The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

[Eaglezsoar]

A message direct from PartDaddy:

I wasn't trying to create a bunch of hype, we're just having fun! Stands 16'-2" tall. Not 100% sure yet, but the printable area is 4 foot diameter by a build height just under 12 feet tall. I'll take some official measurements soon. Nozzle is .187" diameter or 0.250" diameter. The hot end has up to 1400 Watts of heating power. The machine requires two 120VAC 20A circuits to run. We're working on a Microsoft Surface Pro and Mac Book. The machine itself weighs approximately 650 lbs. The hot end stepper motor can deliver 600 inch-pounds of torque. I used an 8:1 gear reducer there. The arm assembly, hot end, and stepper motor weight 80 pounds. There are 30 pounds of counter balance weights on each tower.

We moved it today. Almost finished hot end. Gotta sleep before the show so going home now. John Oly did a large dry run print and it looked great.

Oy & I are going to come in at about 6:30 tomorrow morning to finish a couple things. We'll move it around a few more times and probably heat up the hot end. Then at 7:30 to 8 am we'll load it onto the trailer. Watch the dropcams in the morning. Have a great night!!

Everyone here has had a hand in helping make "The PartDaddy" in one way or another. John Oly, Andy O (Guanu), JJ, Brent Rubell, Spencer, Melissa, Tandey, Julie, Joe, Evan, Bob, Caleb, Uri, Petra, Melanie, Sam, Jacklynn, Johnathan... and the open community!

It's truly a privilege to work with so many good people.

~Steve Wygant
aka PartDaddy

[brent]

Steve couldn't have summed it up better! It was absolutely incredible to come into the shop and see that giant machine every day.

[brent]

I'll be linking pictures as the team is in Detroit right now and probably won't post on this thread.

Arrived in Detroit
[img]http://i.gyazo.com/d7339b79d8ad80b3f2c7d94bbaf2b4f4.png[/img]

[Mac The Knife]

That explains why the build diameter is so small.

[Eaglezsoar]

Mac the knife, I hope that your comment was an attempt at humor, we love the PartDaddy printer and appreciate all the
work that went into it from the staff at SeeMeCNC.

[Mac The Knife]

Mac the knife, I hope that your comment was an attempt at humor, we love the PartDaddy printer and appreciate all the
work that went into it from the staff at SeeMeCNC.

My comment was aimed at the picture posted of it loaded in the back of the truck, and yes it was supposed to be humorous. By looking at the picture, if the build area was any wider, they would have to disassemble the frame to load it into the truck.

[Eaglezsoar]

Mac the knife, I hope that your comment was an attempt at humor, we love the PartDaddy printer and appreciate all the
work that went into it from the staff at SeeMeCNC.

My comment was aimed at the picture posted of it loaded in the back of the truck, and yes it was supposed to be humorous. By looking at the picture, if the build area was any wider, they would have to disassemble the frame to load it into the truck.

I honestly didn't think it would fit into the truck. I think the length of the entire machine exceeds 12 feet. I would love to see it in person. Perhaps someday.
Happy Printing!

[Mac The Knife]

Instead of going to the Detroit Maker Fair today, I'm instead heading out to the Michigan Steam Engine and Threshers club's show.

[brent]

[img]http://i.gyazo.com/019c6d27b8d18663e1f8d0c44d2b452a.png[/img]

[brent]

[img]http://i.gyazo.com/ee9122f9cbad7382cd9c2deba13a6155.png[/img]

[brent]

vid: http://instagram.com/p/q66V5mnuFQ/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Flateric]

Ya, but when are you guys going to make a LARGE version! LOL

kidding.

[Mac The Knife]

So, this year instead of buying a Christmas tree for the company, you're going to print it instead? Wonder how long that would take,,,

[Jimustanguitar]

Steve and the auger from his pellet extruder:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/jcSyLvg.png[/img][img]http://i.imgur.com/w8hWNwe.png[/img]

Some extruder pictures:

[img]http://i.imgur.com/5UfZCX2.png[/img][img]http://i.imgur.com/YXklenQ.png[/img][img]http://i.imgur.com/AKvR9lS.png[/img]

[img]http://i.imgur.com/O6IhlUm.png[/img][img]http://i.imgur.com/AITgxiz.png[/img]

[DocHogan]

That...that is a thing of beauty. Sure would look good in my living room

[wyattkyle]

Heey. I'd like a printer just like the PartDaddy so I'd be able to build full scale models of people, among other things.

I want one. The same dimensions even. I't doesn't necessarily have to print from recycled plastic balls, but I'm sure that's a positive feature to have.

Where did you get the parts from and who sold them to you? And how much did it cost?


I'm more than capable of assembling one.

[geneb]

He manufactured it. From scratch.

g.

[Jimustanguitar]

Where did you get the parts from and who sold them to you? And how much did it cost?

Steve and John custom built every piece in their shop. It's open source, so watch for the CAD files to show up here: https://github.com/seemecnc/Partdaddy" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I can't even speculate on the price, I've got no idea.

[geneb]

Just the stepper drivers alone are about $400 a pop - if they're similar to the ones my ShopBot uses to drive it's NEMA34 motors.

g.

[Jimustanguitar]

Just the stepper drivers alone are about $400 a pop

So there's $1600. Add a Rambo and some 80/20 and they'll probably sell for about $1850 shipped, right?

[DavidF]

Just the stepper drivers alone are about $400 a pop

So there's $1600. Add a Rambo and some 80/20 and they'll probably sell for about $1850 shipped, right?

