Terawatt Industries 00str00der Build Instructions & Preliminary Review

In the never ending quest to try and improve print quality on my RepRap MendelMax 1.5 3D printer, I decided to try a belt-driven extruder. I recently replaced my original extruder's straight-cut gears with helical gears which caused a noticeable improvement to part quality. The next step would be to move to either a direct drive extruder or a belt / gear drive system. The direct drive extruders I've seen use 1.75mm filament, but I'm set up for 3mm filament and have many spools on hand. So, it's either a gear drive or belt drive. Gear drive systems still have some backlash- and a GT2 belt drive system will have almost none.

One choice that looked interesting was Terawatt Industries' 00str00der belt-driven extruder kit. It was a drop-in replacement for my Wade's gear drive extruder, and their kit seemed to include everything for an easy build. I considered printing the parts myself, (models found on thingiverse here) and sourcing all of the parts from the various sources. But, after taking into account parts costs and shipping, it wasn't a bad deal to buy the complete kit directly from Terawatt Industries. I also upgraded the motor at the same time- replacing my original small Nema 17 stepper I bought from the industrial surplus house and moved to a larger "standard" size Nema 17 stepper.

Unfortunately, the kit didn't come with any instructions, and those found online either on reprap.org or Terawatt's site were not very complete. I took photos and notes during assembly of my kit, hopefully they'll be helpful to someone.

Kit, as received from Terawatt Industries

 The belt-drive extruder kit arrived nicely packaged from Terawatt industries. The various "vitamins" were individually packaged from the printed parts.

Extruder body

 The part quality of the printed parts was acceptable, but not spectacular. One nice plus was they included two copies of the idler body- something that (in my experience) tends to fail over time.

Kit Printed Parts

 The "vitamins" included in the kit seemed to be decent quality, and complete.

Extruder Belt Drive Kit "Vitamins"

 Step 1: clean out filament hole in extruder body. I used a #28 0.140" drill

Cleaning out filament hole

Step 2: Attach stepper (not included) to extruder body with M3x10 SHCS and M3 washers. (not included). M3x12 SHCS might be better, but I didn't have any available. Don't fully tighten screws, you'll be removing the stepper later.

Stepper Bolted on

 Step 3: Attach pulley to stepper.

Pulley in place

 Step 4: Get Hobbed bolt properly aligned. The bolt head should be on the "left" or non-drive side. 4x 8mm washers under the bolt head, and 2x 608 bearings aligned the hobbed portion of the bolt perfectly with the filament path in the extruder body.

Hobbed Bolt in position- note hobbing is directly aligned with filament path

 Step 5: Attach 608 bearing and large pulley to hobbed bolt on the "right" side of the hobbed bolt.

Step 6: Attach belt. To get the belt on, I removed the small pulley, put the belt on the large pulley, and carefully slid the small pulley back into position with the belt in place.

Belt attached

 Step 7: Tighten stepper bolts. This step isn't really necessary, as you'll be removing the stepper later to install it on the mounting plate and X-axis slide.

Step 8: Assembly Idler. Insert 8mm threaded stud into remaining 608 bearing, and press into idler. The idler required some cleanup with a x-acto knife for the 8mm threaded stud to fit. Press captive nut into idler body.

Idler, Assembled

Other hardware for idler

Captive nut in place

 Step 9: Install Idler. Attach to extruder body and insert fastening screw and tighten.

Idler attached

 Step 10: Clean out 4 mm nut traps for idler tensioner with X-acto & install 4mm nuts. The part quality of the printed extruder body was a bit dodgy here, and one wall of the nut trap ended up breaking when I was cleaning it out. So far it seems to work fine, but I might have to print a new body myself.

Cleaning out nut traps

M4 nuts in nut traps

 Step 11: Install 4mm tensioner screws, washers, and rubber "springs"

Idler tension screws installed

 Step 12: At this point, I realized that I wasn't going to be able to install the assembled extruder head on my printer without doing some dis-assembly. The minimum amount of dis-assembly is to remove the belt and stepper motor. I stripped it all the way down for easier access to all of the hardware during mounting on the printer. Pre-assembling everything on the work bench is the way to go, though, as it's easier to trim edges and test fit parts before the extruder is on the printer.

