Improve your CORE X, Y, printer to go to be a 5 (or up to 9) axis machine.

This post is not for the lazy minded 3 D printer users, only for the ones that have the grip on bettering their lives, and machines.

If you do not poses a Core X,Y but still want to make your "more than 3 axis" machine, yes you can, it is just that a Core X, Y, machine has almost everything you need in it to be canibalised, while a bed slinger needs you to buy more parts to match the new configuration, that is all.

WARNING:

Do not remove this Warning, it is here to Warn you.

Jokes apart, WARNING, this post is not for fainted heart 3D printer users that can barelly stand the fact that their printer makes noise in the room, hence rarelly use it.

This post is for them that understand that going this way takes work, lots of work, patience, some money, and time, not days, not weeks, maybe months.

You will be printing large scale of intricated geometries, that should NOT warp, hence you need enclosure, heated chamber (even if only with a bathroom fan blower) stupid materials prone to warping such as ABS, Nylon, PPS, PP, etc are needed, PC is not recomanded for layer adhesion reasons.

To start with here is my portal wherefrom you can buy all the STL files you need:

https://3dmential.com

Also this entire text above is but a huge link to the same portal,just in case...

Machine overall description:
It is a Core X, Y, system but... the bed does the Z axis based on 3 motors that act indipendently to also create the U axis and the V axis, that is tilt the bed some 30 degrees left and right from horizontal; U axis, and same for the back and forth from the horizontal; V axis, and any combiantion between them 2 tilting axix extremes, and anywhere in between.

This gives you the advantage that you will need almost ZERO SUPPORTS while printing. I mean if you print an empty cube touching the bed on the tip of a corner only, than bed surface is obviously not enough and some external supports are needed to keep the cube in balance, but they are external, and you still can print an empty cube and need zero supports inside, where you canot clean them up once you closed the cube. Same works for a sphere.

So we normally have an overhang printing capability with zero supports up to maybe 45 degrees, stretching a bit you can print overhangs up to 60 degrees, doable on any printer today. But if you can tilt the bed so that the nozzle stays within 60 degrees raported to the printed position vertically by gravity when your printed positon raported to the bed is at 90 degrees, technically you are at the gravity limit of an overhang without supports.

Now, if you think this all it takes... just have a thought; tilting the bed makes your printer gantry go astray from the bed, you nozle cannot reach anymore the targetd print because the bed edges will hit the Core X, Y, gantry system before your nozzle can reach the printing spot.

Hence a Top Down Z axis system is required. Ups, now you got TWO Z axis to deal with. So on the printing head carrier you have an extra Z axis motor lifting up and down an aluminium profile bar that at the botom end has the printing head, compensating in height to reach the printed part over the limits of tilted bed touching the gantry. And this adds weight to the Core X, Y, system, and this will slow down the machine.

But hey, printing with nylons and other exotic materials will slow down your machine by definition anyway, so where is the problem?

Just think of it, printing with supports, PLA, you eliminate 30% of printed material at the end by cleaning supports, say 10 USD of PLA used, 3 USD is waste. And waste of time to print supports. And waste of time to clean supports. And waste of time to sand where your supports were broken from.

Printing with say... PEKK at 1000 USD a Kg, 30% supports is..... 300 USd thrown away.

But if you use the Rumba 5 axis machine system, barelly any supports needd, maybe 10 USd of PEKK goes to waste, although you print slow due to material constrictions (and machine restrictions) by simply not printing supports your total printing time might be similar with printing in PLA with supports. And you waste no time with cleaning any supports in the end, and no time wasted on sanding down tose pesky supports breaking points.

Total processing time? Shorter than printing with supports. And supports wastage limited to a minimum if at all.

As I finish assembling the machine and start coding for it to make it move around (together with a professional in coding, since my coding capacity is limited) I will update this post, and I will update some youtube video footage.



5 Axis machine build needs:

- New bed motorised system on 3 axis, Z, U, and V. Headache to print it on a regular printer, more hadache to clean the supports and assemble.

And

- New print head carrier system with top down mini Z axis motion added, so on the gantry you will have a Core X, Y two motors plus a mini Z top down motor to manage.

And

- Cherry on the cake, you need a system to swap the printng head with the tool to "read" the bed postion before printng, thus creating 3 mesh readings, one mesh on Z, one mesh titled on U and one mesh titled on V to determine the pivoting center point each time before you start skirting filament out of the nozzle, that requires a TOOL CHANGER, so I designed and testd for 3 years now the Flip, a manual tool changer that allows you to swap heads at will. Working on the automated version of it right now

- Last but not least, a titled bed cannot be tested for accurate positon with any sensors, you need a mechanical touch probe pretty much like a CNC machine probe, but dedicated. So here I have for you the dedicated CNC like 5 axis probe on a Flip head. Unlike the CNC machines tool that only have ONE reading impulse regardless what direction the probe hits from on the object edge, determining the hit point just by deduction of the direction the probe was ported to, this head has 5 microswitches, hence the reading directional accuracy is no longer dictated by the motion only, but also confirmed by opening or closing the signal circuit of a specific microswitch of a certain axis at each touch.

And tis is but the begining of what you need, but it starts you up into the new era; Non Planar Printing, that is yet all to be conquered, Open Source style, by you and I and the rest of us out there having ideas, doing out bit, and pushing progress forward.