# 3D Printing > General 3D Printing Discussion >  Working with a beastly hardware kit.

## Treak

Recently i came across an amazing deal on a Stratasys SST printer. The problem is i have never had or used a 3d printer before and my coding experience is limited but still generally above par (or so id like to believe). I have about 2 years experience the Google Youtube 3D Printing University so my approximate knowledge of the situation is vast but unhelpful.




http://i.imgur.com/lltymrr.jpg




Problem is, they took out some of the juju that runs it. So i improvised and ordered a rambo 1.2a from amazon.




http://imgur.com/w4dbxpG




The stepper motors are 8 lead steppers with your standard 4 wires coming up for the top and the bottom coils. Even through i am able to put alot more juice in these steppers they wont be much of an upgrade from nema 17s with my setup. (if even possible)
http://imgur.com/jQBwvRK




Which leads me to my first problem my steppers dont move or even tighten when connected to the board. Which makes me beleive my 12 volt power supply is the problem (i dont have the confidence to hook up the powersupplys left in the machine)




http://i.imgur.com/SybHbad.jpg




The rambo board has repetir firmware and connected to repetir host on the computer on it (i somehow bricked it and figured outish how to re program it real fast). The next thing i want to connect is the heated chamber and lights and fans.




http://i.imgur.com/xq4eABY.jpg




Theres 4 fans total with revered plastic blower thinggies and polarity protection to make sure the air goes through properly. And 2 heated thinga ma nigs on each side of the chamber. I have a budget of about $500-800ish more dollars to make this thing put out some low quality dental floss and was thinking of wiring all the fans/heated chamber separately. So any help in pointing me in the right direction to make this thing print at least air would be greatly appreciated. There is still a lot more going on in this printer that i haven't gotten to yet. (possibly provide some inspiration for your own diy project).


All the options and do hickeys in this thing to fine tune prints are are nice and all but my first goal is to at least make the stepper motors twitch.

Some pictures my friend took of the steppers, chamber fans and max end stop for those curious.
https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.n...bbcc4b3cf6895a
https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.n...589e52684e0f72
https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.n...baef5b2e183b7d
https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.n...6f23fbc059d4c2

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## Treak

http://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/c...re_kit_part_2/

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## bshadown

from all i can see this is way out of our league (at least me), what else can you tell from this machine? is everything still inside? (parts) do you have the owners manual or any other reference material? how much power does it use???
i have never seen this tipe of machines, but if i can i will help

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## Treak

The power distribution unit and logic controller? are gone. There is 3 power supplies and a sbc + hard drive inside.

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## truly_bent

For starters, those LH2322-P300 stepper motors are size 23 and rated for 3A per phase while the Rambo 1.2a board is only rated for 2A. If you did try to drive these motors with that board, i'd expect fuses to pop at least. If those driver outputs were not protected (i assume they must be) you'd be letting some smoke outta the wires. 

You can break the drive signals out and use stronger drivers for those motors.

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## Treak

How do you recommend i break the drive signals out to connect it to the controller? and which externally powered driver do you suggest i look into for these?

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## Treak

> from all i can see this is way out of our league (at least me), what else can you tell from this machine? is everything still inside? (parts) do you have the owners manual or any other reference material? how much power does it use???
> i have never seen this tipe of machines, but if i can i will help


I have the owners manual (hard copy and not really helpful unless you have a working machine) and some reference material for the parts.

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## truly_bent

I was pretty sure i'd seen reference to external stepper drivers for the Rambo board someplace. It took me a while, but i found it again, in one of Tom Sanladerer's Youtube reviews. He points out (at time 3:03) pins that can be used for external drivers in case the on-board drivers fail. You'll have to do a bit more digging, but i'm (98.7%) sure it's doable.

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## 3dspider

hmm... you could drive the steppers with power mosfets, like the old dot matrix (2d) printers used to do... but it might be easier to just install new steppers.

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## bshadown

> The power distribution unit and logic controller? are gone. There is 3 power supplies and a sbc + hard drive inside.


In other words you have the body but not the heart, start by checking the power rating of that beast otherwise is preaty much useless at the moment, there should be a label indicating the total amps and voltage it use, start there.

