on on on today
on today's maker mashup we're building the x501 3d printer
so on today's maker mashup we are starting part one of our x 501 build series
now if you followed the channel for a while you know that we have an x301 printer
which is a core xy diy printer and you can build it yourself we have also put together an
x201 which is a slightly smaller version and that one's really great if you don't want a big printer
but one of the things that since we put together the x301 videos that everyone has asked for is
bigger everyone wants to scale this printer up and make it larger and that's what we're going
to be doing in this build series so part one is going to cover the construction and a lot
of the linear motion that's involved with this printer and then what we're going to do is have
each one of these videos do a little bit more so at the end we'll have a working x 501 printer
so there are some design differences to the x501 from the x301 and that's what we're going to be
touching on largely in this video if you want to know how to assemble this printer overall you
could just go watch the x301 videos and there's a card up at the top that'll link you to the
build videos for the x301 if you want to build an x201 which is a smaller version
it's essentially the x301 with a couple of part changes because they're smaller now the x501
that means that we've got a much bigger printer and it changes some of the rules on how we had
to put this printer together we couldn't just make a larger version of it because you would have had
far more flexing in the longer lengths of the extrusion so that's where you see things like this
back plane that is here and we've had to add some additional brackets here to hold this extrusion in
place to make it much more rigid than if we were to just copy the x301 design right from the start
so the goal of the x501 is to be able to print large things but not take longer to print those
large things now what i mean by that is an x301 for instance a 0.4 or 0.6 nozzle is
pretty commonplace for a lot of the x301 builds for the x501 build we're talking about a one
millimeter nozzle as the base nozzle for building this printer now why such a big nozzle because
when you get to 500 millimeters and you want to build something that is in that very very large
space it would take a very very long time to be able to print something at a 0.4 nozzle height so
the idea behind this is that we built a printer that's much larger but it's also designed to print
large things in the same amount of time with not the same level of granularity or fine layer lines
that you would find on something like the x301 so this printer is designed to be something a little
bit different and if you're considering building one of these things you really should understand
that if you're going to throw a 0.4 nozzle on it it could take your prints four or five days
even a week to complete if you're printing slowly and want a super high quality print
at a very small layer height now that might be your goal and you may want to go down this route
for that but that's not what i'm building these videos for the idea here is to build
something that can print at a fairly fast rate to build things like furniture or other things that
are more real-life objects that you would not be able to normally print with a standard 3d printer
so that's really my goal here for the x501 so the build series is going to work a
little bit different i'm basically going to be showing some of the part changes that we made
and some of these parts can be used on the x301 or the x201 but basically what i'm going to be doing
is going through this as here are the changes that you need to make to a standard x301 build
in order to turn it into an x501 build so with all that said let's get to work
like the x301 we're going to start with the base electronics enclosure
and we're once again using the inside corner brackets that are hidden inside the extrusion
now the benefit of these corner brackets like this is that they do hold very tightly and keep things
from flexing but you can use a standard corner bracket as well on these corners and while we
assemble this we want to just get these assembled and then make sure that they are just lightly
tightened we just want to keep everything together until we get it onto the base plate itself
now here we have one of the laser cut base plates and the real advantage of this is all of the holes
are lined up and this time around i don't have to drill anything the first step here is to go around
and pre-load all of the screws and feet onto this main plate now the real trick here is that once
you get everything all set here because this is all laser cut it's all square so this works
really well for lining up and making sure things stay square so once we go ahead and put all of
these different screws in here and get this loaded we're going to attach this to the base plate and
then we'll tighten everything up and that will keep everything square for us so that way the
rest of our build is square and rigid we're going to measure everything here and then we're going to
go ahead and install our 40 40 brackets for the main sides here and then after that we're going
to go ahead and install the rear 2020s now so far this is pretty much the same way that you're going
to make a 301 build nothing's really changed here except that we are using bigger extrusion
now that we have the base all complete now we just have to do the top half of the frame so we're
going to add in here our plastic corner brackets that we've 3d printed we're going to get our
extrusion slid in here for both the left and the right and then we're going to go ahead and finish
everything off by going ahead and attaching the 2020 to the 2040 and then that will complete our
mainframe construction in order to add rigidity we put that new backplane in place now to do that
what i'm going to do here is tap out a m5 screw out of the extrusion here of the 2080 and we're
going to do this on both sides and then after that we're going to go ahead and attach the back plane
two of them are going to go to the 2080 that we have here and then the other two are going to go
ahead and attach to the upright 2020s and that adds some solid rigidity to the overall design
now we're going to move on to the stepper mounts we'll get those attached to the extrusion
and then we're going to go ahead and install the rear pulley towers as well
these just go ahead and screw into the back of the plastic of the extrusion and now we move on to the
linear rails we want to make sure we get these all lined up 600 millimeter rails are really long
so i had a few extra screws on this when i went ahead and assembled it on each side
once the linear rails were in i went ahead and installed the stepper motors
now it's time to move on to our z-axis this goes on pretty easy we just go ahead and make that
flush with the 600 millimeter extrusion install the bracket for our bed mount and then we're gonna
go ahead and install the stepper motor at the bottom once that's all done this lead screw takes
forever to feed through it is a two millimeter pitch this took a really really long time and
i sped it up a 1300 times for the video once that's all done go ahead and tighten things down
and then once that is wrapped up we're going to go ahead and move on to our x-axis this
just drops right into place and we're using the new and improved x-axis mounts these upgraded
mounts are available in the layer fuse repository and you can add them to your x301 or x201 builds
now we're going to tighten this down and then we're going to move on to the pulley towers
for this build i chose the iron red color from the layer fuse pro pla
i wanted to use something different since we had a blue and a black model already once the tower is
in place you're going to want to go ahead then and install the carriage plate and then finally once
everything was all aligned like i said i went back here and installed these corner brackets
to add even more rigidity and i added them to all the 4040 and 2020 that we had going upright
so as you can see building an x501 is very much the same as building the x301 there are some key
differences and some things that you're going to have to do in order to add rigidity now you
don't have to get this back plane we will offer this the layer few store but you don't have to get
the back plane if you want to reinforce this in another way the whole idea here is that you don't
want to have any shifting of the 3d printer in any of the directions while it's printing otherwise
it's going to throw off your 3d prints now i went with the backplane approach now other people
have been talking in our discord channel for a lot of our insiders and patreon members uh we've been
talking a little bit some have uh also suggested just using reinforced aluminum at different angles
to create an x where it can't shift left and right i like the back plane approach because it
screws into both the bottom and the top and it's a nice addition aesthetically it looks really nice
seeing the logo there and and being able to uh have a backplane on it to hide some of the wires
now as the x501 progresses you're going to see other changes like that and i've got a pretty
good plan for how all of this will go together and we're going to learn together how this all works
once we get it completed so with that is going to bring the end of today's video if you liked
it make sure you mash that like button and don't forget to share and subscribe so you don't miss
any of the upcoming episodes on the x501 printer if you'd like to help support the channel or you
want to become an insider please check out our patreon page the patrons get early access to all
of this content and a lot of them have seen the x501 coming for some time so i'm really excited
to start putting these videos series together so that way everyone can see uh all the results of
what we've been talking about for the last four or five months if you're interested in this printer
don't forget to check out our discord channel it's a very large makerspace and we're coming up on a
thousand members in our discord channel where we talk about 3d printers cnc lasers electronics just
about anything it's really a great place for makers to share in real time their experiences
and also get help with a lot of their projects i have links for all that down in the description
so with all that said i want to say thanks again for watching and we'll see you all next time
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