Here are some photos of the tilting bed mechanism (and back battery bay) of my truck.
You can see that the clearance when open is relatively tight….
S10 Pickup tilt bed
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Author Archives: Jay
How to make a 264 gallon rain “barrel” out of a liquid tote tank
I was recently given a 264 gallon liquid tote tank. That’s 1000 liters for you non-americans. These tanks are typically used to transport and store liquid products such as corn syrup or dish soap for small to medium sized industrial processes (large industrial processes get tanker cars full of liquid….). The tank itself is made of HDPE (high density polyethylene), which is the same plastic that milk jugs are made of, recycling number “2” (but it’s quite a bit thicker!) and it is protected by a galvanized steel cage with forklift points on the bottom.
Unfortunately, mine come with a semi-proprietary valve and nozzle. To make it into a (large!) rain barrel, I wanted to attach a standard 3/4″ hose bib. Continue reading
Finishing the Rostock-Mini
I find that getting a 3D printer working (i.e. printing parts) is relatively straightforward. But getting it FINISHED takes just as much time. Over the last month I have been working on finalizing all of the little bits of my Rostock-Mini that will take it from a “working printer” to something I am willing to put on a desktop and show off.
First, I needed a spool roller. I could have mounted the spool beside the printer on top of one of the many tabletop bearing spool rollers on Thingiverse, but I really wanted the footprint of the printer to be self contained, so I decided to mount the spool horizontally above the printer, and of course, designed my own horizontal spool roller system.
The biggest threat to a “finished” look is wires. Lots and lots of wires. Lets count them up… 4 per servo (16 so far), 2 per end stop (6 more makes 24!), 2 for each heater (extruder/bed) and temp sensor (extruder/bed) and fan (10 more make 34!) plus a few more to power the whole thing!
I tackled the power inlet and power switch (a.k.a. Emergency stop!) first, by designing a power inlet block to fit my jack and switch. Although not taking full advantage of the medium, I’ve found that 3D printers do a good job making custom front panels.
I shortened all of the wires under the base to size and then covered the servos and power wires with a wire mesh. (Wire management, in the form of extra crimp receptacles so that I could make custom wire lengths and wire mesh added $30 to the project cost…and quite a bit of time. After an hours work with my smallest needle nose pliers, I’ll be quite happy to outsource the population of crimp connectors.)
Luckily, with the Rostock-Mini, a good number of the wires are under the base, but even if you didn’t choose to put your extruder servo up top like I did, you’d still have to deal with getting quite a few wires from the endstops and print head down to the base. My current plan is a big long length of wire mesh. (Did I mention that I like this stuff?)
rostock Mini firmware
This is a zip file of the rostock-mini firmware that I am currently using. The only changes I made to it were to update the files to compile with Arduino 1.0.1 and modifications to the configuration.h file to work with the rostock mini.
Rostock-Mini: Fully Operational
After replacing the 1/8″ plywood temporary base and top frame plates with the final 1/4″ acrylic , my rostock-mini is working very well! The extra rigidity in the frame has greatly improved it’s positioning accuracy and it’s making prints that rival my Prussa Mendel for quality. The video above shows my round print bed and spring loaded adjustable levelers in action, as well as a close up of the delta bot motion.
This is a picture of the clear acrylic base plate before I added the print bed holder to it.
Here is the complete printer with the adjustable print bed.
I mounted the airtripper v3 bowden extruder cold end on the rear of the top plate. As it turns out, the M6 screw holes on the extruder are close enough to the right distance apart to match up with the idler top end printed bracket, so I can use the same M4 screws (with fender washers) to hold the extruder cold end as well as hold the top plate to the idler bracket! Once I saw that bit of luck I gave up all thoughts of mounting the extruder under the bottom frame plate.
Rostock-mini: Round adjustable print bed
The default rostock-mini design mounts the print bed directly to the base of the printer and adjusts the leveling of the hot end nozzle via three adjustment screws on the carriages that home the printer. This may work, but I wanted to make my round glass print bed removable (mounted via binderclips). I figured that if I was going to add an under-hanging lip for clipping purposes, I was going to need some space below it anyways, so I decided to make it adjustable with 3 screws at the same time. I mounted the adjustment knobs under the platform so that I only reduce the build volume by 5-10 mm total. This is my current platform design:
The rectangular areas are where binder clips attach. The holes in the rounded tabs are for a hex bolt and the two rectangular slots are for pins from a plastic piece that keeps the bolt head from turning.
(This allows a knob to turn on the bolt as a hight adjuster.) A piece of adhesive cork acting as insulation sits between this plate (which will be cut from 1/8″ birch plywood) and the glass build plate. The glass plate provides the structural rigidity and provides for a nearly flat build platform.
If you want to replicate this, all my design files are on Thingiverse, #63414.
Rostock-Mini: First Print
I finished the bowden tube extruder for my Rostock Mini build. It uses airtrippers V3 Bowden extruder for the coldend, a makergear hot end, and the rostock-mini hot-end holder.
I can actually print things with the rostock-mini, and say that I built a 3D printer using my (other) 3D printer. However, I have a lot of work to finish up before the printer is done (or even prints well). Now that I have all of the parts working together, I need to finalize the mounting position of everything, then I can laser cut the final 1/4″ acrylic top and bottom plate with all the appropriate mounting holes. I think I will be putting the airtripper extruder on the top plate, as opposed to under the body of the printer. I may also rig up a spool roller on the top as well. The 1/4″ acrylic (vs the current 1/8″ birch plywood) will give the printer a lot of needed rigidity. I also have to play with using the set screws on each carriage to adjust the height of the extruder head over the entire print surface, and determine exactly how I want to mount the glass build plate and bed heater.
Screwless Heart Gears for Valentines Day
I printed a copy of emmett’s screwless heart gears for Valentines Day in pink ABS. Depending upon how far the gears are rotated, it can look like a flying chicken, a toothy fish, or a heart.
An example of why I really like the 3D printing community: People complained that it was hard to get the pins inserted into the plastic parts. So kcmelty designed a tool (3D printable of course) that made it easy to insert the pins.
3D printed 3D printer cable management
A lot of cables for my Prussa Mendel 3D printer can simply be clipped or zip-tied in place. However, some of the cables go to moving parts, and need to be able to move with the part. Of course, if your cables get wrapped around something, or kinked, this motion can break them. A common solution to this problem is a cable carrier, which is an articulated mechanism that keeps cables rolling back and forth smoothly in a defined position without excessive bending of any one point on the cable.
Landru designed a 3D printable cable carrier and Buback made a version that could be clipped around existing cables and didn’t need bridging to print. Finally, Yzorg made some mounting ends for the cable. I printed some Yzorg mounting ends and Buback cable sections and used them to hold the power and sensor cables for my heated build platform. The video at the top of the post shows it in action as the Y-carriage (and build platform) move. Now I just have to organize all the other cables….
Rostock Mini: Simulated Printing
I have the endstops, automated homing, and steps per mm set up correctly so that my rostock mini can run gcode and “print” an object. Of course, I still need a printbed, and an extruder cold / hot end before actual printing will happen. Also, I’m still using my 1/8″ plywood prototype frame pieces, so it wobbles around a lot with the vibrations. Once I finalize all of the mounting holes, etc, I’ll be switching out to a full 1/4″ acrylic sheet on the top and bottom.