Extruder, dis-assembled

Extruder body attached to mounting plate

M4 screw detail

 Step 13: Install on printer

Old extruder

Old extruder removed, tail end of hot-end visible

New extruder bolted into position with stepper installed

Mounting bolt detail

Idler & hobbed bolt install

Pulleys and belt re-installed

Belt Detail

Extruder backside detail

So far I've done the initial tuning and printed a few small sample parts. After limited tuning my steps per mm setting was 535.3524.

Overall, the belt-drive 00str00der was an easy build and upgrade. My initial prints have looked pretty good, but I don't have enough data to say whether it improves part quality in a big way. At the very least it should be a more durable option, eliminating the need for extruder gear replacements. More details and a final opinion to follow.

Ubuntu 13.04 w/ Repetier Host and Marlin firmware

Ubuntu 13.04 Linux w/ Repetier Host
I started having issues driving my MendelMax 1.5 (Marlin firmware) with my creaky old HP Vista laptop after I "upgraded" to Repetier Host 0.90c. STL files wouldn't visualize when imported into the model placement window. Rather than try and track down a Windows 7 license for the old laptop to fix this issue, I decided to try Linux, and I was able to obtain an old obsolete T61p Lenovo laptop from my employer for a nominal cost.

To my surprise, Ubuntu 13.04 installed extremely easily with no driver problems at all. Even the keyboard volume and contrast keys worked. The Repetier Host install (found here) was a bit of a pain to install, requiring a separate installation of Mono. I still can't get Repetier host to run any way except typing the command into the command line. I'll have to do some additional research to fix this- ideally I could pin it to the left hand application bar.

Once installed and running, I could not get it to talk with the printer. I've used this laptop with this exact Ubuntu installation to program Arduino boards before, so I knew it should be able to communicate successfully. After some web searching, I saw that Mono doesn't support the default Repetier Host / Marlin firmware baud rate. I went into the Marlin firmware, updated the Baud rate to 115200, recompiled, and updated the Repetier Host settings. Bam, worked!

Question- is the Repetier firmware any good? Would it be worth changing from Marlin to Repetier?

Solidworks on personal Laptop, RAM upgrade
I have the home license for Solidworks (2013, 64bit, SP04) installed on a two year old laptop running Windows 7 with 6Gb of RAM. This laptop has an i7 processor with a decent consumer graphics card, so it should have run Solidworks pretty well, at least for simple models. But, it had all kinds of graphics window stuttering, making modeling really annoying. I've thought about upgrading the RAM for the last year, but didn't want to spend the money because I wasn't sure it'd fix the issue. I finally purchased a 8Gb stick so I could upgrade the RAM from 6 to 12Gb- and that was absolutely the ticket. It isn't perfect, and doesn't run as well as my desktop at work, but it gets the job done. No more mystery stuttering. So if you are wondering if the RAM upgrade is worth it, just do it.

Littermaid Litterbox fix w/ Arduino

Our Littermaid automatic litter box decided to die a week or two before a week long vacation- exactly when it needs it to work. The motor appeared to be fine- just when plugged in, it would try to return to home position, reach it, and the motor would continue to grind away until the electronics timed out. Then, no more activity. I opened it up and pulled the circuit board out. I hoping to find an obvious problem- burned components or other clues to what failed. Nothing was obvious. I also tested both limit switches, and both seemed to be fine. The motor also easily turned when it was fed 12V DC. Instead of troubleshooting each component, I decided to completely replace the stock electronics with an Arduino and a motor driver shield.

After examining the dissembled litter box, I found a pretty simple machine:

• 12v DC Gear motor for driving the rake
• Limit switches for home and maximum travel
• IR LED / Phototransistor to detect the cat

I wanted this to be as inexpensive and easy as possible of a project, so I chose to re-use all of the stock sensors and motor.

