff enough for it not to be an issue.
I will be reaching 80 degreees though. At first I was going for a 6 mm carbon plate, but then I saw that E3D blog post.. So now I was going with 6 mm aluminum plate, but seeing this I will see if my design can accomodate a tube like you guys. I am building a crossed gantry machine so it may not fit a 20x20 but maybe 20x15.
I have not noticed any issue while printing ABS with enclosure temps of 55C. But yes, this may be an issue at higher temps. Materials used in speed printing usually don't require high enclosure temperatures.
@@MirageC Thanks Mirage!
No I am not really aiming to beat you guys in a speedboat xD I prefer the best possible quality at higher than average speeds. The lighter, the less ringing at higher speeds :)
I will be happy with 10k acc and 100 mm/s speeds. I just want as little rigning as possible :)
Also, instead of screws/bolts, could you use carbon rods glued in place? Might save some more grams but everything would be permanent..
Could you mill a groove under the rail? To lighten the weight?
Yes, I have some plans like that.
Yes I enjoyed it very much. One small step for channel one huge step for 3D printing.
If you can get your yaxis in between instead on top you will reduce the mass rotation across the axis modern laser tech is using this ie eagle Fiber Laser
You did a perfect approach. I came around Your very fine video not by looking for speed, but more for reducing vibration on a given speed by reducing mass on the X-carrier. Since you explained so nice the Newton Law I do not need to go further - It's only to remark that Your approach as also a second effect, that is reducing acceleration induced vibration to the printer. Thank You so much for Your nice and also funny video 🙂🙂👍👍
My pleasure! thank you for your uplifting comment!
this seems really cool! keep in mind that 3d printing using filament is low impact but not no impact. there still is resistance from the nozzle drag (it can be alleviated from a higher temp during run and lower temp during slow down for control. i would suggest first 3 layers ramp up speed and temp to work from a stable surface , and last layers slow down temp and speed. travel moves will likely be quick on this machine. also i have seen designs that just use the rails themselves as the x-bar. i would imaging a head crash would be expensive for those designs...
Yes, head crash are bad at those speeds. Luckily, using springs on the bed helps a lot. I totally get your point with nozzle drag. The speed profile needs to be adapted to the part being printed. Good point.
@@MirageC can you elaborate on this a bit more? one of you two? lol
Wow, that was an amazing improvement. So much added lightness.
I can still see one small hanging fruit though: the bltouch. Surely a dockable probe would be a few grams lighter? Sure its not much in the grand scheme of things, but you did replace all the fasteners with titanium ones....
Using tape to stop the carbon fiber from fraying was brilliant, but you might still want to cut the CF wet. It will help keep any fibers out of the air and then settling on other surfaces, or your skin.
At 500g, a 15g improvement is still -3%.
and isn't negligible, because it's additive, if you manage to reduce the weight to like 150g, reducing by 15g is 10% then.
Current needs time to build up in the motor, at those high speeds you may not be reaching the set limits. You need to reduce motor inductance and/or increase the stepper driver supply voltage to maintain a decent torque at high rotational speeds.
Yes, we are using 48VDC to feed our motors and some special low inductance motors were selected.
You can use less screws if rail be attached to carbon by glue - it's fine for sportcar too)
Plastic parts can be replaced with fiberglass or carbonfiber- you can print blank for it or modelling parts with slots for fiberglass cloth
I was about to suggest titanium bolts and nut partly as a joke, but you already took that step :D
You might be interested in a Voron 2.4 Trident Metall X Achse X-Beam ultraleicht Carbonachse should be 32g at 350 lenght.
We can confidently say that it is people like you who actually drive printer technology. Not the big companies that later make the claims and reap the profits. Thank you for this video. Do you remember who came up with the ideas of input shaper and linear advance?
Thank you! Over the years I found that by sharing what I know, I receive much more knowledge via comments and encorragements than what I give. Open source community is full of good people with a lot of knowledge :) .
Unfortunately I dont have the exact name of the people you are referring. I always assumed that the father of Input Shaper was from the Klipper community. I think I know who but not 100% sure.
As for linear advance I believe this was from the Rep Rap community.
@@MirageC, again the open source community. Keep up the great work, you have no idea how uplifting your videos are for me and many other. Exploring the outer fringes of what can be done. So much fun.
@@MirageC, I am on the same bandwagon. My main education was through the internet from forums to TH-cam. In case you want to print faster and more reliable and much cleaner, here my 5 cents worth" Z axis: air bearings. For Y and X you must try linear servo motors. A quantum leap ahead of your Clearpath motors as you will have super speeds and a lot less motor noise. You will then open a can of worms as you will need the same quality of plastic delivery. We are so lucky to live in these times where we still can make a difference.
This was so intersting. Thank you for your work and sharing.
Impressive improvement. You can use aluminum alloy screws also. They're strong enough, lighter and cost less than titanium ones. Its also safe to use threadlockers with carbon parts. Loctite 273, or 638 if you don't want to take it apart anymore.
At this size (M3) aluminum hardware is easy to cross thread or strip the head. Comming from aerospace background I also wanted to avoid risk of galvanic corrosion.
@@MirageC You could use PEEK fasteners, they don't cost so much, if you need so few anyway.
Edit:also pulltruded Carbon tubes are more rigid for what you want.
Great content. And I appreciate your production quality.
