D3D @ Fontys Sittard

This edition of the D3D was made in the town of Sittard, the Netherlands in a pilot project for a course for STEAM teachers. We intend to spread OSE as an educational context to schools in the region, starting with this printer. Everybody who graduates as a STEAM teacher will be able to build one. While building this printer we found that the notes on the D3D_Australia were very useful, so we will make a similar log here, hoping to be of use to other people trying to build this printer.

Frame

The frame was made using cold rolled steel L-profile instead of sheet metal. We had them made in metal workshop of a school we know and they had these profiles lying around. The paint was chosen by students. Maybe I will add a few silver swirls or a zebra print to it later.

Wiring

At first none of the axes worked. We found it is quite easy to troubleshoot if you just connect a loose stepper to the relevant driver and see if you can get it moving through pronterface. The D3D Controller page says it is essential to rewire the stepper cables. For us this somehow didn't work, so we had to rewire the cables to their original configuration. Steppers are stepping now, though sometimes in the wrong direction. Hoping to fix that in the firmware.

If your stepper does this when you ask for it through pronterface, you've probably wired it correctly

The LCD-display doesn't work yet. Maybe it's because it is a cheap Chinese clone. This is one of those occasions when it would be really useful to have a working edition of this machine around so we could test it with our LCD display.