Building with aluminium extrusion?

[Stuart Hungerford]

Hi all,

I'm looking at building a rigid and sturdy table for a 3D printer.
One of the materials I'm looking at is aluminium extrusion. It looks
like I could add as many cross-beams between the table legs to ensure
rigidity, then make a nice timber top for it.

Has anyone in the group built anything like this with aluminium
extrusion? Would you be willing to share your experiences or maybe
answer some getting-started questions?

TIA,

Stu

[Sophie Parker]

I planned this for my workbench for a while until I compared the cost of importing all the aluminium with buying local hardwood. It ended up being a lot more cost-efficient and stronger to build out of solid 70x35 Structural Spotted gum beams. I can only imagine the cost advantage for wood would be even more pronounced now with Covid freight issues.

It’s held together with M8 and M6 bolts, and uses form ply (plywood with waxed coating for casting concrete) for the bench and shelf surfaces. It’s super solid, the 2000*900mm bench can easily take 150kg on it with the two cross supports. It’s been deconstructed and reconstructed a few times for moving house and is definitely going to last me decades.

Basically — there’s a reason they make furniture out of it! Wood is good.

[Madox]

Hi Stu,

Depending on your 3D printer, I don't think you really need a really sturdy table but I know your intent.

I was going to build myself a lovely workstation out of AL extrusion with a table top last year but the costs just blew out very quickly.

As a suggestion, have a look at Ikea Bror shelves/trolleys for inspiration on 3D printer enclosures/tops, there's some very neat ones and they're obviously sturdy enough for most people :)

https://www.google.com/search?q=bror+3d+printer

Cheers,

[stuart.h...@gmail.com]

On Monday, 14 June 2021 at 17:06:56 UTC+10 sop...@luminesce.lighting wrote:

I planned this for my workbench for a while until I compared the cost of importing all the aluminium with buying local hardwood. It ended up being a lot more cost-efficient and stronger to build out of solid 70x35 Structural Spotted gum beams. I can only imagine the cost advantage for wood would be even more pronounced now with Covid freight issues.

It’s held together with M8 and M6 bolts, and uses form ply (plywood with waxed coating for casting concrete) for the bench and shelf surfaces. It’s super solid, the 2000*900mm bench can easily take 150kg on it with the two cross supports. It’s been deconstructed and reconstructed a few times for moving house and is definitely going to last me decades.

Basically — there’s a reason they make furniture out of it! Wood is good.

Thanks for the detailed description of your workbench. I'll probably end up going down the same path.

Stu

[stuart.h...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, 15 June 2021 at 00:26:35 UTC+10 Madox wrote:

Hi Stu,

Depending on your 3D printer, I don't think you really need a really sturdy table but I know your intent.

I was going to build myself a lovely workstation out of AL extrusion with a table top last year but the costs just blew out very quickly.

As a suggestion, have a look at Ikea Bror shelves/trolleys for inspiration on 3D printer enclosures/tops, there's some very neat ones and they're obviously sturdy enough for most people :)

https://www.google.com/search?q=bror+3d+printer

Excellent -- thanks. I should have used the word "rigid" rather than sturdy. The printer is not that heavy but when it does many small movements of the hot end rigidity helps to minimize ghosting or other artifacts from the table oscillating with the movements.

I think rigidity is a function of the cross-bracing and supports between the vertical parts of the table, but I'm obviously not an engineer, so take that with a grain of NaCl.

Stu

[Andrew Larkin]

You might like to explore the "Rack It" storage system at Bunnings. See www.rack-it.com.au

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[Kris]

you can also use a terrible and flimsy table (or printer) and fix it in software...

https://hackaday.com/2020/12/24/control-theory-spellcasting-banishes-the-3d-printing-ghosts/

[Madox]

An Ikea $39 table ( https://www.ikea.com/au/en/p/taerendoe-table-black-s49246369/ ) is pretty rigid based on its simple steel tube construction with a simple table-top, its ultimately what replaced my fancy extrusion table...

I think you're overestimating the contribution of the table to print artefacts based on my experience (of using crappy tables, and even trolleys....my printer right now is on a trolley...).  :)

Even if you have a perfectly rigid table... if its light and/or the feet does not have enough grip, you'll still end up with a table that moves around... and we're almost back to sturdy :)  

Do you have the printer now and do you actually see printing artefacts and anomalies with your current set-up?  Do they persist or disappear if you put the printer on the ground...?

