I want(ed) to call it the ToolBox. However that may not happen due to SEO problems. I shall fight the good fight though..... There is nothing that we know about software wise. We hope that now we have done the hardware, some software people will jump on board and make the required changes to a slicer for it to work efficiently with the tool-changer.
Hey gregg, excited about the direct drive tool changer just curious how the progression of this specific tool is coming along.
Will the drive gears be set at a specific distance is that why. I run a range of durometer material so I use things like 80a, 40d, 55d, 63d, 72d, nylon pretty regularly and prefer nothing but direct drive. Thanks Tyler
Would the Zesty Nimble fit onto the toolhead ? @Stian Indal Haugseth did it with Greg's bowden on the Bigbox and an E3D chimera.
This is the route I will go myself and the zesty nible is so compact I dont think this will be an issue. Obviously I will share the design though I will limit it to a single v6 extruder, not the chimera setup.
I would be lying if I said I didnt consider it. I would like to have the zesty for all tools but I wil start with just the one to test the advantage of the direct drive over the titan bowden with capricorn tubing. For flexibles I would like to use the flexion extruder I have lying around but I dont have any bright ideas of how to drive it yet, since printing speeds are lower for flex anyways a direct drive is possible, I am just a little worried about the size. DIY rotational shaft is something I might try, but all this is parked until AFTER the "toolbox" arrives.
I think what he means is, they will not release any prints or cad before the product is released, meaning there will be no preliminary release, and you will have to wait for the official release.
I was just contemplating the chunky (solitary) Z-axis rail in the video above. And the fact I recently saw someone printing on an Ultimaker 3 at 20 micron layer height the other day with no fiddling about... They stuck in the file and pressed play. So is the hypothesis that it's easier and cheaper to stick a dirty great branded-linear-rail at the back than to go through all the custom engineering and fiddly bits that Ultimaker have had to do in order to achieve something similar with a lot less material? (Just thinking about 3d printing here - forget the idea that this is going to be a CNC machine which requires mega rigidity. Don't quite buy that idea.)
I think a better solution, if the intent is the best one can get, is three independent Z rails and motors. Attach the linear rails to the back extrusion and the two in the front. Then attach the tooling plate to the rails in a manner that allows the plane to be precisely trammed by independently adjusting the each Z axis. The Duet can easily do that. I'm also thinking through mounting something rounded like a mag-ball end at each of the rails and then milling a slot locally that allows some compliance when the tooling plate expands as it heats up. Not a kinematic joint as that is too much constraint but probably a slot normal to the main axis of each rail done with a ball end mill that matches the radius of the mounting ball. The front ones allow expansion to the right and left while the rear allows expansion forward and backwards. That also would allow the tooling plate to be easily removed but I'm not sure that is really much of a feature. I can't decide if a "V" shaped structure is required between the three rails as it seems that may be an over-constraint. Maybe causing binding which I'm determined to avoid.
The difficulty with 3-rails is getting them aligned, and then keeping them that way, such that there is no "sticking up" as the bed moves over the range. That's the problem we had with the 4 rod BigBox. And as far as I know the problem can only be solved in practical practice by allowing some "slop" in the system to accommodate the inevitable discrepancies over the entire Z. At which point you lose what you were trying to gain. So we come back to the single rail.... What happens when things heat up is a tricky one. My aluminium bed definitely looks a different shape to the Duet + IR sensor probe when it's heated up, yet it's only loosely clipped to the BB PCB heater. So we calibrate when hot....