Anet A8 and Tronxy p802ma Pen Holder PCB Plotter by hansolouk

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

I sold my pen plotter then as ever needed to plot something.
So, I created this pen holder for my 3d printer. It is a remix of one from the
hypercube but I created it from scratch.
You will need to thread your x-axis holder before and put longer
M4 bolts through. It attaches to the rear of the carriage so does not affect your printing abilities :-)
It is designed for linear motion on the z-axis so you get
perfect plots with 0.2mm resolution.
I have included the rough cut scad
file in case anyone needs it but it is a mess. Sorry did not have time to clean
it up or comment it etc.
 
Features
 
Spring loaded so pen pressure depends on z height when
plotting
Includes set screw located in mount so that pen can be
retracted and held up above extruder nozzles. This allows you to switch between
2D and 3D printing without uninstalling the entire pen/mount.
Hardware Needed
For X-carriage Mount
--M4 threaded mounts all the way through
--2 x M4 *35mm bolt
--2 x M4 *25mm bolt
For linear rail
--2 x M3 *70mm bolts ( I used some
old Xbox 360 case screws I had laying around and shown in pics.)
--2 x compression springs (5mm ID by 20mm height). These go on the linear rails above the mount plate. This means you get even pressure down so pen is always touching the PCB
--I also used two other extension springs to hold the two rails in place as I had them laying around and because I did not have nuts but you can hold nuts
For Pen Holder
--1 x M3 nut screws (approx 20mm
Pen
--Any Staedler or Stabilo OHP pen works a treat
Software
I used eagle to create the boards
I used Geoffd123 fantastic script to convert HPGL from eagle
into Gcode. You will need to determine the bed and
pen heights as this will change depending on your setup.
Alternatively you can use hp2xx direct from the shell but you will need to add start codes etc manually.
https://github.com/geoffd123/Hpgl2Gcode
 
 
Other Notes.
--Only home your device at z=17mm or higher else you run the
risk that the pen holder clips the support. No big deal but annoying if it
does. I changed my default start gcode to move to
17mm first before doing this.
--I glued a cut pen cap (with the end cut off) to the end of
the pen holder to make it even more stiff but this will depend on the
resolution you need. Simply cut the end off and glue to the mount. works a
treat to improve wobble at end.