Advice for Metal 3D Printer Project

Hello,

I'm a PhD student in Mechanical Enginnering Departmant and planning to build a metal 3D printer from scratch just for research purposes. In that project I will build a 3 axis gantry and aiming to control a powerful Continious Wave (CW) fiber laser which will melt the wire that will be fed to the focus point of the laser (aka Wire-Fed Laser Metal Deposition).

Given the constraints of my research budget, I intend to use stepper motors with encoders and appropriate motor drivers to ensure precision. To be honest, my knowledge about such a system is limited but I will learn and implement what I have learned during the process thus your advice and insights will be immensely valuable to me during this learning process.

I am particularly interested in understanding whether LinuxCNC is a suitable choice for controlling such a system, or if there are alternative systems better suited for this application. Additionally, I am seeking guidance on selecting a compatible controller board that aligns with the requirements of this unique project.

Thank you for your time and consideration

Thank you for your reply.

- We want to begin with a 3-Axis system, mainly focusing on making simple shapes. Our main goal is research, so we'll use this setup to explore and understand the procedure better but it would be great to have more than 3-Axis in the future
- Hacettepe University, Ankara/Turkey.
- I am looking for leadshine closed loop stepper motors but I'm always open for suggestions
-Sadly, it is not possible for us to buy used/pre-owned things due to the university policy.
-I'm thinking of 500 mm x 500 mm x 300 mm (roughly 20 inch x 20 inch x 12 inch)

Stiffness is a very important thing to consider, thus I'm expecting that the system will be heavy. That is why I'm considering lead screws/ball screws to maintain stable motion.

I was imagining that it will be very similar to a classic CNC router until I read your comment about Z height. I will definitely consider the idea of the falling bed.

In fact, wire-fed laser metal deposition systems seem much more superior to WAAM (Wire Arc Additive Manufacturing) systems in terms of flying metal pieces . But I also would like to thank you for reminding me of that topic as well. We may need to isolate the inside of the gantry.

tommylight post=287364 userid=17274
andypugh post=287354 userid=723


I tthink that I would propbably design this as a Core-XY with a falling bed. Pretty much exactly like the Prusa XL. It would almost be sensible to by one of those (except for the long lead time) and design your head to match the toolchanger. 

Big Bambu lab ones, VZ bot, Creality K1, Voron Trident and Legacy, etc, use the same core XY with up/down moving bed, VZ, Voron, Hypercube, are open source and can be modified at will, VZ and Voron can be made with metal parts readily available.
There are several Laser sintering printers out there, no idea if any are open source
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=diy+sls+3d+metal+printer

Thank you for your contribution. I will be looking at the designs that you mentioned.


Which board do you suggest me to accomplish all these requirements? There will certainly be at least 4 stepper motors to move the gantry, 1 for wire feeding system. There will be laser to be controlled and some sensors such as at least two thermo couples, 1 infrared pyrometer, may be a proximity sensor and only god knows what I would like to add to the system in the future .

Thank you again for your valuable comments.

I couldn't properly quote the posts. Sorry about that