Prusa i3 MK3 PiCam v2 X-Axis Motor Mount by jppowers

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

Prusa i3 MK3 PiCam v2 X-Axis Motor Mount
What is this?
The goal here is to mount a Raspberry Pi Camera v2 to the X-Axis motor of the Prusa Research Prusa i3 MK3. This will allow the camera to move up the Z axis as printing, which should make for nice time lapse videos and allow a visual of the extruder while checking the live feed to look for potential issues.
The arm is thickened significantly compared to others to allow for a couple of ~10mm wide (so a total of ~20mm wide) LED light strips to be attached directly to the arm. This should provide a much more even casting of light across the printed part.
Where did it come from?
I like the idea of the X axis motor mounted camera arm from dragsterbox here and the arm extender from Mososokruppe here, and it's currently printed out and ready to go for my use (I printed a couple of Mososokruppe's extenders actually), just waiting on a PiCam ribbon I ordered that (should) be long enough to show up. While I was test fitting the parts I thought about how the print area will be lit, and while goofing around with my desk lamp realized some LED light strips might make the difference I'm looking for.
What's the plan here?
The cut outs in the arm are intended for zip ties to keep the LED strips in place (I never trust the stickiness of the tape on the back of these long term), although it should help reduce the mass of the arm a bit, too. I threw together a pretty generic mounting bracket system to connect the arms together: a couple holes for using screws and nylock nuts. An M3 screw should work for connecting each arm together, 16 to 20mm long. I considered placing an M3 nut cut out but decided against it, as leaving it "free floating" should allow for much easier minor adjustments to the camera angles. I kept dragsterbox's PiCam enclosure and rotating mount, and used the shape of his mounting arm as a guide for the main arm here.
Parts:
Main arm: Required, mounts to the X Axis motor so the camera moves up the Z axis as printing.
Extender: Optional, I prefer the camera being a bit further out from the bed and closer to the front left corner of the bed.
Camera mount arm: Required, this is where the camera sits. This arm is shaped a bit differently on the end to allow dragsterbox's enclosure and rotating mount.
4: Camera case and mount: This is dragsterbox's enclosure and mount directly, including for ease of download.
5: "Altogether": A couple STL's of the parts for the arm all together (if you already have dragsterbox's stuff printed), and another of all the parts together.
M3 20mm screws and M3 nylock nuts: These will be used to connect the arm segments together. 16mm might work for some spots.
LED Strips: The LED strips I got are from Fry's, Omni Lighting Systems Home Accent Series Kits. I got a Y split/extension cable to go with it, and the plan is to route the extension cable around the back of the arms, down the frame, and out the back to it's control box/power adapter. Almost any LED strip of the right length should work here as long as it's flexible and 10-20mm thick. I'm doubling up on the 10mm strips to increase the amount of light. RGB definitely isn't necessary but a nice to have in my opinion as different color filament might look nicer with different lighting.
Depending on where you mount your Pi, a decently long PiCam ribbon cable. Mine is 1 meter. Amazon link: (http://a.co/d/ipKorKB)[http://a.co/d/ipKorKB] I could have gone shorter, but I'd prefer having a tiny bit more slack than necessary than not enough.
Notes
Rev1 parts keep the camera lower and provides an excellent view of the extruder. Rev2 brings the camera up high enough so it's looking down at the build plate more. Rev1 is great for checking a live feed to ensure things are printing right, Rev2 is better for timelapses. I can't help but recommend printing both, try them out and see how you feel about it.
Print settings
My Slic3rPE settings:
For the arms: 3 perimeters, 30% infill. I want the arms themselves to be rigid. STL's should be setup so the arms print flat, which keeps the layer lines running in a way that should help reduce seperation due to vibrations and hold up to types of motion it should experience. No supports are necessary in this orientation, either.
For the camera parts: I'd do 2 perimeters and 10-20% infill, whatever floats your boat (or 3DBenchy... eh? eh? Bad joke? K I'll see myself out)
What's pictured
To start, I didn't notice until after I started uploading the pictures of it mounted that one of the LED strips was off. It was plugged in wrong. Whoops! Fixed it, and you may guess but it's a good bit brighter now.
Front view of camera with arm fully installed and functioning (ignoring that one LED strip that I didn't plug in right).
Timelapse recorded with Rev1 installed: https://youtu.be/AeQpy1RO2DE
Here you can see the slack in the PiCam ribbon at the joints better.
Wider shot of the arm and my attempt at managing the cabling.
I try to keep wiring as tidy as possible but the PiCam's ribbon doesn't like being tied up when moving up and down the Z Axis. I let it hang loose and tried to keep everything else tighter.
Pictured during install, ths is my test fitting.
To reduce confusion hopefully, here's the exact placement of each arm segment.
Another picture during test fitting.
I'm likely going to raise this camera mount position all the way up to regain that few millimeters worth of camera angle. I didn't think the LED strip would extend so far out with the slack I was hoping to give it at the joints but ultimately I prefer having lighting right under the camera to hopefully give it more direct lighting at what it's pointing at.
This is testing the LED's to ensure they were working and also trying to route the cables as smartly as possible. These strips are bright enough I didn't notice only one was on.
View from Octoprint Control tab during the first layer of my first print after installing.