Morpheus Modifications

[sukhvir]

After almost a month of tinkering, testing and a few litres of wasted resin, I have made a couple of modifications to my Morpheus that now gives me good and consistent prints. I thought a video would explain it better, so please see click on the link below to view. Please excuse the poor quality of the video, however I wanted to share this ASAP. I have made TOW aware of my modifications and they have encouraged me to share (however are not responsible for any changes you make). Please only do this if you are comfortable to do so as I cannot be held liable for any damage you may do to your printer.

Basically, the main problem is that the vat is sitting too high above the LCD and this results in poor adhesion, inaccurately sized prints and if you press down too hard on the platform, the bottom 4-5mm of your print are deformed. I'll quickly list the main changes I have made as shown in the video:

Vat modification:
- removed silicone from top of vat
- added 1.5mm rubber gasket on bottom vat plate
- place sheet on top of this gasket
- add ANOTHER rubber gasket on top, which is slightly larger on the inside (35mm perimeter)

Morpheus LCD panel:
- remove metal plate that surrounds the LCD
- carefully insert LCD and use thin tape to make sure screen is flush with base of Morpheus

I increased the retraction height in CW to 25mm to make sure the WHOLE print lifts off the vat film. I use FTD resin and have been printing with 0.07mm layers (still to try 0.025mm layers). 3 base layers at 50s each and rest are at 11s.

Print ONE single base layer, cancel print, then remove the build plate. remove excess resin and use a UV laser pointer (or possibly UV torch) to really stick the base layer to the build plate. Re-attach plate and re-start print. Your print will not peel from the platform any more.

I hope that covers it all and feel free to post your questions, findings or better modifications in this thread

[dada print]

Thanks Sukhvir

Excellent video tutorial and information. I will try this method and see if the prints will come out.

Cheers
David

[bolsoncerrado]

Thanks so much for the tips, tutorials and vid, man!

Sounds risky but worth trying!

Some quick questions:

1) any special rubber you used for the sheet for the VAT?
2) you don't care much about the suck up effect on the plate once it starts pumping up the print right?
3) why do you also unscrew the arrow screws on the plate? what for?
4) how did you remove the rest of controls on the CONTROL screen (unneeded ones) on CWS?

Thanks!

[AngryPanda]

Agreed! EXCELLENT POST!!! Thank you @sukhvir!!

[sukhvir]

You are very welcome and it is important we all help each other out to really get this working properly. The good news is that TOW have seen my modifications in the video and seem to approve. They are not hard to do, to be honest, and are reversible if required, so I would class them as low risk. TOW sent me a photo to stress that it is important to make sure the screen is properly 'sealed'.

Bezel.jpg

To answer your questions @bolsoncerrado:

1) any special rubber you used for the sheet for the VAT?
- I am using this rubber sheet http://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/natura...sheets/5063078. It was cheap, however to be honest, 1.5mm silicone would be much better if you can get it at a reasonable price. I was really just trying anything out of desperation and didn't want to spend too much on things that may not work. Although the rubber is working great for me so far, I'm just not sure how it will react with the resin long-term, but seems fine so far.

2) you don't care much about the suck up effect on the plate once it starts pumping up the print right?
- The 'suck up' effect is normal for all DLP resin printers. It is less pronounced with the PDMS vats, however is still present. This is normal and nothing to worry about. TOW sent me a photo today showing they tape the vat down to reduce or eliminate this. From their picture, it looks like they are testing the FTD resin.

KakaoTalk_20160407_202545796.jpg

3) why do you also unscrew the arrow screws on the plate? what for?
- I was told by TOW to always do this. It may not be required, however I still do it as a 'belts and braces' approach to really make sure my vat is level. If the vat is not level, you will experience issues where the print will not properly stick to the build plate.

4) how did you remove the rest of controls on the CONTROL screen (unneeded ones) on CWS?
- To be honest, I didn't actually remove any extra controls. My copy of CW installed like this.

Let me know if you have any further questions.

[woale]

Without much hassle, added an optical endstop (sensor here, and board here) on Z Min to ease the build plate levelling:
IMG_20160408_004225.jpgIMG_20160408_172754.jpg
This allows the build plate to "home" down via Gcode G28 command which is compatible with the Sprinter 1.3.22T firmware.
Sadly, with this factory default firmware, only Z Min (lower sensor) seems to be taken into account, and not Z Max (upper sensor).

The sensor needs to be wired with Z-Min on the Ramps board (5th connector counting from left to right), where 1st row pin is Signal, 2nd row pin is Ground, and 3rd row pin is Vcc :
untitled-49151.jpg

So it should look something like this:
IMG_20160408_003818.jpg

And fiddle the wires via the right actuator, like:
IMG_20160408_003948.jpg

Then snug fit the sensor board into the holder and clip on to the right actuator. The right handlebar pin (which will block the sensor) simply slides over, like so:
IMG_20160408_173105.jpg

The 2 parts ('Sensor holder' and 'Handlebar pin') and corresponding STL files, can be found here:
300x170.png

[woale]

The 'suck up' effect is normal for all DLP resin printers. It is less pronounced with the PDMS vats, however is still present.

You mean our film isn't PDMS ? Any idea how to obtain such PDMS film ? And would this allow continuous printing, like Carbon3D ?

[bolsoncerrado]

what's a PDMS film guys? :P angry panda said with less speed on z axis the suck up is less pronounced... but since it only happens on the very first layers...

[BobenhamHotspur]

@ woale - "........This allows the build plate to "home" down via Gcode G28 command which is compatible with the Sprinter 1.3.22T firmware.
Sadly, with this factory default firmware, only Z Min (lower sensor) seems to be taken into account, and not Z Max (upper sensor)."
If the firmware is accessible then using Arduino IDE it should be easy enough to enable the Z Max sensor. The pin allocation would need checking and probably just un-commenting a line to enable the software.

[woale]

If the firmware is accessible then using Arduino IDE it should be easy enough to enable the Z Max sensor. The pin allocation would need checking and probably just un-commenting a line to enable the software.

I'm afraid the source isn't accessible and I don't have any experience in decoding stored code from an arduino.
By the time I'll get to 33cm height prints, I'll ask TOW for their settings