When we wrote about [Dan Beaven]’s resin printer a while back he enthusiastically ensured us that, thanks to the recent wave of attention, he would finally finish the project. That’s why today we are covering his entirely unrelated 2 cubic foot print volume FDM printer. 

As we mentioned, [Dan] is no stranger to 3D printers. His addiction has progressed so far that he needs bigger and bigger parts, but when he looked at the price of printers that could sate his thirst… it wasn’t good. We assume this is the time he decided to leverage his resin printer procrastination to build a massive printer for himself.

The frame is aluminum extrusion. The bed is an 1/4″ thick aluminum plate supported just a little bit in from each corner. He can use the 4 motors to level the platform, which is a killer feature on a machine this big. More or less it’s fairly standard mechanically.

We are interested in his interesting addition of a FLIR thermal sensor to see live heat distribution. We also applaud him on his redundant safety systems (such as a smoke sensor that’s separately powered from the machine).

All the files are available on his site if you’re procrastinating on something and would like one for yourself.

Looks like the build volume is actually 2 ft x 2 ft x 2 ft, or 8 cubic feet. Impressive.

Looking at his platen, could could still be 2 cu. ft. That would 16 inches per side.

Crap, youre right. Its 8 cubic feet. 2 foot square plate with about 2 feet of vertical. It can be more if i find some longer leadscrews that dont break the bank and get me divorced.

I wish my procrastination worked out like that :/

Thanks, now I don’t have to go through the trouble to post the same idea. B^)

Someday I’m going to do something great with my procrastination!

Grate Cheddar Cheese perhaps – that way all mercans can easily be great when grating (other than upsetting the French & Candians lol) whilst trump meanders through his unusual brand of logic & bluster (sry for off topic is fun).

Seriously, once you have some basic infrastructure in place the rest is just filling in gaps & can be done with minimal discipline just set aside 2hrs per week. I have these really wide thick steel beams zinc plated that would make the base for a fantastic desktop lathe (heavy though) and widening in the perpendicular could be feasible. Which would end up being a lathe/3D printer in one – without doubtful utility :/

Friend on next level apartment up from me getting this:- https://www.dicksmith.com.au/da/buy/balco-3d-printer-with-4-x-free-filaments-and-print-mat-balco/

Builders not far from me discarded several “ColorBond” steel fence posts, very strong yet light with a nice profile so they resist flexure. Could make a build region 1.5m^3 (metric units lol) ie 3.375 cubic meters – but where to put it ?

The fittings for X/Y steppers could be easily done with friction fit & appropriate linear scale feedback independent of the stepper rotational counts and with a Heidenhain/Sony scale down to 0.01mm easily (metric again) with backup from a couple of Bosch PLR-15’s (Laser distance measurers)

Hey talk about 3D metal this co http://auroralabs3d.com/ has just risen 1150% share value since only August this year – guess who has shares – har har !

My guess is they’ll dip a little mon/tues then fly up, & I ain’t sellin yet…

It’s either an advanced jargon bot, or late stage schizophrenia. Either way it makes my eyes hurt.

Nah, just early stage newbie. :)

Dang Australians, probably where Trump got the idea of tossing people out of a country.

When you get the idea of power rangers armour suit for your puggle, resin printer improvements go on hold :) I hope to have the fire system up and posted very soon, simple design but im sure my insurance company would be happy knowing i have it…

Is filament commonly sold in spools large enough to leverage this volume? Or will he have to splice in or use custom filament.

What sort of tolerances can [Dan] manage?

Atomic Filament sells rolls large enough. Most printers capable of larger prints have filament sensors that let the printer know if it runs out. It’ll pause the print and move to a reload position. When it’s been reloaded it will move back and resume the print.

I designed a simple mount for an endstop switch to be used as a filament runout sensor. The print will pause and allow you to swap out filament rolls. :)

I’m getting 100 micron layer heights with no variation (hoping to go smaller if need be – prints would take forever though).

Atomic, 3DXTech, Push Plastic, IC3D, Ultimachine all offer larger spools of varying sizes. I’m sure there’s others I’m blanking on. I personally work with Atomic and 3DXTech materials. Each of these tend to be more economical than same brand of 1kg spools but may seem expensive if you’re used to Chinese spool prices. But after a certain scale, it might be better to use a quality material, nothing like making a huge part and having dodgy material jam on you at 90% done.

Many filament manufacturers will even sell you a master spool of material.

And if you use vase mode, you’d be surprised how far a kg can go.

four motors is a ‘killer feature’? Its probably a ‘necessary feature’ given the size and mass increase of the build area.

The auto bed leveling could be done with 3. But I only had Nema 17 steppers and didnt want to fork out more cash. Youre right about the weight though. However with 4 steppers the bed leveling is fairly easy.

Isn’t it tricky to keep the four motors in sync, i.e. keep the bed planar?

What do you use to sense the bed height?

The 4 z axis steppers have the STEP and DIR signals coming from the RAMPS. I haven’t done any serious testing, but lost steps on the z axis would be extremely uncommon, given how seldom the z axis is moved. I use a limit switch for the z homing operation. There are split ring clamps on each 20mm smooth rod set at the correct height.

I do also have an inductive Z probe between the two extruders to do a grid based z map. But so far havent needed it yet.

Talking about procrastination, I’ve been struggling with mine for the last 10 years and read countless books and self help methods. Here is what I’m having best results with. First of all, procrastination bulldozer method has worked wonders for me. I highly recommend you apply it. Secondly, whenever you have a task that takes less than 5 minutes to do, do it right away. No delays. I’m really starting to take control of my life now.

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