11–20 of 41 posts
Really cool. I found myself traveling recently and missed my 3d printer. There were a few neat things I could have done if I had a printer in a carry on. It would be kinda awesome to have a self contained 3d printer with a battery to take wherever I go. If you're near a harbor freight, they have cheap rugged cases. Maybe design around that form factor, since they're easy to get?
Consider using a slightly higher level connection to the print head: just power and a serial protocol. That way you are immediately future proof. What firmware are you running on this?
I think the term is/was originally a product name for a small, rectangular module with a stepper motor driver on it [1] from 2012. Then it seems the term has been made more generic, with updated versions like the SilentStepStick [2] featuring a driver chip by Trinamic instead.
I guess my point is that for some readers, the stepper motor features on OP's board could be made more clear and perhaps use actual chip numbers, too. :)
Great job!
[1]: https://wiki.geeetech.com/index.php/StepStick_A4988_Stepper_...
For some reason my brain read the title as “3D printed motherboard” and I was really curious about how this was even possible, and I ended up being disappointed by the lack of detail on the github readme. It's only after a few more seconds back on the HN front page that I realized my mistake. Less exciting than what I read but cool project nonetheless.
I don't know what the state of the art is, but 3D printing circuit boards is a thing people are doing: https://all3dp.com/1/3d-printed-circuit-boards-pcb/
For some reason my brain read the title as “3D printed motherboard” and I was really curious about how this was even possible, and I ended up being disappointed by the lack of detail on the github readme. It's only after a few more seconds back on the HN front page that I realized my mistake. Less exciting than what I read but cool project nonetheless.
I thought it was pretty clever but they admit it was tricky to make work at all, let alone get good results.
Why all those heat sinks? Power electronics are getting very good these days with low RDS-on. Have stepper drivers not kept up?
I think we're only a few years away from BLDC servo motors taking over from steppers in 3d printers.
Ideally control algorithms for them would go into the MCU so there is proper force feedback too - ie. The system will know that there is an extruder clog by the increased extrusion force, or even set print speeds to be 'the fastest you can follow this path' rather than a fixed number of mm/sec. Ie. If the bearings get a little stiff it'll go slower rather than skipping a step.
There are some patents on sensorless servo control expiring which should cut the price of this stuff almost in half since the position sensor is one of the most expensive bits.
Power supplies are one of the more expensive parts of a 3d printer, and by having BLDC motors which can do regenerative braking, that same energy can be reused in the head and bed heaters, which should allow significantly smaller power supplies too - again with significant software complexity to make sure the bed heater primarily heats when the head is decelerating and stops heating whilst accelerating to not exceed the power budget.
You might find it interesting to look into AI-powered PCB design tools for your next iteration. There are some cool tools popping up that can use AI to assist with the trace routing and layout, which could make the process much less tedious for you.