In just four weeks we have made an perfect example what could be done to print faster and larger, however, we haven’t been able to test our rig thoroughly. In this blog post we will summarize our results subject by subject, but we will also include a list of possible thoughts for a future remake.
Table
First of all we had much trouble with the leveling off the table, this had several cautions:
-The table was mounted with 8 screws, this leads to over dimensioning, three would be the ideal number of support point.
-The Ultimakers couldn’t be leveled because they were joint with a rigid connection.
-The table was made out of 12mm MDF what still bowed.
-Because of the movement and the table and the asymmetrical table with motor, the center of mass moved what made leveling really hard.
A linear motor could solve multiple problems but also adds extra problems due to weight, balance and motor driver. Beside that we had multiple problems ultimakers related because we used two different Ultimaker with different tables, different nozzles, different nozzle heights, whenever trying to bind two Ultimakers together it is much easier with two identical ultimakers.
Software
When we finally figured out how to move the table and how to integrate this in the gcodes made by cure, we made two plugins, this plugin allows to let the table move when the model changes to another part. There could be multiple ways to improve this:
-There are two plugins for each ultimakers and different parts of the object have to be inserted cut, this could be improved so that one file could be inserted that generate two gcode files. This also solves the seam problem we had solved manually by testing.
-When this plugin has been written, there could be done tests what seam will be the strongest or even calculate where the seam has to be to let both printable areas’ be the same, this leads to no waiting time when one ultimakers finishes.
-When mastered the coding, there could be added a feature to move the table constant with a slow speed, this would gain time but is harder to program and connect, the current software doesn’t allow 5 motors to be driven at the same time and the hardware also becomes more complicated.
Electronics
Currently we have soldered 4 wires between the ultimakers digital ports, this gives several problems:
-Because separate power supply is used, the ultimakers could be damaged.
-Separate code has to be used for communication; a serial connection would be much nicer.
-The inputs used could also be used for a second extruders, a communication between these connections makes this impossible.
In the future could possibly make a wireless communication for extra convenience.
