Picaso 3D-Builder - Made in Russia

    Today’s story will be about another very interesting and worthy 3D printer, which was practically not mentioned on Habr before, and with the creators of which I recently had a chance to talk a little.

    Picaso 3D-Builder


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    A distinctive feature of this printer is its Alma Mater, namely:
    1. although, as it is not hard to guess, looking at the picture, the classic Prusa Mendel was taken as the basis, all subsequent “file processing” was planned exclusively by the Russian team;
    2. The printer has a 100% Russian production cycle. Yes, yes, do not be surprised, this is true. And what advantages and disadvantages followed such a decision, I will just tell you further;
    3. and the printer comes with its own Picaso Polygon software . The software is closed and resembles the Repetier-Host , but unlike the latter it contains a set of presets specifically for Picaso 3D-Builder.



    First, let's talk about the design features.

    As I said earlier, the Picaso 3D-Builder is based on the classic Prusa Mendel, but with some improvements.
    There are not many changes, but each of them is not very bad.
    And the entire production of the printer, as usual, is concentrated in the glorious city of Zelenograd.

    So farm

    The farm itself is practically no different from Mendel’s grandfather. The plastic parts of the farm have undergone changes. They have a pleasant orange color, are more massive and are cast, and not printed on the printer itself, which has a positive effect on quality. At the same time, the manufacturer has 3D models of these parts and can provide * .STL files to users for self-printing if necessary, for repair, for example.
    The farm is also reinforced with a U-shaped aluminum frame. Moreover, the frame is not mounted in the plane of the Z-axis, as on the new Prusa i3 , but on the front edge of the side triangle.
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    Prusa i3 ______________________________________________________________________ 3D-Builder
    Here the question is more about design. Together with the orange details, the 3D-Builder looks nicer than the Prusa i3 and even has more rigidity, because it retained triangular trusses on the sides.

    Printhead

    Here, our craftsmen worked hard for fame.

    Let's talk about the extruder first.


    As you can see in the picture, all the movable elements of the extruder are closed by the body of the print head. This is a definite plus, since dust does not fall on gear pairs. The extruder is not "direct-flow", in contrast to the more budgetary and increasingly popular options, where the ribbed bolt is attached directly to the motor shaft, and even vice versa, it has two ribbed rollers and both leading ones, through the gearbox.

    With this arrangement, a jam or “obstruction” is virtually eliminated.
    And the “direct-flow” extruder, no matter how you conjure with the motor driver, stretches the bar jerky, which of course will affect the quality of your model. The gearbox, to some extent, minimizes this effect. If you still decide on a straight-through extruder, check that the stepper motor driver supports 1/32 steps or higher.

    For comparison, the new wooden direct-flow extruder Printrbot.

    Now about the hot end and auto-calibration.
    Here everything is really interesting. The hot end, together with a part of the print head and sensors on the Z axis, form an original auto-calibration system. Which one, the developer does not disclose, citing know-how, and I have not yet managed to disassemble 3D-Builder personally. Autocalibration itself occurs before each start of printing, as a parking element. Thus, no matter what happens to your table and nozzle, whenever you change the nozzle and what geometry it has, whatever kapton or other cover of the table you use, the height of the tip of the nozzle above the table will always correspond to the set parameters, when any circumstances.

    To its hot ends, Picaso offers several different nozzles, from 0.30 mm (mind you, from 0.30 mm!) For fast printing, to 0.15 mm for high-quality.

    I especially liked the ventilation.
    But only its lower part.

    The upper fan, as usual, blows on the hot end itself and creates a temperature gradient in its upper part, minimizing the size and effect of the “cork” on the process of passing the bar ( more details can be found here in the section “Entertaining Rheology”). However, as I wrote in previous articles, the gradient is created due to the local heating of the bar, and the use of the fan can be replaced by using a more massive hot end, preferably ceramic, like Ubis Hot End . But, this moment will remain on the conscience of the developers.

    The bottom fan is much more interesting!

