I bought the duplicator i3 plus a couple of months back and although it worked great out the box I knew it could be much better, the mods started.
The Head:
The stock setup wasn’t that bad and was performing quite well. It just seemed to be lacking in the part cooling department. I went through about 4 fan shroud designs before I decided the head layout was just too limiting to get sufficient cooling. Whilst looking for ideas I see that the new E3D lite6 hotends were going really cheap and decided, sod it lets change the whole hotend.
I design a whole new carriage with detachable fan ducts. pretty happy with how it turned out.
The Bed:
New bearings and a sheet or mirror I had laying about. Nothing special.
Extruder:
As i had to redesign the head assembly I wanted to remove the extruder to reduce weight and go with a bowden setup. I could have bought an extruder off Ebay but i wanted to make my own, after all, that’s the point of owning a 3D printer isn’t t it?.
Looking at some of my prints you could see they were never really smooth. Looked like little bumps all over them. It was a minor thing but it could still be better. I came to the conclusion that the bumps were pluses from the extruder as it pushes the filament through. I decided to gear the extruder 3:1 to give it better resolution and wow did that help.
Anyway here’s the result.
2 Likes
A couple more shots. I need to do more printing but looking good. What you think?
Very nice!
So gearing in the extruder is enough to create the little bumps? I figured it had more to do with retraction and layer starts.
Same material by the way.
That makes me wonder (again) what a pro-level stepper controller would do then. Something like Gecko drives. I switched from a L293 type (plain) stepper driver to Gecko drives on my CNC machine and the difference was night and day. It even sounded so much quieter and smoother. I think the Makerbot stepper modules are based on a L293-like chip too. The Gecko’s are vector drivers.
Yeah i’ve been thinking the same. Was also looking at new steppers with a smaller step angle, such as 0.9 Degree. This will give double the resolution with with the same electronics.
That may affect the torque though. As for the Gecko driver I have a G540 lying around…I will give it a shot over the Christmas holidays and report back. I am still iterating on my water-cooled hot ends…it’s working great!
Yes you are right, some little bumps are caused by layer starts and stops. slicer setting can improve those but they will always be there. The bumps I was referring too were like a continuous pattern along all edges. It made a part look almost glittery and gave them a bit of a textured feel.
See pic for a before and after.
Sator
10
It’s impressive! I’m just starting to learn 3d printing and recently bought Wanhao Duplicator I3 Plus. Your modifications really seriously improve the print quality! Where did you find these models of the extruder gears? You print them out of nylon? I would really appreciate if you could share this information. Thank you!
These are all my designs. They are printed in Wanhao PLA and im testing them for reliability. all good so far :).
Sator
12
and is it possible if you to share these models?
it will be very generous!)
Thank you so much !
I am developing this as a kit for the i3 plus. Additional parts are needed to get it to work and the printer needs quite a bit of rewiring. Also requires an E3D hot end.
The kit will include a genuine E3D v6 hotend, screws, printed parts and a pre-made wiring harness that just plugs in.
It’s not ready to go just yet, but I can offer you a full kit with all the parts at cost if you willing to a beta test for me.
Sator
15
Thank you for your offer. For this moment I would like to just change gears of the extruder system.
Sator
17
either way interesting to know what the cost of this kit.
Did you ever make anymore progress on this?
