My 1st 3D printer was a success, and right after getting it working I had moved onto my next printer. I had identified that the convention was to overbuild printers, for example, there is a commercial printer that can mill aluminium if a spindle is swapped out for the extruder, which I find ludicrous! I wanted to experiment with a few methods of getting the cost down:<\/p>\n
Axis Drives:<\/strong> The printer uses braided fishing line and an M8 bolt instead of timing belt and pulleys, which worked pretty well. I did, however, find that the fishing line slipped over time, so I introduced a few lines of G-code after every layer so that it homed itself to reset its position. I concluded that fishing line could be used effectively, however, it would have to be fixed in place on the pulley to ensure that it wouldn’t slip. Linear Rails:<\/strong> I saw the v-groove on flat bar as an interesting idea and wanted to test it. I used steel rulers for the X-axis and aluminium angle iron for the Z axis. Both have stood up to thousands of hours of printing with almost no wear.<\/p>\n This printer was a fantastic workhorse and aside from the small slipping issue it was a perfect machine.<\/p>\n
\nThe rack and pinion drive worked very well, and the only issue that I had was how difficult it was to get it perfectly parallel to the motion of the axis. The main issue is that the axis has to be built in such a way that it limits the range of movement, so if it was used it would compromise the range of motion.<\/p>\n