    Through a system of channels in the body of the print head, he creates an annular and uniform blowing of the model directly in the print zone. And just in contrast to the fans located on the brackets on the side of the extruder - it does not create any gradients in the print area and allows the plastic to solidify evenly in all directions and with minimal deformation.
    From my own experience I will say that any separately made fan leads to printing defects, for example, of such designs.

    In the case of my Printbot, where the fan is moved forward from the extruder, the rear “horns” of thin-walled models always tend to bend forward during printing. This in some cases leads to a breakdown of the horns or a breakdown of the entire model from the table when the nozzle hits an overly bent horn.

    Note

    I mainly print and give examples from PLA plastic. It is safer than ABS, non-toxic and biodegradable. Models from PLA always look rougher than from ABS, and in the case of transparent plastic, the effect is visually enhanced.


    Hot table

    Everything is in accordance with the best fashion trends in the houses of LandOn. The table is made of a single piece of aluminum, and the heater is located inside. Thus, the table does not deform when heated, heats up very evenly and holds the temperature.

    Aluminum is really thick.

    Another feature of the table is the material with which it is covered. This is not a kapton, but some synthetic material with even greater adhesion to ABS and PLA. The manufacturer keeps the composition of the material a secret, but sells it as users wear to 3D-Builder. Here is such an exclusive.
    And yet, yes, the table has a size of 20 x 20 cm, which distinguishes the printer from competitors for the better. The size, Mother Russia, has always been rich, and that’s where we stand.

    Stepper motors

    Here I only want to say that only one motor is used along the Z axis. The second screw (since the truss structure is U-shaped) is driven by a belt drive. The design, in my opinion, is not the best. Belts are not absolutely rigid, and when they begin to deteriorate, the lag of the second screw will become more noticeable, which can lead to a skew of the horizontal axes and introduce corresponding defects into the geometry of the models.
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    Electrician

    Everything is pretty pretty here. The printer is powered by a standard ATX power supply, which in turn is an integral part of the design, which is good news. The controller board is located in a separate compartment, which is attached to the power supply. All wires are collected in flexible cable channels. There is a connector on the board that allows you to connect an LCD display, but the manufacturer does not supply the display itself yet. WiFi, unfortunately, is not supported.
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    Simple and tasteful.

    Now a little about production

    As I said, the printer has a 100% Russian production cycle.
    At its own facilities, plastic truss parts are cast and some structural elements are produced, the printer is finally assembled and packaged.
    The controller board is printed in the same way in Russia, and the model board is printed in Zelenograd. An aluminum U-shaped frame and a hot table are also produced there.
    Stepper motors are naturally Chinese.

    As a result, the manufacturer has its own service and technical support, and an almost unlimited supply of original spare parts. Again, if you make any design changes (of course, and exclusively improve)), you can quickly order and get a new part directly, so to speak, from the machine. From my own experience I’ll say that technical support is adequate enough, knows my product and software for the printer well. In any case, the master’s voice never broke in 20 minutes, no one hung up the phone, and calmly and clearly explained how auto-calibration works and why presets are needed in the software.

    Even in the production section, I would mention the bar. The manufacturer supplies many different multi-colored ABS and PLA rods in China. Why Chinese? Because, according to the manufacturer, at the stage of developing the printer, they tried many suppliers, both Russian and German, and, ultimately, settled on a Chinese supplier, reliable and high-quality. I can’t say anything about this yet. I ordered a couple of PLA bobbins for myself, I’ll try, I will write it off. But the bar is really always available in any color. Celestial in this regard has not yet failed, Arbeiten is in Stakhanovian style, so to speak.

    Picaso Polygon Software .

    And here, perhaps, the most interesting. The manufacturer has its own software in its arsenal, like Repetier-Host , i.e. Add-ons over the Slic3r slicer.
    At the same time, not all Slic3r parameters are displayed in the Polygon, but only the most common and most often edited — print speed, layer thickness, percent fill, and some more. Everything else is a multitude of parameters “wired” into presets, which the manufacturer recommends choosing depending on the specific task. But this, of course, is for ordinary laity, for those who just want to print and in advance with high quality. And for Lefties - please, you can delve into the Slic3r settings directly, it is not forbidden. Replacing Slic3r is done simply by copying the new version of the slicer to the folder of the same name.

