Basic Rostock MAX kit, Xnaron magnetic arm upgrade, after market 12V and 24V power supplies mounted in base (where original PS was located). The 24V powers my Onyx. My original aluminum heat dissipator on top of the Onyx. It not only dissipates heat but constrains Onyx warpage. I really wish this upgrade had worked out commercially as it has been rock solid for me. I run a borosilicate plate covered with .03" PEI taped on with 3M tape on one side. (PEI is an amazing print surface.) I run the machine with a RAMBo v1.1b with the LCD display. I mounted my RAMBo differently for accessibility. It is also cooled with a fan to prevent stepper driver overheating. The business end is a 4 nozzle Kraken hot end driven by 4 EZStruders. It is water cooled and an amazing device. This is still a work in progress but coming along nicely. I'll be moving to an Azteeg X3 Pro controller to drive all 4 extruders, it's configured for 2 at this time with RAMBo. I've been running the threaded themistors in the E3D and Kraken exclusively and am completely sold on these as an upgrade. Two of the EZStruders are top mounted on printed mounts, the other two are on SeeMeCNC's "side arms". I have a part fan on the effector, used primarily for PLA parts. My hot bed reaches 80°C in less than 2 minutes with the 24V supply and 3 minutes to 100°C. And here are some metrics on what I've done with this machine:
- I've printed well over 1000 parts of all sizes. You've seen some of them in the "What are YOU making?" topic. I've printed some amazingly tall and fat vases (one of my personal favorite items) that took over 12 hours to print down to a little gizmo that is less than 1cm^3 with lots of intricate features. Many of these 1000 parts have been the tenkara line holders that I now manufacture and sell.
- I've printed LOTS of PLA, LOTS of ABS and a fair amount of Taulman Nylon (3 types), polycarbonate, NinjaFlex, Laywood, several soluble support filaments, and a few others I've forgotten about. I estimate that I've consumed about 18 1Kg spools of ABS and PLA.
- I've been running my machine around 8 hrs a day most days for the last 3 months producing commercial parts. That's over 700 hours just for this period. Prior to that I had about 500 hours on the machine. I've not really had to do any maintenance to the mechanics of the machine. I do keep the Cheapskate bearing covers clean (isopropyl alcohol on a Q-tip does a great job).
- There were some early reports last year on pre-mature belt wear, broken belt teeth, etc. During this time I've not had a single issue with belt wear. Until Tuesday, I had not touched my belts at all in over a year. Earlier this week I started to notice a little "part offset" at high print speeds that turned out to be a loose belt on my Y tower. A quick adjustment fixed that (the tensioning adjustment screw at the top of the tower was very loose. I do not have any special tension adjustment mods, just the original SeeMeCNC setup. Given that I've only had to adjust 1 belt re-tension in over a year, it doesn't seem like a mod is necessary. My MAX has the original small 15 tooth pulleys that were suspects for poor belt wear.
- I've done a lot of experimenting with hot ends. I've installed and used several J-Heads, a E3D v5 hot end, a self-designed all stainless hot end and now, the 4 nozzle Kraken. the E3D and Kraken are my favorite by far (they share a common design) with the Kraken's water cooling edging out the E3D air cooling by a bit. I'm a big proponent of water cooling now. I've had no trouble printing PLA, ABS, Nylon or polycarbonate with these two extruders. The J-Head is also a very nice extruder. And the updated SeeMeCNC extruder with the new(isn) nozzle design is quite competent too. I've also tried a few other "exotics" like a direct drive Q3BD hot end/
cheers,
Michael