Like 3dspider said, you aré better off by using power mosfets for the steppers, trust me you dont want anything to start smoking suddenly, cheers

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## Mjolinor

The steppers will work fine with under an amp per phase, the current only affects your printing speed, acceleration and the lock torque. Lock torque is of little importance and not worth considering as the only forces acting on the head motors are cable tension and at this early stage printing speed is right down there with case colour as far as importance is concerned.

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## truly_bent

That's interesting. I would have thought the stepper drive needed to be sized to the motor. Is there a loss of torque due to the reduced current in the windings?

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## Mjolinor

Loss of torque between what?
There will be less torque form a NEMA 23 than it could produce.
There will be slightly less torque than a NEMA 17 can produce for the same current. It is likely that the holding torque will be slightly more on the NEMA 23 than on the NEMA 17.

Generally it depends on the individual build inside the stepper motor and without exhaustive testing and documenting it is really hard to state facts about how well it would work but the fact is that it will work and will probably work well enough for the task in hand.

I am just about to remove all the LinuxCNC stuff from my PCB mill and use an Arduino / RAMPS on it so the TB6560s will go and I will use the RAMPS drivers but am not planning to touch the stepper motors at all.

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## Treak

After hitting my first brick wall with the stepper motors. I got rid of the xbox power supply and moved on the ones already inside the machine. 2 of the 3 PSU's connected and all the fans + lights i have available in the machine. I plan on making a line filler box when i add the 240v PSU for the chamber/extruder heaters. Originally i wanted to go to the department store and make the filler box out of sheet metal and screws. I wanted to explore a team collaboration for creating parts and i am able to invite people to the grabcad workbench for being an adopter. If you use solidworks PM me your email and ill toss you an invite link with max powers for those who want to play with it.


The box will have...


1. USB plugged into the rambo (or ramps, whichever i get working first)
2. Main Power (computer style plug in)
3. 12V 2A Fuse
4. 24V 6A fuse
5. 120V 3.15A fuse
6. Respective trouble shooting leds/Test points


Below is a picture of my "just get it working" power set up


http://i.imgur.com/gSOjmKj.jpg




http://i.imgur.com/6I3ektm.png


The lights/blowers are all direct independent power from the 24V PSU, and running a bit high but not worrysome. I plan on adding in line resistors to tune all the blower fans output even through it may not be necessary.


http://i.imgur.com/419ZaMq.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/15CeI3J.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/gfVuV0b.jpg


I reinstalled the original SBC and connected the LCD, hard drive and PSU but it did not budge when i flipped the switch. I am having trouble finding anything about this lcd. It would be nice to connect it to the rambo or ramps if possible.


http://i.imgur.com/nZD0Tdf.jpg


Moving on to the electronics, the thing that makes this a printer and not a heated brick with fans and lights.


http://i.imgur.com/xrkWYLA.jpg


Only the 12 volt is connected to the rambo using this diagram. i connected everything with the information i have at hand and my best guess for the stepper motors (each of the stepper lead pairs are isolated and connected to their respective pins but the position is a crap shoot)


http://www.geeetech.com/wiki/images/...o-conn-all.jpg


(I hear the rambo board can go to 24v but im not so sure about this china made one the picture with 12v down the line for power input made me lose confidence in putting 24v into it.)


There are two types of temperature reading devicdes that normally have some sort of signel amplification. But today we are using electric tape for the chamber sensor which appears to be just a wire stick poking inside.


http://i.imgur.com/9yV7vlE.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/EyvIFb4.jpg




The other is a thermocouple and the only thing i know about that is the name, Thick as hell wires go into i and communicates with PWM.




Chamber


http://i.imgur.com/wiopCrT.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/04oCK0g.jpg




Extruder


http://i.imgur.com/H1fTKqp.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/OiXzltM.jpg

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## Treak

It lives! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1wm...ature=youtu.be

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## Mjolinor

Hmm, close to living, still a bit ICU ish but progress is good so far.  :Smile:

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## bshadown

Holy Shit, Frankenmario Its gona 3D print himself :Big Grin:

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