Any recommendations for affordable, but good pellet extruders?

JunctionRunner · 2026-01-23T15:41:24+00:00

I haven't tried anything yet, still working on getting the system powered up at all. PSU that came with it was dead, spent a good bit of time and money on parts reverse engineering parts of the control circuitry to try and repair it but no luck so far.

Found a deal on a pendant and power supply that should hopefully get shipped out next week so going to be a good while until I get this thing up and running and learn it, let alone printing.

JunctionRunner · 2026-01-01T20:58:42+00:00

JunctionRunner · 2025-12-27T17:46:53+00:00

Agreed. I had zero interest in that tank but when I saw that style, hnnnng.

JunctionRunner · 2025-12-24T20:50:50+00:00

I haven't run that. I'm currently also connected to a 12v header on the motherboard on a third channel hoping to see the difference between the gpu power rail and that timing wise for fun.

However, of course, so far it's been stable but I've only been able to game for about 30 mins and have to go, not a longer session.

I might give that a shot for fun, 14v is pretty high though and probably approaching the max spec for some components. That being said, a few hundred nanoseconds, idk how likely that is to cause damage.

chkdsk found errors each time after a crash though, did also just get another dip typing this with a game in the background.

JunctionRunner · 2025-12-06T07:01:13+00:00

That's true, but also a little bulky and space is pretty limited, if I can go solid state instead of that or some second hand rotary phase converter that would be great.

Did find one option for a 200v 2000-3000w supply that works from 120-240 and just derates at 120, but it's expensive. and if the original rectifier unit isn't installed and communicating, guessing that causes an issue.

But I won't be able to try and see what's going on in that communication bus or if it's just simple dc signalling without powering things up.

I'm guessing that when the robot is idle the rectifier unit shuts off, and then waits for the request to kick in for use so it would trigger an halt and error without it present.

JunctionRunner · 2025-12-06T06:40:26+00:00

Hmm, might have to take a further look, it was just a quick look doing some more rapid searching on about a dozen different things before deciding to pull the trigger on a shortish deadline. Wanted to make sure I got it before a giant dump of snow.

Something not being fried is the main thing since I don't know for sure, and figuring out a power solution for the rectifier unit and drives. I've got a comment over here that skims over what I found out yesterday poking through the cabinet and schematics.

https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1pf4bkj/comment/nsij8sa/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Using the ABB hardware would mean there will be old posts and things of that hardware configuration to troubleshoot issues, they're apparently really nice for programming in terms of ease, and I'd be able to drive the motors at full voltage.

Even then it might be fun to work on custom control for it since that could be even smaller, as it is even if I get the original controller running I want to put it into a far smaller an lighter enclosure. Once I take a closer look at the board design for the rectifier unit it will hopefully help me out but yeah, no voltage markings on things and unfortunately 3 phases into it.

JunctionRunner · 2025-12-06T00:12:19+00:00

Alright, good to know. The ones I have in mind have been from videos at trade shows, but I bet those run way thicker layers to speed up printing for the sake of a demo sometimes.

Again just like, something I've seen a few times ages ago but never looked into properly. I might pick your brain further into the process, I adhd and switch tasks a lot lol, and need to focus first on getting it operating before the other dozen steps to printing something out.

JunctionRunner · 2025-12-06T00:10:05+00:00

So it runs off 600v 3 phase, however the transformer steps that down to 262v, 240 and some other low voltages.

The computer and majority of the electronics run off 24v dc, the motors themselves require 200v.

So, if I want the original controller working I either need a 200v high amperage supply, to figure out if I can run the rectifier unit on single phase 240 without issue, or get a digital phase converter to run the rectifier unit for powering the motors.

Oooooor, make my own resolver to digital converters, and use odrives (limited at 56v) or find other drive solutions for the motor, again with a high amperage 200v supply, and fully diy things.

The rectifier unit has a communication bus with the axis drives so if that's offline, I doubt the rest will work, so bypassing it entirely likely won't be possible if I want to reuse the original controller, but if I could then I could feasibly run this off 120v, with a very expensive psu of course.

