Protohead V7 "Zeus" - E3D v6 Full + E3D Titan for FABtotum by imarin

Last crawled date: 3 years ago

UPDATE 9/2/2018: I have printed this reworked version and it works great. This time I have printed it in PETG (my original was PLA). It feels way stronger and more beautiful. Still to see how durable it is.
PREVIOUS UPDATE: The design has been reworked to fix the original flaws. Still untested as my PLA original is working just fine and I have no motivation to print the reworked version. Full FreeCAD source is attached so that you can customize it as you wish.
At this moment, the original head is well tested. Printing awesome in ABS, ABS+, PLA so far. The result is amazing (thanks to e3d obviously, not that I did anything special).
Some videos printing a calibration cube:
Some simple videos:
PLA:https://youtu.be/oiGCqU7qlkYhttps://youtu.be/QDAGHRTxxmk
ABS:https://youtu.be/dO7hqFu-qFIhttps://youtu.be/UxlTan-TjxE
After having tried several low-cost hotends and extruders and learning their weaknesses, I want to be able to see what more reputed (and expensive) components can offer.
A main design limitation that is not per se a design flaw (it is intended), is that you will lose some printing area on the rear part. I just did not want to raise the titan and make it "extremely short bowden style". I wanted to use the Titan+e3dv6 as a single block. If anybody interested, you may just raise the titan a couple of cm and the stepper will go over the rear (or front if you want further redesign) part of the FABtotum.
Choosing the components:

I have the e3d v6 full original and the e3d titan original.

Blowers: Not all the 5015 blowers are the SAME.
a) Check your voltage. The fabtotum carriage blower fan is 5V. Unless you want to constantly have it activated, you need a 5V or skills to make a small PCB with a MOSFET to operate control the 24V in the head with the 5V blower fan as input. There is no 12V in the FAB head.
b) Current. There are different currents for the same voltage. Higher voltage generally means more air flow and/or air pressure. In general go for the higher current ones. It shall be noted that higher voltage blowers (and within the voltage those with higher current) generally have better performance than lower voltage blowers.
The blower used for cooling down the heatsink can operate at 5V (head has 5V) or at 24V (remember to enable the mill motor line in your gcode).
Printing tips:
Support is needed for the HEAD and the Blower conduct.
Building tips:
Triple read the instructions:https://wiki.e3d-online.com/wiki/Titan_Assemblyhttps://wiki.e3d-online.com/wiki/E3D-v6_Assembly
Yes, please, read until the end. Yes, read the troubleshooting guides. My favorite is the "click when retraction" issue with Titan. If you do not get the meshing right, you WILL HAVE to disassemble the whole thing apart including the blowers and including any seal with thermal glue you might have made.

Use the longer supplied M3 titan bolts in the bottom part. You need a 35 mm for the left (of the viewer when looking front side) and a 30 mm for the right (standard titan mounting is 30 mm for left and 25 mm for right).


Seal the around the blowers input with thermal glue or any other sealant you like. Do this BEFORE mounting the titan, otherwise you will have to remove the titan later to seal the rear part of the blowers (the part closer to the titan).


You might want to put some drop of thermal glue in the rear part attaching the NEMA to the v7 head (you do not actually need to reinforce this a lot, as in operation it lies on the head holder part of the carriage).


The front titan supporting holes must be sealed before use, so that the air does not flow out that way. For the prototype I have just put some thermal glue.


To mount the hotend, insert first the hotend from above without the heater block. Then follow e3d full instructions from their wiki, except that you have to leave the assembly of the thermistor and heater cartridges for the end.


This head is compatible with the protohead PCBs, original and 24V version:https://github.com/imarin2/Protohead_PCB_v4_FAB_24Vhttps://github.com/imarin2/ProtoHead_v4

It is designed so that you thread the blower supporting holes (4 holes, 2 on the head structure and 2 on the blower joining part) with an M4 thread.