370mm X 250mm X 300mm

[AutoWiz]

Well now I have to wait for some rgb lights. But also I am waiting for a some Capricorn tubing so I can get rid of that white length of ptfe. Guess I can get started on running wires while waiting for the rgb leds..

[AutoWiz]

Sunday fun. Building harnesses stuffing them in cable chains and building a clean and coherent electrical system for my new large format IDEX. Kinda large format anyways. 400x250x330 actual build volume. Still got a little ways to go..

[AutoWiz]

Time to share. For anybody interested I have posted all the files I drew for this effort to thingiverse free for any and all to download right here: Tevo Black Widow IDEX Conversion by AutoWiz - Thingiverse

[AutoWiz]

The printer is all back together. It looks great. One last thing I might do is angle the smart filament sensors forward a bit so the PTFE hoses do not get pinched or pulled. But overall I am very happy with it..



I always loved this printer because of the huge extrusions it was made from. It is such a robust platform to build with..



This is so much cleaner now. every stepper motor has its own driver and no driver expansion boards or splitters. Just one board and a clean coherent electrical system..



Marlin is up to 2.0.9.1 and that be the version I am working on setting up for the Octopus v1.1. Hopefully Big Red here will be back to printing soon. I still want to finish my large format CoreXY build.

[curious aardvark]

I know it's crass - but any idea how much that has cost you so far ? (knowing you, the ruby tipped nozzles will be added at some point, probably when you realise how much better than pet-g nylon with carbon fibre is ;-)


But it's certainly a handsome looking beast !

[AutoWiz]

In both money and time this machine represents a lot. I did not skip out on a second Mosquito on this because of cost. I am using a v6 j head under the bondtech BMG extruder on the secondary extruder so there is a bit of vertical adjustment. That is I can unscrew the heatbreak from the heatsink a little and give myself a few mm worth of meaningful Z adjustment between the 2 extruders in my IDEX. Otherwise I would have 2 Mosquitos on this rig.

I can try some nylon with carbon fiber as soon as I get this up and running. I was unimpressed with the 2 pc design of the Ruby nozzle. I have read horror stories about such an expensive part having a temp differential between the metal of the nozzle and the ruby tip. I have also read about the ruby tip cracking. It is certainly the most expensive nozzle out there. But I am on the fence about it being the best. The vanadium nozzle in my Mosquito comes with a lifetime warranty from Slice engineering against any type of abrasion wear. The v6 J head has a Micro swiss plated nozzle that is hardended but definitely less than that ruby. Both are 0.6mm.

And thank you. Hopefully this will all dial in ok and I will get to leave it alone for a while and just print stuff with it. But I mean how far down that road can I possibly get before I just become bored to the point of tears?

[curious aardvark]

lmao - and at that point you'll remember the little nagging voice in the back of your head that's been whispering:
Build a really big delta and print full sized people...

So come on: $1000, 2, 3, 4 ?
I vaguely remember the rails coming close to $1000 on their own.

Go on you can tell me, your wife's definitely not looking ;-)

I mean if you really want a project - buy a k40 and turn it into something truly spectactular !
The 40 watt co2 laser is a full on deathray !
But the rest of the machine is just horrible.
You'd love it !!!!!

[AutoWiz]

Honestly I am pretty sure I have sunk somewhere between 3 and 4 into this. But over the years. And since early 2017. The printer itself with the BLtouch was just over $600. The rails were a grand. The BMG/Mosquito setup was over $400. The MMU2S was $350. The Meanwell SE 600 24v power supply was $130. I have been through so many different mainboards, screens, drivers, and extruders. 32 pages worth at this point. And then there is hardware and filaments. I spent a chunk on separate whacks with ebay for wires, bolts, nuts, t slot nuts, and I bought the translucent red PETG filament 2 or 3 spools at a time.

One big thing I have learned along the way is that all parts are not created equally. And the name brand parts are made with better quality materials but also with better machining qualities. We should all pause for thought about reworking that $200 printer with the extra $150 we have in our savings account. I mean how much better could that be? If not just a placebo that makes us feel like it prints better because we spent time with it.

I still want to build a large delta. And I have given a lot of thought about trying to print out the largest Lego man I can. With the TronXY That would be a big dude. This guy is already scaled up 5x and I would scale it up to the max dimensions of the tronXY: Lego Man Figure by papajohnfuller - Thingiverse

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New Marlin is cool, BTW. 2.0.9.1 lets you command multiple baud rates. That's new. Different speeds for different serial connections. I'm gonna be here for a while. This rework has all the 'bolt-ons' from BigTreeTech. Aside from the 2 smart filament sensors there is also the ESP-12S wifi module and the 24v UPS that is supposed to keep the machine powered on for a few seconds after power loss and raise the nozzle. I have a lot of configuring to do.

This Octopus has so many inputs it just lists them all with numbers rather than to label anything with a specific designation. So there is no X motor. It is motor 0 - motor 7. However motor 2 has 2 outputs motor 2_1 and motor 2_2 so I guess if I were to run dual Z off one driver that would be the way. I am not connecting my dual Z that way and each stepper has it's own driver.

The fans are the same way. They are not labeled for extruder fan or case fan or layer fan or anything. There are just so many fan connectors on this board they are just labeled cnc fan 0-5 and then fan 6 and fan 7. And they all have separate jumpers to link them to 5, 12, or 24v power.

Even the endstops. There are 6 endstop headers with 2 3 pin headers for filament detection. This board is just so awesome. It is well worth all the time it is gonna take me to get this firmware right. I made this legend as I was wiring to help me with the firmware..

[AutoWiz]

And in Marlin under the configuration adv.h tab is the section I need to enable and configure to make the magic happen..



There is actually a lot more but this directly enables what I am trying to do and what I just built. I still haven't seen a way to run 2 smart filament sensors or to link each one to an extruder. But I still have so much more to dig through here.