Converting a CNC Machine to a 3D Printer

Hi Everybody,

I am looking for someone who use Linux CNC Software in order to control a 3d printer. I am designing standalone temperature controller boards for extruder and heated bed temp control. I also developed some plugins for Mach3 Software. People love to convert their CNC machine to a 3d printer with my electronic boards. Now I want to test them with LinuxCNC.

Any idea and help is welcome.



Regards
Nuri Erginer
MakerStorage

Thanks for the documentation seb_kuzminsky I will take a look at them.

The boards are working standalone. No PC connection is required. On-board microcontroller trying to set the temperature of the extruders via PID calculations. Sensors and heaters are directly connected to the board.

I made some tests via modbus and run it on mach3 successfully. But making boards standalone simplified the system a lot.

Here are some pictures of the boards:

I hace tour Boards and i'm using linuxcnc Nuri. But i'm newbie using linuxcnc. Waterpolo do you need?

Kind Regards

Great to hear that Juanolo,
We can work together to use LinuxCNC to control our CNC machines like 3D Printers. What kind of machine do you have?

Hello Nuri,

I have a 3 axis mill. I have printed things with your controllers in abs, they are very good but I have problems setting up the Slic3r to make good prints. I have problems on vibrations and Extruder steps ( I think it lose some steps) and melt the superior layers of the printed objects. I think because the nozzle is too much time in contact with the same layer and not retract sufficient ( I change it in Slic3r but not good results).

The other problem I see is the acceleration of my machine. It is fast and in small pieces it vibrates a lot when 3d printing them.

Wow! Great you have one of my controller in hand. Did you use mach3 or linuxCNC to control your machine as 3D printer.

For the quality issues. The system must be rigid and mechanically very precise. Any lose step comes back as quality issues on the printed part.

The other thing is fine tuning the parameters. After some tests you can understand what is the problem by looking at the printed part.
If you want to try my controllers with mach3 LinuxCNC I am here to help you on the subject. But please be sure that your machine is mechanically ready around 100 micron precision.

Regards
Nuri

I think my machine is sufficient robust, I will do some photos. I have motors with 200 steps and 16 micro stepping (can I change it) for each axis and Extruder. In x and y axis I have ballscrew with 10mm of pitch and in a with 5.

Other problem I have I think is my Extruder is a Chinese MK8 direct extruder. And mechanics is not too accurate.

I have used your controllers with Mach3 and linuxcnc, I had best results with Mach3 because it is more difficult to calibrate the steps x degree as you set up the Extruder as A axis in linuxcnc.

Your machine sounds promising. Photos can be nice. What do you think about another try with LinuxCNC?

I will send photos.

In my short experience with both, linuxcnc is best. The motors runs more smooth and I like the capabilities of linuxcnc system. The settings of the machine are not difficult, only the time you spent in configure the steps per revolution of the Extruder to extrude 1mm of filament when you send one mm of it to extrude.

I think it need more difficult to set the correct settings in slicing program. It is not the same a 3d printer of 10kg than a CNC machine in movement of 100kgs. It must be configured different the accelerations. But I did not find a suitable settings...

Well, I have printed object about 0,3mm in each layer with abs and heated bed controlled by your board I did not have any wrapping problem.

The most annoying problems I had were: vibrations in Y axis represented as waves in layers, blobs in edges and sometimes under extrusion caused by my filament feed system ( the filament is very tightened). And when the Z axis goes up in layers of thin cillynders or squares, the nozzle overheat the abs and it melts.