I’ve been busy building the mini kossel 3D printer on and off for about a year now. Unlike the Desi 3D printer that I’d build entirely from scratch, this time I decided to splurge on some decent off the shelf parts. I really like this printer design, its clean, simple, fast and economical.
I collected all the parts over the course of couple of months at the beginning of this year (2014).
It still looks a little messy. Need to find a better solution for those unruly wires.
The controller is a RAMPs board combined with an Arduino Mega. The extruder is an all-metal bowden that I bought while I was visiting Shenzhen, China.
The hot-end is a MKV J-Head with 0.4mm nozzle.
The dimensions of the first print are off by about 0.6mm and the first layer is a little too squished, but I’ll be able to get that down with some fine tuning.
One nice thing about this design is that it has an auto bed leveling mechanism which allows the printer to self calibrate before every new job. The original design uses an allen key connected to a limit switch to gently tap on different location on the print bed to self calibrate. I decided to try out a new design based on Johann’s recent experiments on using force sensor underneath the bed and using the hot-end itself to tap on the bed.
The FSR sensors are currently held in place by tape while a felt pad provides support for the above glass bed. I still need to find a more permanent solution to this.
I’ll put up more detailed post on the build soon. In the meantime, calibrate, calibrate, calibrate.