Did you run some tests on temperature resistance of the CF tube? The epoxy used for those tubes is supposed to soften between 60-100C… I have only seen people using these without enclosures, would be very helpful to get some information about this. Maybe do a follow up and put the left over piece on the bed or in the oven at different temperatures?
Also heat expansion and contraction of CF could decrease print quality because CF shrinks while steel expands when heated. You could also place a dial indicator on the rail while running the bed at certain temps.
Would be a really interesting video imo.
Yes, you are spot on! Although this works right now, we need more data. I run this in a 55C enclosure, but most of print are high speed ABS or PLA without enclosure.
there are epoxies for CF which can withstand 150 or even 230 degrees C, typical Chinese ones are rated at 80C max if i remember it correctly, about thermal expansion - agree, having steel-titanium-carbon hard locked will definitely create points of thermal deformation for rails(yet steel-aluminium is kinda the same shit, so it won't decrease print quality but possibility to increase is not used)
@@SergeiSugaroverdoseShuykov I have a 500mm Vcore-3, and the gantry definitely warps when my chamber gets over 45C or so. Takes a good 2 hours of soak before the whole printer is stable.
In practice, it is not a problem since the gantry remains (mostly) straight during the first layer, and the warp is not too huge to muck up the final layer.
Causes issues if I start another print with out doing a bed mesh to compensate for the gantry warp
Thanks for providing such fascinating info to your viewers. I appreciate all of your efforts. Sincere thanks for sharing this!
My pleasure! It is when reading comments like this that I get motivated to produce more :)
That was amazing to see in action. Time to buy some carbon fibre
Have you seen the new BTT Octopus Pro? It has support for up to 60V for the motor power separately from the board/heaters etc. Since the steppers also can be pulled it might be cheaper to replace if you blow one.
YEs, I have one incoming :)
I want one, but can't actually find it for sale yet. Settled on the 1.1 out of desperation. BTT, please!
Interesting. Acceleration and speed are nice in a test like this, but can the extruder keep up, and will the plastic cool fast enough to let you print at high speeds?
you can have a look here: th-cam.com/video/ZtpQwZyuZP8/w-d-xo.html
or here: th-cam.com/video/h-ukClHtai4/w-d-xo.html
Misumi sells hollow linear rails. Have you looked into those?
Way late to the party on this but would it be possible to lap the carbon fiber tube on one side to make it flat? Of course you would need a known flat surface to compare it too but wonder the results on this idea.
You could probably do it very lightly. I guess that at some point, if you reach too deep in the fibre coth it may delaminate if the impregnation of resin is not uniform. Somebody else mentionned glueing the rail in place, so this would deal with surface irregularities as well.
Regarding the cutting of carbon fiber composite: used a cheap tile cutting saw. The water handles all the dust, and the diamond wheel leaves a smooth, precise cut without pulling any fiber.
Use CA glue to closeup the end grain of the fiber.
The next one heaviest part is the head, IMHO. It would be interesting to have a full ceramics hotend, or a non-moving laser head, where you have to only move the material feeder and melt it. It can be interesting to compare this new carbon fiber setup with the fastest delta printers - maybe the next move will be that you turn your printer to a delta printer.
I wonder if you could use machined aluminium nuts/fasteners. If you form tap the nuts, instead of cutting them, they get really strong, especially if you use a 7XXX-series alloy. Not as strong as titanium, but lighter.
Perhaps its my aerospace experience speaking, but Alu and CF are usually to be seperated by surface protection or intermediary material to avoid galvanic corrosion. could be feasible, but Ti is more straight forward in that respect i think. Now.. is it truly important for our applications?
@@MirageC Never thought about them reaction with eachother. All I know is I've used aluminium washers for CF parts with success on car parts. I machine a lot of 6- and 7XXX- alloy, but I work very little with CF.
I guess also galvanic corrosion is most problematic in a humid environment? Not really my field haha
this is crazy,, awesome... briliant...wow..wanna try it some day !!
insane!!!hello from patagonia Argentina.
Excellent content, a ton of info. Thanks a lot.
i wonder if you could get the linear rail to be made out of titanium. or even using ceramic bearings. and using a flex drive to remove the motor from the extruder.
You asked for Ideas: 1. You could do topology optimization for the 3d printed parts, if you can calculate the forces for that part, a titaniom build topology otimized rod might also be lighter than carbon fiber, but the carbon fiber tube might be aleady the best and will be much cheaper.
Have you looked into the annex Quickdraw? Not sure how much it weighs compared to the bltouch but not having a probe while printing should help.
Yes a detachable probe system would have some benefits I am sure
wow, great walkthrough video 👍☺️
Your videos are getting better and better 👍
thanks for sharing your experience with all of us 👍😀
It could be possible to build a new solution with two carbon fiber shafts and some plastic bearings..
Could also change the pulleys to ones in plastic.
That would eliminate the heavy rail. Guessing that is the heavy part that need to be altered to achieve a lighter solution.
There is some nice hollow carbon shafts from igus.
Showing us some comparison prints would be genius
It would be really cool to see how fast this is with odrive and sensored brushless motors.
I use clearpath servos from teknic. Some of my other videos are with them. Just need more fuel on the hot end now :)
Thank you, brilliant explanation and brilliant work.
Starting to get to Star Trek Replicator performance :) Awesome!