John's Maxmicron M8n build...

John Pollman

Member
Messages
1,332
Location
Rochester Hills, MI
I'm so excited!

Look what showed up at about 5:00 this afternoon. It's a Maxmicron M8. 250 x 250 x 200 build area with auto-leveling. Here are some shots of me opening it up. I think that I'll do like Darren did, and just keep adding pics of the progress I make on this original post. I can add replies too, but I'll try to keep the build info and pics here.

This is gonna be fun!

Aluminium-Frame-900x900.jpg3D1.jpg3D2.jpg3D3.jpg3D4.jpg
 
Hi folks! It has been a long day and I'm tired. I spent a couple hours working on it yesterday, but ended up going into work because it was busy and they were short handed. I had today off, so I got to it after Celeste left for work and spent about 12 hours on it today. Assembly is pretty much complete, now I have to wire it. Then it's time to get it adjusted and calibrated. Don't worry, I took a TON of pictures of the build. I'm just trying to come up with a good way to show the best ones.

What I did was with each step, I laid out the all of the pieces and hardware for that step. Then I photographed it. Then I did the assembly for that step, and then photographed it when that step was complete. I wanted a good record of the build. Here's what she looks like now...

3D5.jpg
 
Very nice John. I like the design of that. If you really wanted a longer bed down the road, you could easily swap those bottom extrusions for longer ones and add a longer bed. :thumb:
 
Very nice John. I like the design of that. If you really wanted a longer bed down the road, you could easily swap those bottom extrusions for longer ones and add a longer bed. :thumb:
Darren can the o/s code that runs these machines be easily modified to accommodate a bigger bed? I realize the gcode can drive it where it wants but i presume the machines own o/s has limits set in it??? Dunno.

That conjures up an image of a shapeoko person with beefy rails adding a printing ability to the basic cnc router something like Dan has done for laser engraving.
Thinking of folks that dont have work area for all these space consuming machines.
 
Well, My names not Darren, But I can answer.

Yep. You can build them to be pretty much any size you want. You may have trouble finding components like a heated bed big enough, but then again, that's not necessary for all filaments.

They have different styles too that can allow you to go much taller.

_AAAIs6_uTxOXHj7-ImaA6v7hJ5zI9xf0yDuZkrdByiXE6UPpW-VBzozS7IdKzX322shHyaahkIJBvk5tDv38xZq=w640-h480-p
 
Most printers are running a software that have the settings for table size and speeds configurable, there are several turn key brands that do run proprietary firmwares that cant be altered. These chinese ones are based on opensource firmware, so we can alter them.

Adding to an existing cnc may take some doing. One would either need to add two more axis or replace the board with one that has enough axis connections. There's also the temp sensors for the bed and hot end that would need to be implemented as well. A lot of that temp management is built into the firmware as well as the auto level features.

The more promissing perspective would be putting a printer control board in place of a cnc controller, but the gcode sender would need to know how to control the spindle and such. The stepper drivers would also need to be large enough to match those of the cnc controller.

I've seen it done, but seems like it may not be worth it for the hurdles one would need to do to accomplish it. :dunno:

Sent from my SM-G920P using Tapatalk
 
One problem with these printers though is the amount of time it takes to print something. The 220x220x240 build size is actually not that bad in size. If you were going to print something at the extremes of size for this, well, it's going to take a while.

That's not saying you couldn't increase the nozzle size and maybe do things faster, but there are limites to the speed with this current technology.

Maybe some of the laser based systems that use a printing solution that hardens when hit by the laser light are faster, so that's also something else to look into.
 
That is a great looking machine John.

Did it come with a power switch? If not, you'll want to consider adding one with either a fuse on it or with a 10 amp inline fuse at the minimum.

One other note, when you go to level it, make sure you do it where you're not going to be moving the printer, any movement of the frame may cause the leveling to get out of wack, which is why some of us have mounted ours on torsion boxes.'

Looking forward to the first prints! :lurk:
 
I was disappointed when I realized that it doesn't have a power switch/fuse. That will be remedied shortly. I am going to try to get it where it will be before leveling it, but it does have auto-level.
 
Top