PS : What printer? :) 

PPS : My semi-temporary trolley arrangement... the Saturn may go into an enclosure soon™ just so i can get some fume filtering going...

[stuart.h...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, 15 June 2021 at 00:26:35 UTC+10 Madox wrote:

Depending on your 3D printer, I don't think you really need a really sturdy table but I know your intent.

I was going to build myself a lovely workstation out of AL extrusion with a table top last year but the costs just blew out very quickly.

As a suggestion, have a look at Ikea Bror shelves/trolleys for inspiration on 3D printer enclosures/tops, there's some very neat ones and they're obviously sturdy enough for most people :)

https://www.google.com/search?q=bror+3d+printer

Thanks for that. You're right about the Al extrusion: the best price I could find my table design with 5050 extrusion was $420 just for the Al (excluding shipping and cutting etc).

Stu

[stuart.h...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, 15 June 2021 at 09:22:46 UTC+10 Andrew wrote:

You might like to explore the "Rack It" storage system at Bunnings. See www.rack-it.com.au

Also a good idea -- thanks.

Stu

[stuart.h...@gmail.com]

On Tuesday, 15 June 2021 at 19:33:26 UTC+10 Kris wrote:

you can also use a terrible and flimsy table (or printer) and fix it in software...

https://hackaday.com/2020/12/24/control-theory-spellcasting-banishes-the-3d-printing-ghosts/

Good point. If I get around to building my own 3D printer (e.g. a Ratrig) I'm going to add an accelerometer and Klipper firmware for that very reason.

Stu

[stuart.h...@gmail.com]

On Wednesday, 16 June 2021 at 02:14:43 UTC+10 Madox wrote:

An Ikea $39 table ( https://www.ikea.com/au/en/p/taerendoe-table-black-s49246369/ ) is pretty rigid based on its simple steel tube construction with a simple table-top, its ultimately what replaced my fancy extrusion table...

I think you're overestimating the contribution of the table to print artefacts based on my experience (of using crappy tables, and even trolleys....my printer right now is on a trolley...).  :)

Even if you have a perfectly rigid table... if its light and/or the feet does not have enough grip, you'll still end up with a table that moves around... and we're almost back to sturdy :)  

Do you have the printer now and do you actually see printing artefacts and anomalies with your current set-up?  Do they persist or disappear if you put the printer on the ground...?

Thanks for sharing that setup -- it's very useful. The ghosting I've had so far is minor and can be reduced somewhat by slowing the accelerations of the hotend. What concerned me was actually watching the flimsy table I started with shaking with the print movements. Maybe it found the printer+table resonant frequency or something.

 

PS : What printer? :) 

A Creality CR-10S Pro V2. Once I made the design and construction process work-arounds and fixes it prints very well, especially for the large-ish, flat-ish prints I seem to do most of.

 

PPS : My semi-temporary trolley arrangement... the Saturn may go into an enclosure soon™ just so i can get some fume filtering going...

Excellent!

Stu 

[Madox]

Curiously, did you finish making a table/enclosure for your printer Stuart?  If so, what did you end up with?

On Wednesday, 16 June 2021 at 2:51:04 pm UTC+10 stuart.h...@gmail.com wrote:

[Stuart Hungerford]

On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 5:01 PM Madox <mado...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Curiously, did you finish making a table/enclosure for your printer Stuart? If so, what did you end up with?

Thanks for asking -- I'd been meaning to follow up on this topic for a while.

For the printer table I ended up getting one of these:

https://www.machineryhouse.com.au/A415

It's very rigid and strong. I think when lockdown is over I'll replace
the coated MDF top with a nice timber top (purely for aesthetics) and
add a second matching shelf that sits on the cross-beams of the legs.

For the printer enclosure I decided to use 2020 extruded aluminium. I
went with a company in Melbourne, mainly because the whole process
could be done through ebay. And of course they didn't make the cuts I
requested during the ordering process. That meant I needed to try and
make square and smooth cuts myself.

Next time I'll go with a more local based company even with a fully
manual ordering and cut-list process.

My plan was to assemble the extrusion into a frame and secure the
corners with outside triangular aluminium brackets and slide-in
T-nuts. Those brackets still haven't arrived (Bangood/Aliexpress), so
I've 3D printed a bunch of temporary ones. I've learned that the frame
even with the brackets fitted has an alarming amount of wobble and I
needed to add smaller internal corner brackets to complement the
triangular ones.

