My Crazy Hobby

[autowiz]

How do YOU pass the time after work and before you goto bed and on the weekends? I consider myself to be an intellectual and as such need to keep my mind occupied in my downtime. And I have found absolute bliss in 3D printing. After some experience with 3d printing and for my 3rd machine I bought a Tevo Black Widow printer. I was taken by the thick aluminum extrusion frame and large build volume..

[autowiz]

I bought this machine back at the start of 2017 and from the time I purchased it I was committed to making it my own. From searching thingiverse and joining a facebook group for my printer I found 7 mods that I liked and printed parts for and applied to the initial build and from the start My Black Widow looked like this..



Early on I realized I needed a layer fan. That is a fan or fans to blow air directly on the hot filament leaving the extruder. I ran 2 fans in the beginning as it was the design I found on thingiverse..

[autowiz]

I switched from the belt drive with one stepper motor to 2 stepper motors for Z like every other printer uses..

[autowiz]

Then after some firmware updates for the mainboard and the TFT i gained the ability to pause a print and change filament at will. This required human intervention during a print but in truth is the beginnings of multi material printing for me. And so i hung 5 spools of filament from the top of my Black Widow's frame so the filament changes could happen easy and fast..

[autowiz]

Now I have embarked on an ambitious project to take the human intervention out of the 5 filament printing. I am doing this with the Prusa Research MMU2S, SKR 1.3 mainboard, LV8729 stepper drivers @ 1/128 micro stepping with the tft35 v3.0 touchscreen. I have also converted this machine to linear guides. Here is what my machine looks like today..

[The Torch]

All that simply amazes me but it looks like loads of fun

[The Punisher]

I have been slowly collecting gas signs and putting them on the side of my barn. They all light up with LEDs. Part of the fun is traveling to get them and meeting new people.

[autowiz]

Now that is cool. I wish I had a barn. If I had a barn I would fortify it. Bury it in a mountain of concrete with long term food storage, weapons, video cameras and maybe even some type or sort of missile defense system. Short range should be enough. Then I could realize my dream of a place for me and my printers safe from the persecution and judgement of my wife.

[autowiz]

I have finished reworking this printer. Somebody cue the Imperial March..



So now I have to program this thing. It has controllers but they are blank slates. I have to download universal firmware and customize it for my specific application. first 5 color print should be coming up here soon.

[KennyGS]

I'm fortunate that our engineering department has a 3D printer, which I've already used to make parts for my cars. Last one was a custom bracket for an oil catch can.

They really save a lot of time compared to what we used to do. Back in the day we'd have to machine up a fixture for a job, which would take hours of a draftsman's and machinist's time to draw and them setup and cut out of aluminum. Now it can be printed out from the same computer file without having to create a drawing or waste a block of aluminum.

[autowiz]

I am making progress. So far the stepper driver expansion boards and the MMU2S are killing the 5v supply from the mainboard. I might need to create an additional 5v like from a wall wart or something. We will see. But for now here is everything all powered up and looking the part..