Cerberups

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Revision as of 03:18, 14 May 2013 by Ultratux (talk | contribs)
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Projects
Participants Ultratux
Skills Woodworking, precision assembly, electronics, fine mechanic
Status Active
Niche Mechanics
Purpose World domination

Cerberups, a Delta-type 3D printer. It is a slight modification to a US design, the Cerberus. The modification were mainly necessary to adapt from imperial to metric, but also because other choices were made in type of materials (ie. wood instead of PLA). The Cerberus itself is based on the Rostock, of course: the first delta 3D printer.

I mostly let the pictures speak for themselves for now

First day.jpg This was rather hard; the used wood is a very hard and tough kind. And it's only when you need a 30 degree angle, you find that none of our tools have any setting for it, or they are so coarse/imprecise as to be completely useless... Examples: I wanted to buy a mitre box with a 30 & 60 degree cut-- unobtainable. And our mitre saw has a 60 degree angle, but can't manage 30 degrees... Oh well.

Coated bearings.jpg Coating specially crafted by Steve Graber (the designer of the Cerberus) on a state of the art CNC lathe. These are at the heart of the vertical movement system used in the Cerberus. Get these ones wrong, and gone is precision & accuracy, and gone is silent movement.

Second day.jpg Decided to go with wood instead of printing in PLA, for a host of reasons; Our other printer is in a state of constant testing, rebuilding, breaking and fixing and not deemed production ready yet. Secondly these printed parts are so massive I'd need to babysit our printer for 48 hours or more, even if it doesn't fail halfway. And third, adaptation from imperial to metric proves hard to do, since my extrusions also have a slightly different profile, so it needs a lot more work than just scaling up by 105%, sadly.

Third day.jpg After retrieving my router and making the mounts for the three steppers, I could now bolt it in place in a more permanent fashion. Not too happy with the extrusions not being 100,0% parallel, but we're getting there. Robustness though, is already very good now...

I must await delivery of the stepper motors and must find a way to get the three carriages printed. In the meantime I will find some means to re-make the bottom dual idler mounts and the top idler + tensioner in something other than PLA. Get creative, Maarten!