Silicone Wiper - Purge Bucket with removable tray (Artist-D) by yydoctt

Last crawled date: 2 years, 11 months ago

My previous brushed buckets have been working well for me, but I still find that fundamentally plastic likes to stick to the bristles when wiping. It hasn't caused any issues or failures but I tend to print quite big production parts with support material so a failure would cost a lot of time.
With that in mind I redesigned the purge buckets to use Silicone sheet to wipe instead.
Design Changes (from metal bristles):

Removable tray - now the whole tray can be removed, this allows you to easily empty it or allows you to completely remove it (ideal for a really long print that you won't be there to monitor).


Silicone Wiper - this is a very small plastic part that you pull silicone sheet of approx. 1.5mm thick through. It's a very small piece as it is only there to make contact with the nozzle. This is the part you may want to adjust to align with your nozzle.

Wiper zones - My current purge routine is to purge 3mm of filament and then wipe back and forth over the wiper. I have the single wiper away from the edge of the bucket (in zone 3) as this catches any ooze on the way into the purge bucket and collects it, which is something the previous metal brush couldn't do.
Wiper zones - I also envision trying multiple wipers, perhaps multiple materials, and seeing if wiping reliability can be improved, or multiple wipers could simply provide additional redundancy.
Printing:
Small amount of support needed on Silicone_Main_Body_001
Wipers need to be a tight fit in their slots so make any scaling adjustments needed on Silicone_Leaf_001
Assembly:
I cut a strip of silicone that is longer than needed and cut that down to an arrow (point). I thread the point through and pull through the silicone and then trim off the arrow.
In use:
Make sure your purge script or the parking location is not on a wiper, it only needs to run over the wiper on the way back to the print area so there is no need for the parking location to be close.
From playing with these wipers and previous designs, my key takeaway is that the bigger the purge the less chance that the whole purge can be dragged from the bucket on a wipe. I have my purge to just 3mm and will likely double it to use as a safety factor.
This is my ideamaker script, I have a similar one for PrusaSlicer, I am running a custom setup so the wiping locations will need to be amended if you use this script: Also this would need to be used in 'Full Control' mode
;Switch
G91 ; Relative Mode
G0 Z2 F1200 ; Move Z up 2mm
G90 ; Absolute Mode
[if {new_extruder}=1] G1 X-45 F{travel_xy_speed} ; Park Old Tool
[if {new_extruder}=0] G1 X365 F{travel_xy_speed} ; Part Old Tool
;;;;#1 Purge then Wipe ;;;;;
[if {new_extruder}=0] T0 ; Switch Tool
[if {new_extruder}=1] T1 ; Switch Tool
G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder
[if {new_extruder}=0] G1 E{extruder_switch_retraction_amount1} F120 ; Unretract
[if {new_extruder}=0] G1 E3 F120 ; Purge 3mm
[if {new_extruder}=0] G1 X-15 F{travel_xy_speed}
[if {new_extruder}=0] G1 X-45 F{travel_xy_speed}
[if {new_extruder}=0] G1 X-15 F{travel_xy_speed}
[if {new_extruder}=0] G1 X-45 F{travel_xy_speed}
[if {new_extruder}=1] G1 E{extruder_switch_retraction_amount1} F120 ; Unretract
[if {new_extruder}=1] G1 E3 F120 ; Purge 3mm
[if {new_extruder}=1] G1 X325 F{travel_xy_speed}
[if {new_extruder}=1] G1 X350 F{travel_xy_speed}
[if {new_extruder}=1] G1 X325 F{travel_xy_speed}
[if {new_extruder}=1] G1 X350 F{travel_xy_speed}
G92 E0 ; Reset Extruder
G1 E-{extruder_switch_retraction_amount1} F{extruder_switch_retraction_speed2} ; Retract Filament before going to print area