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Building a Plastic 3D Printed Engine - junk idea or possible?

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raynerd:
Hi John, have pm`d you. Didn`t get a reply for the one I sent you a couple of weeks ago and haven`t been having any probs with my email that I know of.

Regarding the cnc machine - speed and acceleration. The bed fair flings itself about on the axis and it would take a long time to print objects. I`m printing at a much higher top speed and acceleration than my little cnc machine could go at.

That all being said, provided you were happy to wait for parts, I see no reason why it wouldn`t work!

raynerd:
John, pm sent! I lied, I have found the email 20/6/12 !! I must have opened but not read it as it wasn`t flagged as "new". Anyway, replied now.


CHris

John Stevenson:
Got one of these Roland PNC 3100's kicking about with bad electronics.

http://www.e-engraving.com/machines/roland/Roland_PNC-3100.htm

Thought it might make a good basic machine to start with ?

raynerd:
Possibly John, but you`d have to sort out the electronics on it as as far as I understand, the motors of all the axis are sync`d with the extrusion rate. The standard electronics for a reprap are an Arduino Mega with a RAMPs driver board attached, running pololu stepper drivers. If you used all that, you`d basically be running it as a reprap and it would all be nicely in sync with the free software needed such as a printrun/pronterface and slic3r. The question is would the pololu and 12v from the ramps board run the larger steppers that I expect are on the Roland. The ramps/arduino are only intended to run small nema17`s on a reprap. That being said, there is a chap on the reprap IRC channel who is running the standard Arduino controller and computer software but with a bigger TB6560 stepper driver, most definately capable of running bigger motors.

It is in an interesting project and I will be having the same issues when I engineer a more stable and rigid 3D printer design for me next build. I will be wanting to run bigger Nema23 motors (because I have some spare and they are a little more powerful for shifting a heavier bed) so will also need to figure out how to use an alternative to the pololu drivers.

Not much help... but I`d be interested to know if you get anywhere. I still think your biggest issue will be shifting that heavy bed around at speeds and accelerations that allow you to print at acceptable times!
Chris

John Stevenson:
PM sent

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