Rep-Rap 3d printer cases on E-bay .... wow

[GrantB]

I stumbled across some thing on E-Bay today, maybe worth sharing......

A 3d Printer case - just the case only to accept up to 300x300mm heat beds.
This thing looked very pretty & perfect for stuffing a set of home build mechanics into...

I have ideas of replacing my 4 FlashForge Dreamers.
I recon I can get a complete set of parts incl the electronics using MKS-Gen motherboards & touch screens with 300x300 beds for about £300 & build this lot into one of these cases.
It was about £300, but when I weighed up how nice it looked, the size of the bed I can get in it & compare the completed machine to a £3,000 Ultimaker, I recon I would have a MUCH better machine for about £600 all up cost...

I costed making a case, but by the time I bought all the tools, bodged it up a few times & made a sodding mess, cut off my digits & bled to death... it seemed like a good deal...
and it is ready built with all its handles & fittings.

The case was called an "Athena" by some new outfit called Nova some-thing-or-other.... it was pricey, but looked very solid & darned pretty..
Looks like I have an Easter present to grovel to my better half for... the creeping & grovelling will now reach a new low to SHE who wears the Trousers ha ha ...

[MikeyBoxP]

Hmmm that is interesting, i wouldn't mind an enclosure for one of my printers.
This one wouldn't work with mine though it l would imagine it would only work with a core XY, my bed would crash into the front.

And it is a little pricey, I wonder how expensive it would be to get panels cut to size and print your own brackets , hinges, handles etc.

[GrantB]

I did think the same..... & then I realized these people must have an army of machines, as there appear to be 12 corners, 4 handles, about 8 inner corner bits, hinges, 10 window corner trim pieces too, and all the edging strips n stuff too.
I contacted the sellers via Ebay & they are selling these as a new product & testing the market AND open to offers. They also have a cases to accept machines like the i3 CR10, Anets etc and Rostok Delta's.
I think I will offer a cheeky £250 & see if they accept.... they can only say no after all.

[GrantB]

got one.... £250 accepted.... MINE, delivery on Friday.... ready built, just bolt the goodies into it & cut some vent extraction exits..... & the wife says she will be OK with it in the kitchen... YAY

[MikeyBoxP]

Awesome, hows the build quality?

[GrantB]

will let you know when it arrives

[GrantB]

Case arrived.
all built & ready to fit all the gubbins into it.
gotta say, its spot on & thougj I was expecting to be able to be a bit piccy, Im very pleased with it.
For the amount of hardware & the large number of printed sub parts, its worth the money at £250.
Yes I could make it myself, yes I could design the bits & print them, but id have to take a week off work to print all these bits to this standard, & would still need to buy big panels, get a decent circular saw to cut every thing up.
all the edge trims are so accurately cut & fitted that there is not even 0.5 mm gaps.
the case is strong enough to sit on, on one corner & it will not flex at all.
Under the machine floor there is a huge space for mechanics & a really big power supply.

It actually looks so pretty, Im almost afraid to put a drill to it to mount all the goodies...

measure TWICE, drill ONCE

[MikeyBoxP]

Thats great to hear. Sounds reasonable, for me i'm still tempted to build my own, my printer costs less than £250 even with the upgrades and mods I've done to it.

[GrantB]

some time ago, soon after joining this forum, I developed a set of mechanics specifically to cope with stupidly high speeds, rapid heat transfer hot ends of large diameter nozzle outputs & was looking at laying down 1.2mm material at some 300mms speed.
I built a few XY top frames to support the X Carriage & did test prints of just a few layers high, all manually adjusted, before I went to the expense of building the whole machine frame.
What I really wanted was a case to be the frame all in one.

I bought in some 600 x 300 heat mats, developed the XY X-Carriage & all the supports running on 10mm rails pushing 1.2mm material from the nozzles via Volcano Nozzles, but the heat flow was not good or stable enough.
I have a friend who owns a thermograph & the temperature thru the hot end was terribly varied & erratic, even just across the 20mm size of the Hot-Block... so I made my own 120watt 3 element hot end... and it works well.

