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Print Bed
Mechanical
PRINT !
Software

Neptune 600

Parts for this section

The Extruder
 
This is the device that takes the filament, heats it, and then places it exactly where needed to make your 3D print. It's main parts are:
 
  • The hot end                    ... melts the plastic 
  • The extruder                  ... grabs filament from the spool and pushes to hot end 
  • The mounting                ... holds the extruder and hot end in place
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The BOX 500 is designed to be able to use any type of print head that you chose but in this implementation of the project we push the limits by using a print head that can print with 4 different filaments at the same time to produce a variety of patterns with colours and or materials. For instance you could print with conductive filament inside of other colours or materials.
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So this design will have 4 hot ends, 4 extruders, and 1 mounting. In addition, the cooling system will use water cycling through the print head as opposed to fans to move more heat more quickly.
  • ED3 Kraken (quad print head) kit:
           - cooling cylinder
           - brass nozzle (0.50mm dia.)
           - brass heating block
           - Heat resistor (heating element)
           - Thermistor
           - PFTE tube for thermistor leads (wires)
           - PFTE tube for heat resistor leads (wires)
           - PFTE tube to guide filament into hot end
 

Hot End

Anchor 1
This component is the one that does the printing. You can print with one filament per hot end that's installed on your printer. Software can generally accept multiple hot ends but the limiting factor is the number of motors that your Arduino/Ramps 1.4 board can control seperately (the 2 Z-axis motors count as 1). The RAMPS 1.4 can control up to 5 individual motors at once. But in this project we will be using 4 individual motors for the extruder alone. So we need to use a different controller board, the one we chose was the RepRap Duet 0.8.5 with the Duex 4 expansion board. More about this in the electronics section.
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Here are the main types of hot ends: 
 
Hot Ends                                              Filament Dia.           Nozzle Diameter
 
- Single (e.g. J-Head or E3D)              1.75mm                     0.25mm      High precision low speed
- Double (e.g. Chimera)                     3.00mm                     0.30mm
- Tripple (e.g. Diamond Head)                                              0.35mm
- Quad  (e.g. Kraken)                                                              0.40mm      Balanced
                                                                                                  0.50mm
                                                                                                  0.60mm
                                                                                                  0.80mm       
                                                                                                  1.00mm
                                                                                                  1.20mm      Low precision high speed
 
 
We are using a "Kraken" hot end manufactured by E3D and available in our webshop.
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