Think your missing a 0 there......
Maybe just rent print time per hour plus material??

[Generic Default]

This thing looks awesome. When are we going to see a printed table or chair or human model?

There are four things about it that kinda bug me though, I'm just a hater so don't take me too seriously!

1) The massive nozzle on that thing won't make details. 0.15 inch minimum radius is a lot

2) Acceleration is gonna be reaallly slow. Make the moving parts lighter!

3) The arms are extrusions. Why not use square thin wall aluminum or steel tubes, you can make it much more rigid and lightweight by going with big hollow tubes instead of thin extrusions! Length to diameter ratio is critical for this kind of stuff.

4) Warping. Put a giant oven around the build area to keep the heat in, it's already hard to print parts over a few inches without warping.



I'd love to see this thing print glass filled nylon, they already have the pellets since they injection mold their rostock parts with it. Fibers reduce warping a lot.

[PartDaddy]

I put files on our SeeMeCNC Github for the PartDaddy.

Here's the pellet extruder I designed. Oly & I went round & round with details on the hot end.

PartDaddys SMPE

Some spacers might be missing. We didn't draw any because it was just easier to make them on the fly. I gotta say, this whole project was a lot of fun and not possible without everybody at SeeMeCNC pitching in. JJ did a lot of work on mounting limit switches, arms, and for CAD he took my sketched work and turned it into something, which I took and mashed into the design of the final machine. Guanu did the electronics and helped dial-in the final setup. And everyone else had something to do with building this thing. Look for occasional posts on facebook or twitter.

[PartDaddy]

Cost. I bought less than $6000 in stuff. And probably another $6000 in machining, assembly, setup, and wouldn't sell one for less than $50,000 USD. I do not plan on producing these at this time. If you're handy in the machine shop, down the files and start making one! I design in Solidworks, and those files will also be on Github.

Most parts are made out of aluminum. Standard inch size t-slot. The screw for the pellet extruder is steel. I typically use standard hardware, like 1/4-20 and 3/8-16 sizes. I like stainless nylon lock nuts with stainless hardware, unless I want extra strength from an alloy fastener. In which case, I'll choose a zinc plated steel fastener. The clearance hole sizes will give you the size of bolts I used. Depending on the project, I don't spend time putting in bolts. Other standard hardware, like pulleys and bearings are not in my files. They're standard items, like L series timing belt, 608 bearings, and the rubber feet.

Electronics wise: The RAMBo board is the heart of the control. There is not a more reliable control board on the market. We broke out the step, direction, and enable pins to large stepper amplifiers. You can find 4 axis NEMA 34 stepper kits on eBay, just search. You can buy them complete with power supply. I'm using a 72VDC supply to power all four NEMA 34 steppers. Of course, 120VAC circuit have fuse protection. The linear output force I'm getting is about 80 pounds. The capacitive sensor on the hopper switches a solid state relay to turn on a small vacuum to load pellets. And the 700 W of 120VAC heater bands are also switched by a solid state relay.

I chose a Microsoft Surface Pro2 tablet computer. It works great. Just put it in airplane mode before running the machine. (Or is might update in the middle of your print. Kinda like your buddy playing a bad joke on you.)

[PartDaddy]

@Generic Default

1. My objective is to print a large part in about the same time you print a little part. The sacrifice is resolution. So my 1.5mm layer thickness gets the print done quickly (for it's size). Repeatability is pretty good. The platform moves up and down diagonally 5 feet and can hit the same z height within +/-.005". Rigidity is not real good, but that isn't a huge problem. I'll post more print pics. In the mean time, look up our twitter and facebook for pics.

2. Acceleration isn't too bad. Yep, it's slower. Takes an inch or two to get to full speed. I print PLA 30 to 35 mm/sec. Rapid is 200mm/s. It can go faster, but rigidity is low. So I opt for better accuracy. The whole hot end assembly, arms, etc. weighs about 90 pounds. I have free weights for counter balancing this. For off-center moves, inverting another set of arms upward with another hot end mass would make the nozzle almost weightless during those off-center moves. Right now, the 80 pounds of the steppers carrys the weight when the end-effector moves off-center. So acceleration has to take into account the forces involved during a rapid move off-center.

3. Arms = TSlot extrusion because we have a lot of it. They work great and are plenty rigid to do the job well. Carbon fiber would be my preference.

4. PLA is all I care to print with. It doesn't really shrink. Now, some filament manufacturers probably put a petroleum base colorant in their filaments. It's cheaper. The problem is that the petroleum base colorant shrinks, which = warping. My extruder design can extrude high temp. I've had it sit at 280C for a while. Doesn't matter. There's isn't teflon or linear. Just a smooth steel bore. HDPE and PP extrude well. A change might be needed to the screw and hot end to make it work right. We machined deeper grooves for the pellets for PLA because it's sticky and needed more input to feed better. While petroleum based plastics seemed to feed easier because they don't seem to act as sticky as PLA when melting. Haven't tried it, but a thermoplastic urethane elastomer (ninja flex like stuff) would probably extrude well. Nylon too. Your problem will be shrink, and will prevent you from using it. Like Taulman filaments, these exotic materials need to be a co-polymer blend to work. Just my opinion here. Shrink is a problem on this scale of printing. Even glass filled nylon shrinks too much, about 0.007 inch / inch. With glass filled nylon you'll shrink almost 3/16" over a 24" cross section. PLA is the magic stuff that allows it to work. If PLA didn't exist, I wouldn't have even bothered to make this machine.