Since an Arduino can't supply the required power or voltage to control the motor, a separate motor driver is needed. I chose to use a Seeedstudio motor drive shield as it was available at the local RadioShack store. This shield is also nice because it'll supply power to the Arduino it is attached to. One big negative, though, is that all of the I/Os are all proprietary "grove" connectors which RadioShack doesn't sell except in a $50 kit. 

Seeed Studio Motor Shield

I did a bunch of searching on the internet to try and find a local solution, or at least one that didn't require ordering parts from China. (Seeed Studios ships from China, not a domestic warehouse) Since I needed to finish this project relatively quickly, I couldn't wait for some parts to arrive from across the Pacific. Sparkfun does carry a cable / connector assembly that is really close. It fits after some modification with a X-acto knife. 

Sparkfun JST Jumper 4-Wire Assembly

The actual wiring of the project was pretty straightforward- basically hook everything up, make sure the appropriate pull-down resistors were in place, then start writing some code. I first wired everything using a standard breadboard, then once it worked I transitioned the parts to a permanently soldered perfboard.

Fritzing illustration of breadboarded setup

I'm no codewarrior, so I wrote the arduino code as simple as possible, with lots of comments. There is also lots of feedback through the serial window to aid in debugging.

Use this project, details, etc at your own risk! 

Arduino Code:

/*

Littermaid catbox control

uses Seeed studio motor shield

portions of code from Seeed example code

 */

// set up sensor & switch pin locations

int sensorPin = A0;   // select the input pin for the cat presence sensor

int endPin = 3;       // select the input pin for the endstop

int homePin = 4;      // select the input pin for the home endstop

// set up motor pin locations, set by the motor shield used

int pinI1=8;               //define I1 interface

int pinI2=11;              //define I2 interface 

int speedpinA=9;           //enable motor A

int spead =255;            //define the spead of motor

// set up various delays

int sensorloopdelay=500; //delay in ms between loop repetitions when waiting for cat

unsigned long delayaftercat=600000; //delay in ms before cycling catbox after cat is detected, 10 minutes

// set up default sensor values

int sensorValue = 100;  // variable to store the value coming from the sensor. starting at 100 so no cat present

int endValue=1; // endstop status

int homeValue=1; // home stop status

unsigned long MaxTravelTime=30000; //maximum time for rake to travel each direction, assumes jammed if didn't finish in alloted time

void setup() {

  // initialize the various inputs and outputs

  pinMode(endPin, INPUT);

  pinMode(homePin, INPUT);

  pinMode(sensorPin, INPUT);

  pinMode(pinI1, OUTPUT);

  pinMode(pinI2, OUTPUT);

  pinMode(speedpinA, OUTPUT);

  

  //set up serial communications with computer

  Serial.begin(9600);

}

void loop() {

// run catbox cycle

int success=0; // cycle success (1) or failure (0)

int i=0; // loop counter

       Serial.println("cat box cycle start");

       

   while (i < 5)

   { // run cycle maximum of 5 times, stop when cycle is successful

     

     success = cycle(); 

     Serial.println(success);

            

     if (success != 0) // break out of 5 rep loop if cycle did not fail

     {

       Serial.println("successfull cycle");

       i=5; // break out of loop

     }

     else

     {

       Serial.println("unsuccessful cycle");

       i=i+1; //increment i

     }

   } 

// reset sensor value

sensorValue = 100; 

// wait until cat is detected

  Serial.println("waiting for cat");

while (sensorValue > 10) 

{

   // read the value from the sensor

   // if > 10 no cat

   // if < 10 cat is present - loop until cat is present

  sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin); 

  Serial.println(sensorValue); //print sensor value for troubleshooting

    

  delay(sensorloopdelay);

}

  Serial.println("cat detected");

  

// wait until cat leaves

while (sensorValue < 10) 

{

   // read the value from the sensor

   // if > 10 no cat

   // if < 10 cat is present - loop until cat is present

  sensorValue = analogRead(sensorPin); 

  Serial.println(sensorValue); //print sensor value for troubleshooting

  

  delay(sensorloopdelay);

}

  Serial.println("cat left, waiting for specified period of time");

  

// wait for specified period of time before running catbox cycle

delay(delayaftercat); 

