The PEEK Performance Project Extra Part: Tips for your own HT printer

Tips for your own HT printer

Okay, I honestly don't know why you sat through 6500 words of my rambling. Maybe you thought it was interesting, in which case I hope I gave you an entertaining and engaging read. Or maybe you just felt bad for me, in which case I thank you for your sympathy.

I'm willing to bet, though, that some of you are reading this to try and make your own high temp printer, and you're here for guidance. In that case, I'll try to give a few of my best tips that I've learned over time:

• Be comfortable with all aspects of your printer, whether that's mechanics, electronics, firmware, materials, etc, etc. Or, study a lot and make yourself comfortable. An HT printer is an extremely involved project and you'll likely be touching every one of these subjects, and you need to know how to work with them when it comes time.

• Start with a great base printer. Not every printer is suitable for high temp use - bedslingers are (sorta) out, printers with lots of printed parts are out, printers you can't enclose are out, etc, etc. You want a good, solid, base printer with a minimum of printed parts and a good enclosure.
  
  Obviously, you can design this yourself, and in fact that gives you lots of advantages - being able to easily incorporate bellows, for one. However, if you do go this route, be careful not to have heavy reliance on printed parts. Keep as much of it metal as possible.
  
  Similarly, if you're going to modify an existing, commercial printer, look for a Z-bed printer with lots of metal and a minimum of plastic.
  
• Minimize your enclosure size. The smaller the enclosure, the easier it is to heat and the less power you'll need for your chamber heater. Z-bed printers are ideal for this, since you can build the enclosure directly into the frame. Bedslingers, not so much.
  This is also why I generally don't recommend large-format high-temp printers to everyday hobbyists. My 1200W is already running close to the limit of a standard US outlet (1650W). Trying to heat a printer twice as large in each dimension, and therefore 8 times larger in volume, would take way more power than a household circuit can provide.
• Narrow your focus. I know, it's really tempting for us as enthusiasts to try to build a printer that can print at 200mm/s with 9k mm/s2 acceleration with all of the bells and whistles, but the goal here is HT, not a machine that would make Voron owners proud. Stick with the basics. You don't need a magnetic spring steel sheet or an ABL probe for example - a traditionally leveled glass plate is good enough.
• Don't be afraid to run certain parts above their temp limits, if they're cheap and easy to replace. 2-3kg of PEEK costs about as much as your whole printer already, so tacking on the cost of a few tiny consumable parts doesn't make that much of a difference. If you can get a fan rated for 90C for 5 bucks, don't be afraid to run it at 110C and just replace it when it dies (and it will). Of course, the exception to this is if it becomes a fire hazard when it fails - a heater cartridge, for example.
• Be prepared to do things over quite a few times. Lots of things aren't going to work the first time you try it. Expect that there are going to be a few times you'll have to tear out that part you spent a week installing, and redo it all from scratch.
• Don't give up! It's not an easy project, but put enough work into it and you'll get it figured out!

Good luck with your high temp printer project!