Ender-3 Filament Waste Squeegee

Last crawled date: 4 years, 3 months ago

After modifying my Ender-3 to be direct drive I found the X axis had a bit of extra range to the side of the bed. Using this space I designed a waste tray and squeegee to make priming the nozzle a quick and clean process. No longer will you have to remove the extra plastic lines on the print bed from priming the nozzle.
In order to use this you will need at least 248mm of range in your X axis. You will also need a piece of silicone for the squeegee part. I used a piece from an automotive detailing squeegee but any piece around 2.75mm thick will work.
Detailing squeegee I used (affiliate link): https://amzn.to/2tiy0A4
You will also need to move the display over in order to leave space for the tray. I designed a simple mount to move the display over here.
After installing you can update your print starting gcode to clean the nozzle before printing. I'm using this gcode at the moment:
M80 ; turn power on
M73 P0 ; Reset print progress bar
G21 ; metric values
M117 Homing...
G28 ; home
M117 Cleaning nozzle...
G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder
G1 Z5.0 F3000 ; Move Z Axis up little to prevent scratching of Heat Bed
G1 X248 Y10 F3000.0 ; Move to start position
G1 E20.8 F300.0 ; Extrude 20mm
G1 E18.8 Z0 F500.0 ; Retract and lower
G1 X230 Y10 F2000.0 ; Wipe
G1 X248 Y10 F2000.0 ; Wipe
G1 Z0 X200 Y10 F1500.0 ;
M117 Leveling bed...
M280 P0 S160 ; BLTouch alarm release
G4 P100 ; delay for BLTouch
G29 ; auto bed leveling
M117 Cleaning nozzle...
G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder
G1 Z5.0 F3000 ; Move Z Axis up little to prevent scratching of Heat Bed
G1 X248 Y10 F3000.0 ; Move to start position
G1 E20.8 F300.0 ; Extrude 20mm
G1 E18.8 Z0 F500.0 ; Retract and lower
G1 X230 Y10 F2000.0 ; Wipe
G1 X248 Y10 F2000.0 ; Wipe
G1 Z0 X200 Y10 F1500.0 ;
M117 Printing...