3D Printing: Ashtar C Printer: CoreXY Belt Routing

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After some delay of parts, I finally was able to finalize the belt routing and configure the firmware for Ashtar C #1:

Belt Routing

belt-routing

CoreXY belt routing of Ashtar C

Early on I decided to separate belts of motors A and B in the Z axis, so they would not cross as such, and also hoped one axis of the carriage holding the X beam would allow some idlers to redirect the belts – to save space and keep frame dimension and build (or printable space) dimension close.

The Bowden tube and the wires of the hotend are preliminary arranged:

20190101_170842

Firmware

To configure the Marlin firmware turned out not that simple, as CoreXY has its own interdependencies of A & B motors: first X axis was reversed, whereas Y axis worked correctly, the INVERT_X_DIR setting on Configuration.h of Marlin did not help, it reversed the stepper motor direction, but not the actual X axis direction. After many attempts to use COREYX instead of COREXY I ended up

  • swap cables of A & B stepper motors
  • keep #define COREXY
  • #define INVERT_X_DIR = true and #define INVERT_Y_DIR = true

and X and Y direction worked correctly.

Preflight (no extrusion, just X & Y axis movement testing):

The stepper drivers still need some tuning, as I saw or rather heard a few missed steps at fast movement.

X & Y Endstops

The preliminary positions of the endstop are:

  • X endstop resides on the X beam left-hand side (USE_XMIN_PLUG)
  • Y endstop resides on the right-hand backside, (USE_YMAX_PLUG and HOME_DIR_Y 1)

Z Axis

I postponed the actual details of the Z axis, as my main concern of the design was to have a good CoreXY setup and then see how I would achieve the Z axis.

In order to use 625ZZ bearings I started to use them as idlers directly (after cleaning the grease off their surfaces) and also use them to increase contact surface when driving a closed belt which drives 3 or 4 threaded rods M6 x 500mm:

20190101_124138

Since the surface of the threaded rods is rough, I realized I need dedicated bearings to hold the rods at the bottom, otherwise the friction would wear on the mounts and increase its diameter. So, the Z axis isn’t finalized yet, but close.