The thing I love about the additive manufacturing is the fact that this stuff is really something straight out of the sci-fi and there’s little but a full time employment at Roscosmos or NASA that could bring you closer (given you do push this hobby far enough).
The reason I’ve mentioned NASA here is because recently, browsing the index of their NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS), I’ve stumbled across a fairly valuable contribution of the space techs to the consumer FDM community – a guide, or more of a FAQ on converting the consumer grade machines to print the high-temperature plastics.
The document is titled “High Temperature Thermoplastic Additive Manufacturing Using Low-Cost, Open-Source Hardware ” and can be accessible via the direct link.
To be totally honest, there are even more advanced guides on the Internet for converting or building machines suitable for PEEK and Ultim printing – but this document features a very brief, thorough and practical approach with good reference base and no overkill practices that you could often see in the forum builds and trolling posts (’cause we know, every comment thread on Ender 3 would feature at least one mommy’s basement dweller, claiming that $200 machine to be inferior as it cannot print space grade stuff).
I will allow myself to outline the key points that the document contains. Please refer to the doc itself for further reference, but some of the ideas are actually something that almost any machine could benefit from:
- An enclosure is built around the printer
- As many electronics as possible are moved outside of the heated enclosure
- The majority of parts exposed to heat are replaced with heat-resistant versions, printed on the same machine before the originals melt down completely
- Hot end is replaced with an original E3D-v6 with a custom fan and thermister. The latter is required as the stock ones would not pick up the readings above 250 Celsius correctly.
- IR heaters added to the enclosure to provide additional heat and mantain consistent enclosure temperature.
- Stepper motors custom cooling system has been installed with custom shrouds and an air pump.
- Filament storage system has been installed to avoid moisture and allow preheating/moisture removal procedures). Same as you’d do with your Filament on any other printer, actually.
- Minor Marlin tweak has been required to allow higher hotend temperatures and thermistor values and add the possibility of
operating IR heating lamps.
Technically, by modern measures this might be not the most advanced list of printer mods you might expect from Langley research engineers. However, note that this document originates from 2016, so the people behind this have been actually spearheading the high temp printing at the time and allowing it to become more or less mainstream nowadays.