Modifying 3D Printers With Cool Gadgets

[Brian_Krassenstein]

Desktop 3D printers lend themselves to not only making things, but to making the machines themselves through the open source movement. Electrical engineer John Fuoco is accustomed to solving problems, and turned his experience to his own 3D printers. Starting with a Bukobot kit and extending its X-axis, then moving on to a FoglgerTech delta-style 3D printer kit and making improvements to its probe arm for the servo, Fuoco's printer hacks are pretty impressive. He's also made his design adjustment available on Thingiverse. Read about his processes at 3DPrint.com: http://3dprint.com/87898/3d-printer-hacks/

[theP13RC3]

Okay, so he updated the firmware (SUPER easy), printed one of an endless number of bed leveling servo arms (SUPER easy), and blatantly copied technology that's already out there for wiping the nozzle (used in Fortus machines, as well as the Replicator Z18 I believe)...

These "hacks" are all well-documented, and not difficult to implement. Don't get me wrong, they're great additions to a printer and they make operating it a ton easier! BUT, they're not all that impressive or original. Not exactly news article-worthy, considering it's been done before.

In either case, great job on the printer mods and keep up the good work John!

[fjohn624]

Okay, so he updated the firmware (SUPER easy), printed one of an endless number of bed leveling servo arms (SUPER easy), and blatantly copied technology that's already out there for wiping the nozzle (used in Fortus machines, as well as the Replicator Z18 I believe)...

These "hacks" are all well-documented, and not difficult to implement. Don't get me wrong, they're great additions to a printer and they make operating it a ton easier! BUT, they're not all that impressive or original. Not exactly news article-worthy, considering it's been done before.

In either case, great job on the printer mods and keep up the good work John!

Thanks Buzz Killington!

jk. I don't think they meant for the article to be ground breaking news or anything but more to inspire people to create their own modifications. If all we ever read about was expensive cutting edge machines, processes and projects, the average maker like myself might get bored or feel out of touch.
Also to be honest, I didn't copy anything. I just saw something that annoyed me and made something. It wasn't even until weeks after I made it that I discovered this: https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/...wiper_working/ which is really cool.

I call it a wiper arm but really its a moving priming station that happens to have a wiper as well. Yes I have seen a priming dump box with a wiper before, but the issue I had with that was that I couldn't drive over to an area like that without losing some print area on the delta. However I have never even seen a high end printer like a Fortus in person and I haven't even seen a Z18 and I bet many makers haven't either. I see you are a rapid prototyping engineer so you are exposed to all the latest and greatest on a daily basis and its common to you. But many of us have never seen this type of stuff. So I think the article was meant to inspire.

[theP13RC3]

Sorry if I sounded like a buzzkill! That wasn't the intention at all!

They really are awesome upgrades, and it's great that they're getting some face time -- once that happens enough, *hopefully* printer manufacturers will understand the value added and start making more bleeding edge mods into stable and standard options. Like what Printrbot did with Bed Auto Leveling, or what Makerbot did (in the good ol' days before Big Daddy Stratasys stepped in and started peddling garbage) with the Thing-o-Matic and the Automated Build Platform way back in the day.

Hence keeping up the good work! The major manufacturers won't change the status quo on printer features unless enough people change it first. I'm right there with you in trying to push the boundaries and help other makers, because if we don't it won't get better!

P.S. Your wiping mechanism is actually quite a bit more elegant than Stratasys and Stratasys Jr. (aka Makerbot) -- with their machines, they just have a static tray at the back of the build volume with steel bristles up top... That means they need to make more Y-axis travel than necessary for the extruder, AND the bristles slowly wear out the brass extruder tip. Silicone is definitely the better route

[LambdaFF]

I recently watched the Lulz mini test from Thomas sanladerer and the machine does include a prinming / wiping straight out of the box and integrated in the soft too.
Nicely done