                 

}

int cycle() //returns successful cycle or failure

{

  unsigned long startMove_time=0;

  unsigned long time_elapsed=0;

  int success=0; 

  

  Serial.println("start motor out");

  Serial.println("wait until endstop");

  // wait until endstop is reached

  

  startMove_time = millis(); // find time immediately before move start

  

      backward(); // start motor towards endstop

    Serial.println("moving towards endstop");

  

  while (endValue != 0 & time_elapsed

  {

    time_elapsed= millis()-startMove_time; // calculate time elapsed

    endValue=digitalRead(endPin);

  }

  

  stop_motor();

  

  if (endValue==0)

  {

    Serial.println("endstop reached");

    success=1;

  }

  

  if (time_elapsed >= MaxTravelTime)

  {

    Serial.println("outbound travel timed out");

    success=0;

  }

  

  endValue=1; //reset endstop value

  

  Serial.println("stop motor");

  Serial.println("reverse motor");

  Serial.println("wait until home stop");

  

    startMove_time = millis(); // find time immediately before move start

    time_elapsed=0; //reset time elapsed

    

  forward(); // start motor back towards home

          Serial.println("moving towards home");

  

    while (homeValue != 0 & time_elapsed

  {

        time_elapsed= millis()-startMove_time; // calculate time elapsed

        homeValue=digitalRead(homePin);

  }

  

  stop_motor(); // stop motor

  

    if (homeValue==0)

  {

    Serial.println("home stop reached");

    success=1;

  }

  

  if (time_elapsed >= MaxTravelTime)

  {

    Serial.println("inbound travel timed out");

    success=0;

  }

  

  homeValue=1; //reset home stop value

  

  

  Serial.println("stop motor");

  

  return success; //return value back to main loop

  

  

}

void forward()

{

     analogWrite(speedpinA,spead);//input a simulation value to set the speed

     digitalWrite(pinI2,LOW);//turn DC Motor A move anticlockwise

     digitalWrite(pinI1,HIGH);

}

void backward()//

{

     analogWrite(speedpinA,spead);//input a simulation value to set the speed

     digitalWrite(pinI2,HIGH);//turn DC Motor A move clockwise

     digitalWrite(pinI1,LOW);

}

void stop_motor()//

{

     digitalWrite(speedpinA,LOW);// Unenble the pin, to stop the motor. this should be done to avid damaging the motor. 

     delay(1000);

}

MendelMax 1.5 Stepper Motor Upgrade - no more skipped steps!

Ever since the first test prints on my MendelMax 1.5 reprap 3D printer, I've been struggling with skipped steps and layer mis-alignment in my X and Y axis. I've spend much time getting my X and Y axis as smooth and friction-free as possible, upgraded the stepper drivers, and adjusted the acceleration and jerk settings. These all helped, but nothing completely eliminated it. A couple weeks ago I finally decided to try some different stepper motors.

The motors I originally built the machine with were sourced from a industrial salvage yard, and didn't come with any sort of specifications other than they were a NEMA 17 case size and bipolar. (4 leads) I did see someone else's MendelMax with "store bought" steppers and I was shocked at how much longer the cases were and how fast he could get the X and Y axis to accelerate.

So, finally I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a pair of steppers from www.lulzbot.com. I've purchased other items from them in the past and they've always had good quality parts. I also bought a 0.35mm nozzle for the extruder as well. The 0.5mm I started with originally seemed "too big", and the 0.25mm I tried next was "too small". I was hoping the 0.35mm was "just right."

New Stepper motor specs:

• Step angle: 1.8°
• Holding torque: 55 N.cm
• Rated voltage: 2.8V
• 2 phase
• Resistance per phase: 2.8?,±10%
• Inductance per phase: 4.8?,±20%
• Operation temp range: -20°C ~ +50°C
• Wieght: 0.365Kg
• 4 AWG22 lead wires (ends are bare and need connectors)
• 5mm D-shaped motor shaft

Original motor on the left, new motor on the right

 As you can see, the new steppers are much longer than my original steppers. They proved to have a corresponding increase in torque.

