Greetings from Virginia

[G_T]

Hello everyone,

I'll apologize in advance... I typed for too long, and haven't transferred any pics or vids from my phone yet.

I'm in the process of bootstrapping a warm Trident with various mods. It's reprinting some of its parts now, out of PC-ABS. The printer is insulated and has achieved chamber temps up to 72C which means ABS parts in some areas might not be the best idea since they may get over the 85C Tg.

I've had trouble with most everything coming loose due to the heat soak I think. And I've certainly annealed some of the ABS in the Stealthburner.

I also degraded and had to ditch a set of POM nuts in less than 40 hours printing... Running too close to Tg for the material, and then add in some grease, and they were eroding/dissolving away. They got to sqealing very loudly and developed excessive vertical slop. It got to where bed leveling was failing as often as not. I machined some PEEK replacements which are in the printer now. They'll not have any such issues.

Printer started as an LDO 300 cube kit, last November. It is being progressively modified. As of now it has two BentoBoxes in, one with activated charcoal and one with Scorch. This particular printer seals up pretty well and the two internal filters make quite a bit of a difference in fumes. And noise. The inside still stinks though!

It uses RamaLama2 front idlers. It has the bearing mod. It had high temp Gates belts but I think they were counterfeit. The tooth spacing wasn't consistent enough over longer lengths, leading to some gantry squaring issues. So right now it has regular ones in there that are working fine. I have another batch of EPDM belt on order.

It has beefy aluminum corner braces all over the place. It has bolted on AGM panels, and a 6mm polycarbonate single front door. It is one solid and heavy box. It has 2 layers of insulation on the inside, 1mm cork, and then the thin reflective fiberglass insulation. Both self-adhesive. The adhesive has been surviving the temps fine so far.

It is now sensorless X and Y as of this past weekend, and has Vitalli's CNC tap.

It has a Ti backer on the X, and I'm using some MGN9 rails that didn't pass inspection as backers on the Y. I have a Lightweight Labware kinematic mount for the bed. The bed shape really doesn't change over the whole temperature range. I just have to be really careful when I tilt the printer back to access the electronics!

I have a Boden tube pivoting guide in there, and a scrub brush / bucket. I also have a filament dust wiper. There are Z motor covers. I'lll be replacing the LED ribbons with COB LED bars in a few days. I can say the adhesive on the back of the LED ribbons doesn't like higher temperatures.

Before long I'll be replacing the current gantry with a CNC aluminum one and changing to genuine HIWIN Z1 linear rails (Had to order from Europe since I couldn't tell what was genuine and what was a knockoff here in the US). I may go to umbilical at the same time, or more likely delay that a bit longer. I'll probably replace the thermal fuse with a bit hotter one at that time (125C to 150C). Eventually I want to try CANbus.

I plan to replace the A & B motors and mounts with a long shaft stepper + top bearing setup for better stability when I push the temperature. I'd planned to print those parts out of PC-CF but we'll see. I have the filament, just haven't tried printing with it yet. I want to get the printer a little bit hotter first before printing those parts.

I plan to work on the stealthburner to try to make something that will be happier at a bit higher temperature (and be simpler). I'm thinking of trying to make something like a mini stealthburner with something planetary on top, that works on the Tap. I don't care all that much about fancy lights on it. We'll see what comes out. I'll probably print those parts out of GF-PA12 since they'll get the most heat exposure and little mechanical load. But with a couple changes I might try printing the smaller parts out of Ultem 9085, or PEKK, or PPSU. Probably fail, but very tempting to try! I'll have to run the bed at 140C so there are some parts I'll have to print in GF-PA12 or PC first or there will be some serious problems with bed stability and the wiring underneath!

Too bad this thing takes most of an hour to get up to marginal temp for PC-ABS. Lots of mass and not enough heat.

Anyway, the target is to be able to make good prints out of medium grade engineering filament, such as the PC family and other stuff in a similar temperature range. So I want to get the chamber temperature over 80C and of course the bed hotter than I can with the current thermal fuse. I've had large prints fail with layer separation at 70C average chamber and extrusion up to 280C with PC-ABS, with bed in the 110 to 120C range, so I don't think it is worth trying straight PC yet. PC-CF might be ok though.

Since I'm not sure what I can print that will handle the heat better than ABS without other issues, I'm trying to replace everything in the hottest regions with metal to the extent that I can. For any remaining critical plastic parts I'm trying to bootstrap up to higher temp materials that hopefully also won't creep. If I can't make that happen the metal content will increase. In the end it will be a Voorish Trident (I'm sure someone has to have used that phrase before so I'm probably mis-using it). I'll post some pictures at some point.

Printer boostrapping with only one printer... Not the fastest approach.

I probably missed some mods here and there, but that's a bit of a brain dump on the printer.

Gerald  (G_T in various forums)

[mvdveer]

Welcome - interesting journey. I think @Buurman was at one stage thinking of building a printer capable of printing PEEK. Will be following with interest

 

[PFarm]

Welcome to the forum.

[claudermilk]

Welcome to the forum. That Trident is quite the project.

Nero played around with printing PEEK last year with his old V1.8. Thus spawning the "the front fell off" meme in the Voron community.