Even then it still has wobble due to me keeping the bottom of the
frame free of brackets where it sits on the bench. Note to self: every
one of the 8 corners needs 3 outside brackets and 3 inner brackets
fitted to get any sort of stability.

For the sides of the enclosure I'm still looking for fire proof
polycarbonate or similar. Failing that I'll use standard polycarbonate
with a fireproof and noise blocking cladding of tiles. The
polycarbonate sheets can be secured to the frame with small bolts and
drop-in or slide-in T-nuts. Laser cutting of this will have to wait
until after lockdown.

For the filament spool holder I'm in the process of prototyping a CAD
model in CADQuery (Python) then slicing and printing it. This fits
onto the 2020 extrusion. I'm planning a Raspberry Pi holder for the
frame as well to hold the pi that drives the printer through Repetier
Server.

Photos would probably help with this explanation, I'll take some
tomorrow and send.

Stu

[Madox]

Hi Stu ;)

Nice to hear, would be good to see the pictures of your current progress.

To be honest I asked earlier only because I was just procrastinating on assembling my own IKEA set-up.... though I got over it and actually went to work on it...

And...I literally just finished assembling it all.  3 IKEA BROR shelves - 2 of 850x550 and 1 of 650 x 550, with 3 shelves each.

Possible layout -

- Top most shelf will be storage for resins/filaments/miscellaneous bits.

- Mid shelf is the working shelf and will contain silicone mats (hello Kmart puppy training silicone mats $9!), a Elegoo Saturn Resin print, Elegoo Mercury X Curer and Washer.... and maybe a laptop workstation on the right or a desktop laser.

- Bottom shelf will hold a Flashforge Adventurer 4 (where the weird 2020 cube is sitting), a Tiertime Up Box, and a small 3018'ish CNC (mid left, but will sit inside the 19" rack to contain all the dust and swarf).

- Floor will probably hold sheet stock, wood, metals, resins etc.

I will probably seal off individual 'sections' and vent it out the back window depending on how bad the fumes are later....

The FlashForge Adventurer series of printers come with built in internal cameras which I thought was a pretty neat idea so I ended up buying a bunch of Esp32-cams that I'll be sticking inside the other printers/CNC/Laser so I can keep a (relatively) constant eye on them as a risk mitigation , they're about $10-15 a pop and very easy to set up!

PS : Still think you're overcooking on rigidity :) Particularly on the enclosure which I assume is to keep the print volume warm?  Though there is no harm in overengineering things as a hobby ;)

PPS : Would you recommend CADQuery?  Do you use in standalone or in conjunction with something like FreeCAD?

On Monday, 13 September 2021 at 7:20:20 pm UTC+10 stuart wrote:

[Stuart Hungerford]

On Mon, Sep 13, 2021 at 8:43 PM Madox <mado...@gmail.com> wrote:

And...I literally just finished assembling it all.  3 IKEA BROR shelves - 2 of 850x550 and 1 of 650 x 550, with 3 shelves each.

Possible layout -

- Top most shelf will be storage for resins/filaments/miscellaneous bits.

- Mid shelf is the working shelf and will contain silicone mats (hello Kmart puppy training silicone mats $9!), a Elegoo Saturn Resin print, Elegoo Mercury X Curer and Washer.... and maybe a laptop workstation on the right or a desktop laser.

- Bottom shelf will hold a Flashforge Adventurer 4 (where the weird 2020 cube is sitting), a Tiertime Up Box, and a small 3018'ish CNC (mid left, but will sit inside the 19" rack to contain all the dust and swarf).

- Floor will probably hold sheet stock, wood, metals, resins etc.

I will probably seal off individual 'sections' and vent it out the back window depending on how bad the fumes are later....

  This is excellent -- very inspiring, thanks for posting.

 PS : Still think you're overcooking on rigidity :) Particularly on the enclosure which I assume is to keep the print volume warm?  Though there is no harm in overengineering things as a hobby ;)

 Very likely, probably another case of "nothing succeeds like excess".

PPS : Would you recommend CADQuery?  Do you use in standalone or in conjunction with something like FreeCAD?

Because I have a software development background everything starts to look like a programming problem to me. So I initially used OpenSCAD and now CADQuery. I'd rather use Python than OpenSCAD's language, hence CADQuery. For this particular piece an experienced F360/OnShape/FreeCAD user would knock it out in five minutes, but again I'd rather maintain and document a Python script than a bunch of GUI time.

Stu