Assembling the Ecksbot 3D printer: Part 1

Hi everyone.

I'm a bit angry with myself for having let two months go by before writing this post (as opposed to the two weeks I promised in my previous post), but hey, it's not like I have kept the world waiting. I have had all of 130 blog views since I started the blog, of which about a hundred would be me excitedly reading my first post over and over again. So let's get this thing trending by posting some more awesome technical content for engineers...(ok, that sounded better in my head).

The last couple of months I have been scraping off a few hours here and there, taking the time to assemble a very interesting piece of equipment that has brought me everything from immense joy to a "hit-the-wall-with-my-face" type of frustration. Through this process I have learnt a great many things and I would like to share this with those of you who care for the ways of the 3D printer.

The Ecksbot-ZA v4.0 RepRap 3D printer is a South African flavour (with a lot of handy improvements) of the RepRap Ecksbot, which according to RepRapWiki is a "sturdier and sleeker derivative of the Prusa 2". It has a 180mm x 180mm heated bed build plate and an all-metal hotend (with PTFE liner) which takes 1.75mm diameter filament from the extruder side and melts it down to the 0.4mm diameter of the hotend nozzle. The kit came with everything necessary to assemble the printer according to the assembly instructions available at the OpenHardware Wiki page. Some insights were also derived from the Eckertech site, while the OpenHardware forum helped immensely.

When I started off with this project I decided to document my ventures as much as possible and to this end I recorded the whole assembly process, also taking a fair amount of photos at critical points. The assembly process is divided up into different sections (based on the instructions for the different subsections of the printer) and I have created some videos demonstrating these sections below. The videos do not have the greatest of quality, I apologise for that, but the photos are pretty cool. View them in this folder for a more detailed "assembly guide in colour".

Step 1: Assembling the vertices

I really hadn't ever heard the word "vertex" used in the context of a 3D printer, so this started off in an interesting way. The vertices are the triangular supports with the four feet upon which the whole 3D printer rests and which gives it its sturdiness. Here it was important to ensure (to as high an accuracy as one can manage with these human hands) that both vertices are equilateral triangles, so the ruler and callipers came in handy. The vertex assembly is shown in the video below.

Step 2: Assembling the frame

The next step was to assemble the main printer frame using the vertices from the previous step. Again, for printer stability and sturdiness, it was essential to have equal measurements on corresponding parts on opposite sides of the printer - this can be seen as a requirement for every step of this whole assembly process. The video below shows the printer frame assembly.

Step 3: Assembling the X-axis

This axis is responsible for the left/right movement of the hotend/extruder combo (if you look at the printer from the point of view that the photo shows at the end of the video above). It is driven by a single stepper motor and belt system and it carries the hotend to where it should be in the X-plane. Of importance here is to align the pulleys (for the Z-axis movement guide) as carefully as possible, which looks inherently improbable due to the fact that cable ties are used. But it actually works quite well. Also, don't make the belt too stiff or give it too much slack, as both can cause printing problems. The belts are strengthened with stainless steel wires internally, so they shouldn't really stretch. See the video of this section below.

Step 4: Assembling the Y-axis

The Y-axis carries the aluminium frame, the headed bed, the aluminium printing surface and the eventual 3D printed object in the front-to-back plane (as viewed according to the convention explained above). Like the X-axis, it is also driven by a stepper motor and pulley system. The stiffness of the belt is not extremely important from the start here, as the Y-motor is mounted on a bracket that one can adjust to change the belt stiffness (kudos to whoever made this adjustment to the design). In the case of the Ecksbot-ZA v4.0, the Y-motor mounting bracket is an aluminium part, as opposed to the older versions where it was a 3D printed part. This was to increase stability, or so I assume (it might have been for the fun of it, really, who am I to judge?). See the assembly video below.

Step 5: to be continued

You will have to wait a bit for this one. It might be because I think the post is getting too long, or it might be because I haven't edited the rest of the videos yet. Whatever the reason, you'll at least have something to look forward to soon. And when I say soon, I mean soon as in not two months. More like two... ok let's not make promises.

Cheers!