Hello, and welcome back to Scale Me Down.
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channel.
and this is our Creality CR-10 Max
3D printer. It appeared on this
channel during the series where we
scratch
built a two-seat radio control Spitfire
and the mould was made on this very
printer.
We also however run a smaller 3D printer
a CR-10s
which we've recently converted to direct
drive extrusion
to make 3D printed model aircraft more
easily
and that's because direct drive
extrusion offers more accurate control
of retraction.
The printer works by feeding this PLA
plastic filament
down this PTFE tube to a hot nozzle
and when the extrusion must stop at the
edge or
end of a print, the printer draws the
filament
back a bit to stop the flow of molten
plastic
promptly and prevent the nozzle from
dribbling.
This retraction minimizes stringing on
the finished print.
So in this episode we are going to
convert
this printer to direct drive extrusion
using this Micro Swiss kit.
Let's get started !
The conversion starts by taking the
print head apart.
Many of these parts will be reused.
The heater and thermistor are reused and
be really careful with the thermistor
wires as they're very delicate.
To remove this stepper motor, I had to
take the entire extruder assembly to
bits which was really annoying.
After slackening and unclipping the belt
we can remove the old chassis.
We will reuse these v-rollers on the new
MicroSwiss chassis.
Just retention this belt.
I use weak, purple thread lock as a
matter of course on all these machine
screws.
The new all metal hot end is really nice.
Heating the print head to reseat the
nozzle.
Now, this kit from Micro Swiss, although
it's really well made,
it's not actually meant for this
specific printer.
So we've hit a slight snag ! Firstly,
there's nowhere for this bl-touch
leveling sensor to mount
and second there's no way of mounting
the cooling shroud and fan
so we're going to pop all this off again,
take it into the workshop
and drill and tap some holes.
In order to get all this to fit, I had
to make this little bracket
for the fan shroud and that was made out
of
just a steel bracket from a hardware
store just drilled
and fitted with nuts and bolts and
painted matte black,
and then, also I had to drill and tap
this fitting
at m3 for the bracket that fits the
bl-touch.
It shouldn't be too frightening to
modify your 3D printer if you have one
to make these parts fit -
it isn't that hard. Anyway, we'll just get
all this
installation finished up and tidied up
and then we can get it calibrated.
g-code is supplied to re-flash the
printer,
however these retraction settings in
Cura are the main thing.
Well here we are then. The instructions
for this conversion
are great, although it did take a little
more than the suggested hour
due to the modifications required to
make it fit this specific printer.
Further modifications we did were to
move the filament sensor from down here
up to here and that required me to make
up this
extension lead. I'm not sure I like it
here just at the moment although the
filament path is nice
and straight, but if I'm happy with it in
the future I'll make this
cable thread inside one of these hollow
support structures.
At the end of the instructions you're
required to
calibrate the printer and it's
straightforward enough
using g-code which they provide but in
actual fact, I didn't need to bother
and all I ended up doing was changing
the retraction settings in Cura
and after downloading one of these basic
stringing tests
from thingiverse - which is a free
download - the print was perfect.
That's currently what it's printing
now. In conclusion, this was a great
upgrade and easy to do and will now
allow us to print
3D model aeroplanes - which is thin wall
printing much
easier. The Micro Swiss nozzles have a
very hard coating which means we should
now be able to easily print abrasive
materials
such as filaments that contain carbon
fibers - and that might be useful
for the propeller blades on our current
pilatus
turbo porter build.
Also finally, the adjustable tension
nature of the drive mechanism here
allows us to easily print
flexible filaments so stay tuned to the
channel and see what we produce
next on this 3D printer. Thanks for
watching.