FolgerTech Ft-5 with Trident Gantry/belt Path

[TheJoe90]

This is my attempt at modernizing my Moms FT-5.  This machine already had a Duet2 Wifi mainboard which is a great board, no reason to change that.  I also dont want to buy z rails and extra steppers, since the bed movement system is fine for my purposes and any multi motor bed system would require a new mainboard.  I found this FrankenVoron/FT-V and originally I was going to fallow his guide and had already printed the parts when I realized how unhappy I was with the strange double belt setup.  I also wanted to choose between any Voron Toolhead.  I decided it would be better to build a trident/2.4 gantry and belt path and simply mount the gantry upside down.

At this time Im using the bed mounts from the FrankenVoron Repository 

Goals: 
Cheap
Fast
Easy
Compatibility with as many Voron Trident mods as possible

Custom Parts:
The FT-5 uses MGN12h Carriers, so I used this simple and mininal mod: Voron Trident XY Gantry Conversion to MGN12H Rails by Keemo | Download free STL model | Printables.com
The y rails are long enough I didnt have room for the front idler, so I took the "Beefy Idler" mod and reduced the amount of space needed for on the extrusion between the Y-rail and the vertical extrusion down to 25mm.  This will be uploaded to printables as a remix soonish.  This would need further tweaking if you want to enclose the printer since it currently sticks out in front of the machine.  You could also just cut down your Y-rails by about 10mm.  

Cutting extrusions
Have to cut the X gantry extrusion by 36mm, be careful not to get chips in the rail and be sure not to let the carriage fall off of the rail.  
The piece that goes between the motors in the back will need cut down to fit.  I had a piece that fit well enough for now, so I have not done this cut yet.  I want to figure out the FrankenVoron bed mounts first
The Trident has a brace that goes down the middle of the back of the frame, I plan to instead use a short piece of extrusion to brace against the top of the frame.  

Issues Im tracking during assembly:  
Distance from gantry to the print bed
The "Upper" xy joint piece, which is on the bottom for our purposes, may be gently rubbing the Z Rod holders.  The STL could easily be modified in the slicer, but I will probably modify the ones I already have printed with a belt sander.  

Better photos coming soon!

[TheJoe90]

Today I added some rail stops on both ends of the X rail. I couldn't find a pattern I really liked so I just scaled up the Voron 0 rail stops to be 10mm deep and they work fine. 

No stops needed on the y axis rails because they are already squeezed in so tight. 

I also was getting ready to cut down the extrusion joining plates [see the phase one instructions of frankenvoron] but then I found these 90 degree pieces left over from a previous project. They will work just fine. 

The Gantry pieces were rubbing the z rod holders but I was able to gently sand it down in place. [See photo one]

Next is belts and configuring sensorless homing!

[mvdveer]

13 hours ago, TheJoe90 said:

This is my attempt at modernizing my Moms FT-5. 

Will be following along. Nothing wrong with the pictures. I was doing a late spring clean in the storage area and in my "may tubs" of 3d Printer left overs found an unused Duet board and screen. This was originally meant for the Ender 5 Plus that turned into a Mercury One AWD and has an Octopus Pro board. Still have an Ender 5 and CRX to convert - think I'll use it there - just to give myself a challenge. You have just triggered that itch - now I have to scratch it.

Looking forward to more pictures, the build progress and the end result

[TheJoe90]

Got the belts and toolhead on, pictures coming soon.  

New issue, the Duet2 Wifi cannot use sensor less homing with Klipper, which I hadn't realized.  Now Ill need to read up on the endstops for the trident and figure that out.  

Pictures and speed testing will come soon.

[mvdveer]

3 hours ago, TheJoe90 said:

Got the belts and toolhead on, pictures coming soon.  

New issue, the Duet2 Wifi cannot use sensor less homing with Klipper, which I hadn't realized.  Now Ill need to read up on the endstops for the trident and figure that out.  

Pictures and speed testing will come soon.

Bummer - didn't know that either. I run endstops on both my Tridents. Sensorless homing was not a rabbit hole I was going to venture down..... yet  - maybe someday. X-Endstop connects to the toolhead board. Y-end stop at the left back corner of the frame so the wires can run in the extrusions.

[claudermilk]

Ooo! I get to push to for a change! 

On Klipper sensorless homing is really easy. I had to switch my Trident over when the X switch failed. I went through this document: https://docs.vorondesign.com/tuning/sensorless.html  It took maybe half an hour. Maybe I got lucky, but dialing in went quickly

[PFarm]

3 hours ago, claudermilk said:

Ooo! I get to push to for a change! 

On Klipper sensorless homing is really easy. I had to switch my Trident over when the X switch failed. I went through this document: https://docs.vorondesign.com/tuning/sensorless.html  It took maybe half an hour. Maybe I got lucky, but dialing in went quickly

Congrat!

I've been using sensorless homing on both Trident and V2 for over three years now, and it works flawlessly when properly set up.

[TheJoe90]

17 hours ago, claudermilk said:

Ooo! I get to push to for a change! 

On Klipper sensorless homing is really easy. I had to switch my Trident over when the X switch failed. I went through this document: https://docs.vorondesign.com/tuning/sensorless.html  It took maybe half an hour. Maybe I got lucky, but dialing in went quickly

 

14 hours ago, PFarm said:

Congrat!

I've been using sensorless homing on both Trident and V2 for over three years now, and it works flawlessly when properly set up.

Thank you both, this is not a klipper issue. This is an issue with The duet 2 Wi-Fi being a very old MCU, designed for RepRap firmware running directly on the MCU. It seems that it doesn't output any of the stall guard information to the klipper host. 

This would not be an issue for anyone running a modern MCU. The duet to Wi-Fi supports sensorless homing with RepRap firmware but not Klipper.

I was able to get two end stops mounted and the machine works!

I had been thinking this bed heater was dying due to some strange behavior, but turns out the temp sensor had come unstuck from the bottom of the bed, so that issue is solved.

X now goes from -15 to 338, so 353mm of travel. [I'm not running the original rail but you could actually fit a little bit longer of a rail here.]

Y now goes from -17 to 328 so 345mm of travel.

I did some speed tuning and landed on a comfortable everyday value of 400 velocity with 20,000 acceleration and 25 SCV.

Toolhead is the A4T with an Orbiter, the nitehawk-36, Eddy USB, and Revo 40 Watt hotend. Max volumetric flow is only about 12 or 13, so the fastest benchy it can do is 15 min 30 seconds. 

The PI 3A I've been using as a klipper host on this machine for the last few years made for a really frustrating limitation. It only has half a gig of RAM so I ordered a pi 4 2gig to replace it. 

Still got a lot of wiring to clean up, have to get the duet screen working again, I still want to make sure the gantry is perfectly straight and put a support on the back side between the motors. 

Overall I'm pretty happy with how this is performing though, and while I spent a lot on the tool head, converting the motion system was shockingly affordable. Just a few bearings, a bit of ASA, and new belts.

I'll post a video of it zooming around soon

Edited January 20 by TheJoe90

[TheJoe90]

https://photos.app.goo.gl/VDsAyHMapN9AqoLi7

That is a video of the speed test validation.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/v8Ff68wmiWcCAzpD7

Here is a bit of it actually printing.

[TheJoe90]

I had to remix the beefy front idler to fit between the Y rail and the frame, and now that model is on printables: FT-5 Voron SBFI by The Joe | Download free STL model | Printables.com