    With presets, the developer really surprised ... the quality of thin-walled structures, though from ABS, delivers.

    I haven’t succeeded at Printbot yet ... a shaman, ma. And size does matter.

    In addition to presets, the Polygon for Builder software contains separately called typical operations for the printer, for example, replacing a nozzle - the printer will heat up the extruder, will command when it is possible to replace the nozzle, then it will drive a little plastic, calibrate, cool down. Or the supply of a new bar - heats up, grabs the bar, stretches, calibrates, cools down. Etc.
    In general, the approach to software, despite the ascetic design, pleasantly surprised me. As if for himself.

    Unfortunately, the software is closed. It’s not very clear why, because the community could successfully modify and refine it, and the variety of CC licenses would allow it to be monetized, where necessary, for example, in the B2B market.

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    Conclusion

    And the conclusion, in fact, is this - 3D-Builder surprised!
    Indeed, quiet glanders, not particularly prominent anywhere, was born on Russian land, grew up and took a worthy place among foreigners, in the best traditions of ancient Russian fairy tales. Yes, and with auto-calibration and ring blowing model. Mdya ... I would like to give one such AvtoVAZ.

    Note

    If anyone does not know, I am the owner of Lada Grants.


    Well, for dessert

    Having amazed your and our, so to say, pride and sense of patriotism, for whom goose crackers with Velvet, and to someone humble and low-calorie from Palych, I hasten to inform you of the most interesting news that the next assembly and packing of 50 ends at Picaso's production facilities new Picaso 3D-Builder printers, and they will be implemented starting this week with a small discount of about 10-12%.
    To the Christmas sale, so to speak, not otherwise.

    There is no such information on the Picaso website , but orders at a discount are already being accepted.

    Here on this positive note about such an extraordinary and original novelty of domestic, and I’m not ashamed of this word - high-tech production, let me finish.

    PS

    But for those who are interested in my further creative research with Printbot, I can report the following.

    About Slic3r

    A recently released release candidate is Slic3r. It includes two interesting options for generating perimeters and generally updated this algorithm. The smoothness of the models has increased significantly, and even to the naked eye.

    The old problem with the beginning of the perimeter over the precipice has disappeared. But new ones appeared, as usual. Now the slicer increases the slice time exponentially depending on the number of printed objects (i.e. downloaded STL files). If slicing one object takes 1-2 minutes, then slicing ten of these objects took me more than 120 minutes, i.e. geometric progression with denominator 1.6 - 1.65. If you save all 10 objects in a 1 * .STL or * .OBJ file and then upload it to the slicel again, but as one object, then the slayseng time is reduced to 40 minutes. Obviously, this is some kind of bug resulting from the constant recalculation of previous layers of separately loaded models.
    In addition, if any accelerations for perimeters and filling are set, then the slicer now swears at “0” in default acceleration, now I set it to 9000 mm / s / s.

    But Musa Isaakovna strongly advises not to lose hope and hope for an early final release of Slic3r.
    What we will inspire and follow.

    About the cold

    With the onset of stable cold weather in Moscow, I was able to test the long-standing idea of ​​the influence of ambient temperature on the quality of the resulting models. Printrbot Jr was brought to the balcony and charged with a five-hour model at an air temperature of about 6 degrees.
    The result was quite predictable:
    • the number of defects in difficult places was reduced;
    • the roughness has fallen;
    • geometric dimensions have become more accurate;

    As a result, a slight painless increase in printing speed by 20% and layer thickness up to 0.25 mm (for a nozzle 0.35 mm) was possible, while maintaining the external quality at the print level in a warm room, but with a layer of 0.20 mm. Those. reduced printing time and a bit of bar.

    On the left, 0.25mm in the cold, on the right, 0.20mm in the heat. The “cold” model visually and to the touch looks smoother and has fewer defects.

    Everything in the garden in winter! (C)

    That's all.
    The end.

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