Longbed Printer Mod
I have a radical idea.
I need to print something long and skinny (28 inches long) and the laws of physics won’t permit me to make an assembly.
I’m thinking about taking several mini heat beds and creating a single long bed with maybe 4 beds. Then I’d replace the rails with really long rails. Next would be an enormous Y belt. I’d obviously have to custom order a weird sized build plate.
Two Questions:
1. How do I update the firmware to allow for a ridiculously long bed?
2. Given the power requirements of 4 heat beds instead of 1, what type of problems with overloading the system will I run into and how do I counter this? - Keep in mind, I’ll have the components of 4 minis, so maybe there’s a way to toggle components and power supplies together to avoid burning my shop down.
Thoughts?
Has anyone done anything like this?
Am I crazy? (That’s rhetorical, of course I’m crazy…)
Probably cheaper to design the part whole and pay for print service with a large bed machine to do the job.
The other option is to resurrect the old idea of a belt printer, there were versions way back at the start of the RepRap project and probably before.
It's almost exactly two years since Naomi Wu was forced off the internet and probably arrested by the Chinese Communist Party; one of her projects, based on a Creality machine, is one of the better interpretations and might have been suitable for this job. You might attempt something similar with a Prusa as your starting point.
Cheerio,
RE: Longbed Printer Mod
Sure. Maybe. But the cool thing about a longbed mini is that you could set it up on a long shelf and it would just do its thing at the back of the room.
I think there’s a way for it to happen…