Here me out making a 3d printer out of vex parts with competition super kit

VEX V5 General Discussion
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Here me out making a 3d printer out of vex parts with competition super kit

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Get ready to spend hours tuning a precise PID and motor tracking for the arms, melting gears and progducing filiment, and learning how to precicely overheat motors to melt the filiment.

I guess if you make filiment out of Vex plastic (like gears) the stuff you 3D print would be leagal. (Only if you don’t pay attention to <G3> “Use Common Sense!!!”)

I like the idea though.

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Uh… it could work? It would require using non-vex parts, for the extruder, build plate, then somehow “hacking” the VEX IQ Brain to give it more capabilities for certain settings (like heating up the extruder, a bunch of code and finally: building the printer itself.
(Sounds like an agonizingly long project that will make you want to burn the whole thing down after the 1st week of building it.)
:melting_face:

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I would like to see this made, I don’t think it will work but that would be awesome!

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The problem as noted would be the print head. But I would build a Delta, that solves the need for a solid X/Y/Z axis.

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This is a V5 discussion

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I wasn’t going to entertain this post but as other have let’s go

Using all vex parts runs into problems. The structure of the arms and stuff would be easy but hard to be 100% accurate but do able. Using custom linear slides and rack and pinion gears you could make the XYZ coordinate system with some work.

Then you get to the bed. This is harder, It needs to be pretty heat resistant and flat, cant use c channel or something because of holes. I don’t think poly would work and I can’t think of another VEX legal way to do this

Extruder, that’s just a problem. Some people said to overheat motor, That just cant be done repeatably and printers like to be pretty exact with the temps, that just won’t work. I can’t think of another way

Also here are some specific rules I’d like to call out

As said before would likely be violated. That’s self explanatory

Filament methods that BananaPi mentioned would violate and just printing in general does.

Almost certain that a 200C nossel violates and

where is your preload going?

Ignore the VEX rules and add 3rd party parts to even have a chance.

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I intend to use one of those 3d pens. This is just for fun, not competition

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It would be kind of the same thing then, since the V5 brain has more capabilities, it would be “easier” to code. Also the benefit of steel parts, yes.

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I think you shouldn’t risk your safety and the functionality of your VEX parts

(a better idea would be a robot that walks instead of rolling)

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Day 1 of building 3D printer

image
image3264Ă—2448 2.53 MB

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My spaceman Benny is going to kick in…

Uhh…

  1. In order to melt PLA, you have to reach temperatures of around 180-210 degrees Celsius, or 350-410 Fahrenheit. No way VEX parts are reaching that temperature.

  2. 3D printers also have to have a heated bed to prevent print warping. VEX as mentioned before has no parts that can reach the standard 50-60 degrees Celsius needed to evenly heat an entire bed, and VEX firmware will most definitely make doing so more difficult. There’s also bed leveling. Take it from me, even the smallest variation by fractions of a millimeter in print bed slopes from being level will cause prints to fail. VEX parts are not manufactured with a sufficient tolerance to reach this accuracy.

  3. Also, nozzle diameters are an issue. The common nozzle tip has a hole about 0.4mm in diameter, or 0.016 inches, which is insanely small. VEX parts are not manufactured with a sufficient tolerance to do so, and making one yourself is even harder.

  4. Then we have the slicer software, which is the biggest problem. The slicer software has to “slice” the 3d file into layers and translate that into motor commands for the 3d printer motherboard to read as “gcode” that varies in flavor but usually is Marlin or some variant or it. Here’s an article on gcode. But anyways you would have to make your own slicer software compatible with VEXcode, which is a daunting effort and I doubt even the best VEX coders could do so. Seeing as you seem new to 3d printing, look at OrcaSlicer (the most popular slicer software) and look at it’s GitHub page (DO NOT TRUST THE WEBSITE ORCALSICER, the 3d printing community warned it downloads malware).

  5. Then there’s the issue with motor power. VEX motors are quite underpowered, but I guess you could just use a 4 motor core x/y system with a 2 motor z-axis.

TL:DR, if you want to make your own printer, try making a Voron printer.

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Did you mean for the two to be spelled differently?

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Yeah my bad its supposed to be orcaslicer.

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I would assume so, one is a good slicer, one is malware, that’s probably why

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Y axis done!

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image4032Ă—3024 4.3 MB

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I’m going for a Bamboo Lab A1 type

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Remember this, @24523B .
Good luck.

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I’ll need it (twenty characters)

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This is an awesome distraction from:

  • We want to rebuild our robot for regionals, what do you suggest?
  • Help programming our autonomous, need to get 600 points.
  • Help!! Robot Broken!
  • At our last event we had a issue with a match that we can’t describe but want to know what we can do about it 4 weeks later.
  • The referees cheated us out of the design award, we talked to the EP and he said the referees rule is final.
  • The rules say I have to place the ball in VIQ, but is bouncing acceptable?
  • Can I swing from the wall stake to the top rung of the center platform?
  • …

I’m rooting for you!

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