Last night, I nailed the XY carriage into the top of this new case & simulated a dummy print doing a star shape 280mm wide/tall, at 320mms speed to see how much shock would be created...
I tuned the acceleration & deceleration curve ratios so that the X-Carriage decelerated progressively over the last 45mm of any straight direction change or halt.
*Note 300mms only happens in lengths of 100mm or more.
The case actually reduced a lot of previous issues of using an Ally frame.
I also mounted the case feet on 50mm dia x 70mm tall springs, which removed all the deceleration shock from the mechanics, & audibly made an instant difference, as the motor & belt whine ceased.
So... instead of the mechanics having to absorb all the shock from rapid movement changes, now the sprung feet do most of it... so simple, but so effective too.

I fitted the X-Carriage with a plotter pen (hot glued it in), and the result with the sprung case feet & the deceleration curve settings, at 300mms there was virtually no ringing on the plotted pen image of 0.2mm width.

I removed the sprung feet & locked the case to my work-top with Blu-Tak to prevent it moving at all, & there was a lot of ringing which isn't surprising at such stupid speeds.

I found that the case internal temps MUST be above 40'C, or the layers will not fuse together.
I did find the the 1st layer still needs to be about 50mms tops, or the ABS simply wont stay put.... once a couple of layers are down, I can turn up the speed.

I know the speeds I set with Simplify3D were being achieved, as the print head would do a 5 pointed star filling the 300x300 heat bed in under 5 seconds.
You definately would not want to get your hand cought up at these speeds.

lastly, the XY axis are being driven by twin 10mm GT2 Belts, as my prototypes a year ago were shredding a single 6mm belt.

Now I need to modify my stepper drivers as they keep burning out, & see what is available re bigger motors.... and devise a way to prevent shunting of the whole print bed from the carriage vibration shock... this will likely be harder to achieve me thinks..

Its been a fun weekend - maybe I should get out more.....

[MikeyBoxP]

Wow you've clearly had more time with 3d printers than I have, very impressive. I'm only just starting to experiment with larger nozzles and dampening the resonance in my printer. My cheapest printer makes very decent prints but shakes itself apart, its quite amusing.
I would like in future to design some more complicated parts for my own printer design as I get better at fusion 360.

[4runner]

HI, I thought that i would chime in. The price of the case is in British pounds, that equates to $327.08 in US dollars.

[GrantB]

Hi Mikey,
I got lucky 2 years ago, & bought 4 FlashForge Dreamers as customer returns for just £300 each & took a chance they were complete... for under £100 total, they were all running. I have significantly modified the cooling, extraction, mechanical strength & lots of illuminations too....
They have each clocked up over 1,500 hrs actual printing time... mostly doing my development parts & a bunch of prints via E-abay too for customers...

Through these little machines, I learned many improvements & also bought a few i3's as kits & a couple of CTC machines for pennies for the parts, as they were finishing late at night.

All this tinkering led me to want to make a business of this hobby, of manufacturing built machines, which is rapidly taking shape & due to Launch this summer.
The key thing with the enterprise concept is to build machines that rid us of all the niggles & failures of even High-End machines from Ultimaker, FlashForge etc, as they all fail miserably in many ways... probably down to build budget & corner cutting... and what I have come up with is insanely lucrative & still gives the customer a dream in a box with EVERY option included at under £2k.

I'm also almost ready to launch a Monster Delta machine with a 500mm dia bed x 1200mm build height... and can print with 1.2mm nozzles at 320mms "Nominally"

I'm happy to share a few ideas if you want to mail privately with an email address

[MikeyBoxP]

wow that is very lucky, faulty/ returns go for a lot more these days, I was lucky enough to get an old Mendel faulty that I have used for parts/testing. I will in future build it into a new printer, right now I have a cheap i3 clone and a any cubic delta both highly modified, I like playing with the cheaper kits, I'm a tinkerer at heart I guess, I don't do a great deal of printing for me the reward is building the machine better, faster, more accurate etc.

[GrantB]

Tinkering is under-estimated, & is great for the mind & soul... I bough a budget i3 kit of e-bay some time ago for about £140, & must admit I learned a lot from it, and had a lot of fun along the way as well.
Unfortunately there are not enough fiddlers & tinkerers left.... engineering skills are almost a lost art these days...