My adoptee is printing!
@Brook_Drumm sent me a Printrbot Metal Plus as part of phase 1 of #adoptabot.
This is a machine I’ve always wanted to play with and hack, so the opportunity to fix one up sounded awesome.
So. The machine came on Friday. It’s a metal plus with dual extruders. It was missing the front bed assembly plate (it’s a narrow piece that mounts to the Y rails and provides a static attachment point for the Y belt. They actually sent a 2nd of the rear plate which is much wider, and the belt position if you use 2 of the same would be opposed, so I didn’t feel like messing with that. I set it aside and machined a piece of aluminum angle to attach to the rails and have an oval cutout that the belt could be secured to.
The machine came with absolutely no electronics. No printrboard, no expansion board, no power supply. Brook you know me so well!
I drilled new mounting holes for the standoffs and put in an old factory sample of my Cohesion3D ReMix board - it has enough mosfets to drive both hotend heaters and both fans, has no trouble pushing 20 amps for the heated bed, and in general I felt like this board was a nice fit. I also added a CHIP next to it running Octoprint, the ReMix is actually powering the CHIP from its 5v regulator and so far everything has been extremely snappy. I’m not aware of any other boards that have 5v regulators that can do over an amp, much less the 2+ amps were doing here. Self contained, no extra power bricks or wires needed.
Along the way I sleeved the heated bed wires to reduce stress and snagging. I was going to do a drag chain but for now will stick with this.
XT30 connector for power from a 600w atx power supply.
The machine got upgrades too! You can see the filament holder which I think looks like the head of an Egyptian cat, and the feet for more stability.
Just did the first print which is definitely acceptable quality.
Fun weekend. Not quite ready to start dual extruding yet - it would be too great a distraction from everything else I need to be doing.