The combination of the new X-Y steppers and 0.35mm nozzle has been great so far. No issues at all with step skipping- the nozzle just blasts through drips during traverses across the part during prints. The printed parts also seem to be more accurate and have cleaner details. I did slightly adjust the voltage going to the X and Y axis using the standard procedure without any trouble. Both Z-axis and the extruder stepper motor are still the original small steppers. I might upgrade the extruder stepper at some point in the future, as I've noticed it skipping steps occasionally. The Z-axis steppers work just fine though.

Swiffer replacement part

One of the first parts I printed was a new, improved design I modeled for a swiffer replacement part. (found on Thingiverse here)  It's a challenging part because of the internal thread to engage the swiffer handle- it requires clean bridging and good accuracy for the threads to fit correctly. The part fit great, much better than previous attempts. This is good because our toddler loves to swing it around and break this particular part. I printed the last attempt using a 80% fill, hopefully that is strong enough to last a while.

New Herringbone Gears

Next up was to upgrade the gears on the extruder. The original straight cut gears were getting noisy with a lot of backlash during printing. I chose to print these Herringbone gears off of thingiverse. They printed very well, and easily assembled. The nut trap in the small gear was very precise, and the nut dropped right in- something I had trouble with previously. The new gears run well with little or no backlash.

I'm considering upgrading the extruder to a belt drive unit and getting rid of the printed gears entirely. A belt drive would have zero backlash, and wouldn't wear out. The 00str00der on thingiverse looks interesting. The only problem is the belts and GT2 timing pulleys are tough to find, particularly at a reasonable price.

Octave 3D Printer Enclosure mini-Review

After trying several home-baked options for our lab Afinia 3D printer, I purchased a Octave 3D printer enclosure from www.octave.com. We wanted some way to control the air currents and air temperature around the printer. Our lab can be drafty and prone to big temperature fluctuations depending upon how hard the AC is blowing and if the sun is particularly strong. The Octave enclosure seemed like a very reasonably priced option.

Afinia happily printing away in its new home

The enclosure arrived pre-assembled in a big cardboard box within a few days after ordering. I think I was fortunate that I ordered it quickly after seeing the advertisement- Octave's website says they are currently back-ordered now.

The enclosure is a nicely designed ABS plastic box, with a clear plastic door. There is a slick trap door on the top for loading new filament into the extruder head, complete with a slot allowing for free motion during printing. My only nitpick would be to make the door another inch or two wider to the left, to allow for easier filament loading when the print head is in the full left "home" position.

Super slick top trap door & filament slot

Another door in the back of the enclosure allows for easy access to the Afinia's power and USB ports.

The Afinia's feet fit into sockets on the enclosure base plate, keeping it solidly in position during prints. Rubber feet on the bottom of the enclosure keep it anchored to your desk top or bench top.

A fan with charcoal filter ventilates the box, and a set of LED lights inside the enclosure keeps your print job brightly illuminated. I was a bit disappointed that there was no on/off switch for the fan and lights. To turn them on and off you must plug/unplug the included AC power adapter. I called Octave, and they said future versions would include an AC adapter with a switch, and would send me one when it is available.

The enclosure didn't include a spool mount. But, Octave makes 3D models of some mounts available on their website for download and printing. Another very minor nitpick is the arm that holds the "outboard" end of the filament tube doesn't fit the filament quite right- the filament doesn't "snap" into the slot at the end of the arm. The slot could stand to be a few thousands of an inch narrower, with a larger interior thru-hole for the filament. If this proves to be an issue I'll model a new arm and post it on thingiverse.com.

Approximate 30 degrees C interior temperature (blue tape holding thermocouple wire in place)

 Overall, I'd recommend this enclosure for purchase if you own an Afinia 3D printer. I can't yet say if it measurable improves print quality, but seems like it should.

Pros:

• Nicely designed & constructed unit. It seems to be good quality and should easily last the lifetime of your printer. 
• keeps interior at a fairly constant temperature
• LED interior lights a nice touch

Cons:

• No on/off switch (yet)
• Filament arm design could use a little more polishing