After using all three modules now for a month albeit once on the CNC. I have a few suggestions for future modules.
Improve the ability to swap heads; maybe some form of slide mount with a locking arm.
Improve the filament feed button on the 3D print head, it is so hard to use. There are many older users who would struggle with the button as it is, I am one of them.
Improve the base-plate mounting system. I have found that the 4 mounting screws vibrate loose and you only notice that when one drops out. This causes base-plate movement that users may not be aware of.
improve the bit holder on the CNC, a chuck or collet head to hold the cutting bit would be great. I lost my tiny grub screw and I need to find a replacement.
I hope this helps towards to melting pot of ideas.
I am extremely happy that I backed the Snapmaker, you have made a great start with a quality device and I can only see it improving in the future.
So here is an IDEA:
Carve a mold out of Teflon, (Graphite could be a candidate too)
then use the Printer as a Plastic Injector to fill up the mold.
This would likely only work for small parts.
The Teflon could handle the temperatures without melting and let the plastic fill the cavity before it cools too much. I donāt know just how fast the Printer can flow material. You would want it to heat as high as possible without burning the material.
So some questions are:
Whats the fastest the print head can flow material?
Whatās the highest temperature it can heat to?
Can the nozzle heater be controlled to heat more when flowing more?
But: With a tilt-head control for three distinct purposes:
Calligraphy, so the line thickness would vary based on pen angle.
Mimic writing. More or less pressure to alter thickness of line/pressure on the paper. Mechanical writing is easily detected when the line thickness never varies.
I would like to see a solder paste dispenser. I have bought one of these , and it is awesome. He even includes instructions on how to set up a 3D printer/cnc for automation.
I want to see hammer module with 0.5-1mm amplitude and about 1000 knocks per second, as hammer drill.
I need it to make leather embossing
If someone has any variants I open for discussion)
I wonder if the Z axis could exert enough force to support that hammering?
How about using the hot nozzle to do the embossing? Of course that would likely void you warrant on the printing module. Perhaps you could build your own module that only has a heated point.
I agree the vibration from the hammering would move the axis too much. I would mount a small impact driver on a drill stand and move the leather under it and raise/lower as required,
My dream machine would be CNC, Laser, 3D print and finally UV surface printing. My research tells me right now a UV print module would be far too crazy expensive. Not sure an INK jet would work but I love the idea of being able to āPaintā color an object just created on CNC or Print. Game changer!
For me itĀ“s a module to get a turning machine.
Like the scheduled rotary axis, but i would rotate it about 90Ā°, so itĀ“s parallel to the z-axis.
ItĀ“s controlled like the spindle now (rpm) and normaly uses Z and Y as infeed axis (both have double drives).
Probably itĀ“ll need an own power-supply.
Itās interesting to read the various ideas about modules here.
It occurs to me that, unless Iāve missed it, thereās no discussion around a āplatformā module.
What I mean by this is a module that you can use to build your own module on. It might contain standard I/O pins that can be controlled by GCODE. It could be as simple as an angle mounting bracket with a SOC, an ESP32, Raspberry Pi, whatever, that interfaces the control cable that comes from the controller and provides I/O ports.
You could then do what ever you wanted to make the module you desired.
For my money, Iām looking for a continuous tramming indicator that could feed a mesh (and suggest corrections) so you could both fix hardware alignment issues and correct for unevenness in software at whatever resolution you needed.
Exactly what I was thinking. What attracted me to the snapmaker platform wasnāt āthis is a 3D printer that can do laser engravingā, but āthis is a modular 3D printer with a CAN busā. In a year or two, Iāll be wanting to build modules for it.
I was reading a post (I think by WB) about the changes needed to print TPU with the Snapmaker2 (dual-gear extruder was one of them, as I recall).
This got me thinking that an āexotic materialsā 3-D print head would be good. Hardened nozzle by default, maybe a hotter extruder, dual-geared as mentioned to handle the more flexible filaments, better fans for cooling.
To cut down the design/manufacturing time, this could be a kit that is applied (destructively if need be) to the existing print-head. User then purchases a second 3-d print head and the kit, swaps it in when printing non-PLA/ABS filaments.
There are clearly a lot of tinkerers in the userbase, so providing at-your-own-risk kits seemingly has a ready market, even if it does run counter to the āno fuss no mussā presentation of the main Snapmaker product.