A1 Miscellaneous

An assortment of topics that are incidental to assembling/running/maintaining a 3D printer.
Work Table - you'll need a place to put your A1
Filament Storage - you need to keep your filament dry!
Filament Spool and Spool Holder - A spool for the FL 1 lb rolls that come without one and a way to mount it on your A1
Accessories - things to print for your A1

Work Table

Before I started assembling my A1 I first had to make a home for it. I had picked up a 36x30x27h table at a garage sale. I had a 54x31.5 space for it in my basement but the existing tables are 30 high. I extended the top of the table and raised the workspace up to be a closer match to the existing tables.
> Something I had not thought to do, but was suggested on the TL forum, was to make sure the work surface was level.

Filament Spool and Spool Holder

In realized, as soon as I started printing things with my A1
, that I was going to need a spool to hold the roll of filament I was using for the print. I had gotten several 1 Lb. rolls of filament with my printer, but none were on rolls. Further, if you've got a spool, you need a spool holder in order to dispense the filament. I did a search for spools on Thingiverse, and there are several, both with and without holders, but I was not happy with the designs for any of them. I did a design of my own, nothing really original. I then decided to CNC cut it since it was faster and I already had a sheet of 1/4 in. expanded PVC that I was not going to use.
The spool holder was made with material on-hand. I used 3/4 inch PVC pipe fittings, a tee for the base, an elbow and a cap, as well as two pieces of pipe approximately 4 in long. The Tee is drilled so It can be bolted to the gantry top piece. Everything else is friction fit, although you can glue it if you want. Leave the cap loose so you can change spools.
The spool itself is 9 in. OD, held together with 2 in. 1/4-20 bolts, on a 5 1/2 in. circle, held apart by 1 1/4 in. spacers. The plastic tubing spacers and bolts are also things that I happened to have on-hand. I use a small binder clip to hold both the inside and outside ends of the filament in place. The design for the spool was driven by the size of the 1 Lb rolls of filament that TL sells and a desire for the spool & filament to fit into my filament storage bucket (see below) without being disassembled.

You can dowload the layout for the spool sidewall in .slt format as well as Alibre design's ad_prt format: click here. I was going to print mine (the .slt is set up for 1/8 in thickness) but decided to cut them from 1/4 in expanded PVC sheeting that I had on-hand and was not going to use.

Filament Storage
In order to get repeatable results you need to keep your filament dry. Exposed to the air it will absorb water which will be 'boiled off' by the extruder but result in variable extrusion rates that show up as imperfections. There were a variety of solutions discussed in a TL forum thread. The one I choose used a 5Gal paint bucket and a airtight screw on lid.


That's a screw on Gamma Seal Lid, widely available from a number of sources.

It will easily accommodate about 10 lbs of Filament. (6 are shown) as well as the Eva Dry E-500 desiccant.

If you didn't guess, the bucket came from Home Depot. You can get Homer's bucket without the Lid!
There are cheaper sources of desiccant, without the built in heater, but I didn't think my wife would be happy with me using the oven to dry them out. There were eBay sources that were cheaper, I bought the Gamma Seal lid and the Eva-Dry E500 together from Amazon and got free shipping which made it the low cost choice.

Accessories
There are lots of sources for things to print. Here I'm focused on things that are either necessary, or very convenient, accessories for an A1 that I've found on the internet (or they have been featured in the A1 Forum). These are not my designs, full credit goes to the folks who posted them.
20mm Cube (calibration)
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:34553


There are lots of calibration objects. This is the one featured in Eric's video.
SquareCal
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:12820

check if your Y axis is perpendicular to the X axis
Aluminatus TrinityOne LCD screen holder
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:57490
Ezra gave us LCD screens for the RAMPS when he had to substitute for the Smoothie Boards. There are lots of LCD mounts. I liked this one for the way it attaches to the front of the A1.

Aluminatus TrinityOne Intake Duct (LEFT)
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:68674


Aluminatus TrinityOne Exit Duct (Below LEFT)
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:68666


This is a duct designed to keep the airflow that cools the top of the J-Head Extruder from blowing on the material being printed. The unwanted airflow can cause problems printing ABS.

Below: Pair of ducts in place around the extruder.




Aluminatus 80mm fan duct
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:73902


The A1 deck fan blows air from the under deck area up into the build space. You can reverse the fan and put this duct on it to keep the draft away from the build space.


Aluminatus Trinity One Heated bed wire support
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:68292


The wires for the Kapton Bed Heater & Thermistor are unsupported. Their weight will cause the heater to eventually separate from the heat spreader.

Cable Chain
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:11978
This is a derivation of the "Enclosed Cable Carrier" by Landru
The rest is under construction!









































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