I am building what I dub Frankenstein's printer from various components I could find in the electronics dumpster to print the proteins for a P3 Steel (toolson edition).
I want to elevate a scanner bed with an attached DVD drive motor for X-Y movements of the hotend. I plan to connect this by threaded rods to a base that also hosts the heated bed on a stury z-axis mechanism. To make this as stable as possible, I plan to conncect M8 threaded rods in the 8 edges in wooden blocks.
I am planning on 4 vertical rods and 2 crossing rods along the diagonals of the backside of the system. Additionally each side is planned to have one diagonal connected by a rod.
We're talking about a height of about 30cm and M8 rods. Will this introduce lots of vibrations and is it possible to avoid easily? Are there any better connection ideas or improvements I can make to this design?
*edit: here is a really bad hand-drawn sketch:
1 Answer
If I understand you correctly, compared to a Mendel RepRap you are using:
- M8 threaded rod (the same kind of rod used in the Mendel RepRap frame)
- roughly the same lengths of rod as in the Mendel, and
- cross-braced with more diagonals than the Mendel design.
So I expect less vibration and the same print quality as a Mendel.
Rather than put one block of wood at each corner with holes drilled at a bunch of weird skewed angles, the "1X2 split vertex" looks like it is a lot easier to construct.
I've heard several people claim that lots of threaded rods and associated corner connectors can be replaced with a few big sheets of wood in a 3D printer. See Mendel90, RP9, SGBot, WolfStrap, etc.
Looks like a very educational project. Good luck.