And… it prints!

After a very long wait, my SCARA RepRAP is finally printing. I printed 4 calibration cubes and a piece of a tricycle wheel (in the wrong colour…)

In the video you can see the new hall-affect end stops, my “Mostly wooden Gregs’ Wades” extruder, the mounted hotbed all working together to print a tricycle wheel.

What you cannot see is the new additions to the firmware that sports:

  1. Quick calibration routines (in Mcodes)  Calibration of the arms can be done in as little as 2min without having to calculate the relative arm positions for the arms – for any size machine…
  2. Axis scaling: it is not possible to easily calibrate the x and y print sizes by steps alone, and therefore the machine has internal and Mcode adjustable scaling factors to ensure your prints come out the right size

You can check my Youtube channel (quentinharley) out for some footage…

Happy times!

I have a couple of upgrades to the frame coming, focusing on the z-axis stability without having to add another motor.  There might also be an upgrade to the arm configuration in the pipeline soon.  I also thought about a practical way to install more than one hotend on the arm – bringing multi-head printing to SCARA.

28 Replies to “And… it prints!”

  1. You really should apply for a patent on this idea before someone else does. You can still open source the design, it’ll just prevent people from making money on your badass idea.

  2. Thanks for all the encouragement! The sudden interest in my project really gave me the push I needed to get Morgan going

  3. Dude, you’ve got one of the reprap legends watching, quit slacking! Ha ha, any estimate on the max print height of Morgan? I’m assuming pretty tall…

    1. Exactly…

      Build hight is entirely up to you. My current frame will allow 200mm, making the build size 200x200x200 currently, but I limited it to 100mm for testing, and until the z-axis is sorted out. The z-drive is a bit slow, and to wait for it during homing gets a bit old… I need to put the same type of motor on Z as I have on Theta and Psi.

      The original build size I had in mind for Morgan was 300x300x300, and I will probably build a Mega Morgan later on… I have a wind turbine that needs to be built.

  4. Congratulations on your progress! I really like your design and can’t wait until you have it running at higher speeds. Good luck on your future projects, you’ve got a real winner here!

    1. I am considering a campaign on IndiGoGo at the moment with some co-conspirators from my local hackerspace. Unfortunately Kickstarter does not deal with non US or UK residents… Their loss… 😉 Anyway, thanks for the vote of confidence!

      Q

  5. Please consider making it open source, I would give a small contribution simply to help encourage development of the design. I wonder if it would be possible to scale the design to even larger dimensions, up to 1 cubic meter build volume within a few years……

    1. It will very definitely be Open Source, since it carries the RepRap name…
      It is not quite ready for release yet, because of the following reasons:
      1. My code base is a bit of a mess
      2. There are some major improvements under way in terms of part stability and economy in printing them
      3. Documentation? What documentation?

      When everything is done, and at the current momentum sooner than I expected, There should be a functional github page for Morgan, STL’s on the blog, and a completed HowTo on a blog page and on RepRapWiki.

      The design lends itself well to scaling up, and a “Mega Morgan” design has been on the cards since the beginning 😉

      Cheers,
      Quentin

  6. Really great build. It seems to print very well. I like the coaxial drive to the twin arm SCARA as its very neat and compact. I’ll post a link on the reprapforum as others will be very interested in what you have achieved.

    1. The coaxial drive has the added benefit of removing half of the maths that would otherwise be required. Running from Arduino Mega, I need al the savings I can get!
      Thanks for the link.

  7. Please do look into starting a kickstarter like campaign (have you checked out indiegogo.com??)

    I would donate to the cause! I’m in the process of starting a RostockMAX build next week, so I don’t *need* a new printer, but it would create a whole new branch of reprap printers like the Delta printers which really started with Johan’s Rostock beta release plans last August – since then I have seen at least 2 commercial and 4 open-source printers.

    I would be very interested in seeing how big this design could scale………

    1. Thanks… I will take you up on it!
      At the moment I am working on making the extruder more reliable and quieter… My wooden extruder works well, but sounds like an asthmatic donkey!

  8. Brilliant! Your coaxial design really rocks, I like how it can be printed more than any other printer out there and without ruining the quality too much. A light head with a Z bed is also a big plus imho.

    I always was looking for something small I could bring to my nearby fablab : my ultimaker is way too big for my motorbike, the foldarap is quite complex, and the Titan by Daid looks promising but it is still in progress… and it requires tons of parts, rods and pulleys…

    Yours is both simple and elegant – it solves most of these issues. And software is cheaper than hardware. For sure I’ll follow your progress 🙂

    1. Happy to serve!

      Morgan also travels quite well. I grab it by the top plate, chuck it in the seat next to me and go. Some of the guys at the House are always impressed that I do not have to readjust anything before showing off the progress.

      I had a very good feeling about this one from the start. Thanks for summing it up so nicely.

  9. Wow, this is looking really good! While I don’t know lots about reprap designs, I do know that what I’m seeing makes it seem almost achievable for me to build. Thus, I’m looking forward to seeing the designs out there so I can make an attempt at my first 3d printer.

    1. Working on that… The ease of build was very important for me in the design phase, since I believe there are two major issues keeping people from building repraps: Cost and Complexity.

      Only a few weeks more…

      1. Don’t worry, I can wait! I’m looking forward to having an opportunity to put something like this together.

  10. Hey Quentin! I saw the half-finished Morgan when you showed it to the guys at House4Hack. Congrats with the results so far, this is really an awesome achievement 😉

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