UConduit H-Bot 3D Printer / Reprap by iquizzle

Last crawled date: 2 years, 12 months ago

The UConduit 3D printer is an h-bot 3D printer, with a frame built from electrical conduit (steel conduit that you can find at the hardware store). The source files are hosted on github at https://github.com/iquizzle/uconduit. All printed parts are designed using OpenSCAD so that parts can be freely compiled and modified. Conduit was chosen as a frame material for its low cost ($3.50/5ft), stiffness and hardware store availability. Standard build volume is approx 250mm in each dimension.
The printer is held together using o-rings and compression flanges. Each end has two rubber o-rings. There is a hard clamp and a soft clamp. The hard clamped o-ring creates a pivot point and firmly holds the conduit in place. By adding a second soft clamped o-ring on each end, vibrations are very effectively damped. As a result, the printer is not only fast, but also super quiet! Additionally, wiring can be neatly routed from the top to the bottom of the printer (using the conduit for its intended purpose!).
I'm not listing this 'thing' as a work in progress. All parts have already been revised a minimum of 3 times, and have been under development since last September -- I will continue to upgrade and support this design until it is safely in the hands of the hacker community. :)
I've created a google group for this printer and general hbot/corexy discussion and support:https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!forum/h-bot-and-corexy-3d-printers
A video of the UConduit in action can be viewed here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73MlaBWCTPU
Special thanks to Free from http://www.terawattindustries.com for support and helping with the build and supplying parts. Also thanks to ckaos for publishing his h-bot (thing:27202), which I analyzed several times during this build.