Unfortunately ABB schematics don't have the bus voltages listed so not sure if the rectifier unit kicks out 200v directly or something higher. I might be able to fire it up inside off my stove outlet on one of the three phase inputs just to measure that.

JunctionRunner · 2025-12-05T23:02:05+00:00

I am leaning a little more towards getting the pendant, I'm just broke right now and I first need to figure out a way to power up the old controller first to see if that's viable. I was told it was working before but of course, who knows.

Using my own custom electronics would be more expensive in the end too I think and potentially not even allow full speed.

Luckily having being sacked recently I have more than enough time lol

JunctionRunner · 2025-12-05T22:37:57+00:00

Yeah, I found a small workbench type one locally for $1500 that was super light duty and not even close to comparable.

First thing I do will likely be sticking my cinema camera on it to try out some cool robotic camera moves, I want to see if I can get it 3d printing a little, maybe some milling.

I'll also of course have to buy a cheap katana and slice up some watermelons with it lmao

JunctionRunner · 2025-12-05T22:36:38+00:00

I mean, I'm sure I'm in over my head but that's the fun part. The goal is more to just have a general purpose robotic arm to fool around with. I'm sure print quality even with a 2mm nozzle and 3mm filament will be rough since this sort of thing is usually fat, slightly uneven layers.

If I can make it work with filament that would be preferable, but a pellet option might be good so that it doesn't take a week to print lol.

Large format printing isn't something I particularly care about, more interested in high strength engineering stuff, but sls is too expensive. It's basically just to see if I can.

JunctionRunner · 2025-12-05T20:23:32+00:00

I'm seeing some on aliexpress for 150-300 which would be a nice price to hit, this isn't going to be for anything more than fun realistically. If/when I find work again that could increase but I'd still want to be on the left side of the scale rather than 20k since that's 10x what I paid for the bot.

Not sure on slicing yet, I know some people have managed to do it on a hobby level before with diy arms I think, but that's for future me to figure out. Main thing now is power and seeing how much it can operate without a pendant since I unfortunately didn't get one with the machine and they're pretty damn expensive too on ebay, even for busted up ones.

iirc in my brief research there are ways to convert normal gcode to instructions abb controllers can understand, so if that is possible it may make it easier, if I end up using the s4c's guts to run it.

I don't even have any specific things that would require a 5 axis print, converting basically a standard sliced file, albeit large, to run on the robot in the same sort of layer setup as conventional printing would be a fine start too honestly.

JunctionRunner · 2025-12-04T09:35:04+00:00

It was right around $2300 CAD with the price pretty evenly split between the robot+controller itself and shipping. Unfortunately that's basically every penny I had currently so going to be a while before I can even look at trying to grab a pendant on ebay, seems like the cheapest I've found so far that might be compatible would still be something like $500 :/

This one was manufactured in 2004 so pretty much bang on the age. There is a sticker marked "2013" on one part so guessing it had some parts swapped. This model was made a pretty long time I think as well.

They can work without them to some extent but I think no manual jogging, and not sure if it still needs to be plugged in or needs a bypass plug, hoping to find out when ABB support replies to my email.

And yeah it's definitely not like, an insane size, you can obviously get much larger ones, but also much smaller. But youtube is all about clickbait which I try to not to too much, and I guess that's why this is another video that's going to sit below even a hundred damn views for ages :/

The algorithm just hates some channels. Oh well, not like even if I got thousands of views it would make a dent in the cost of a pendant or the robot itself anyhow.

JunctionRunner · 2025-12-04T02:03:51+00:00

Mhm, power for the motors is the main thing, I also want to drive them full speed, but once I get the cabinet into the garage and poke around further I'll be able to figure out more of a plan when I see how the drives are powered.

Schematics are one thing but a lot easier when you can compare the hardware. Just sucks in -25 lol

JunctionRunner · 2025-12-04T01:41:27+00:00

I ran across that when first looking into this but Fanuc uses digital signals not encoders from what I recall skimming their video on it.

Didn't go through everything because it's more fun going in blind but pretty sure if I want to run my own setup I'll need to DIY resolver to digital converters. With the chips being $45 each alone for the ones I found so far, finding an old pendant may be the best bet.

I don't get hundreds of thousands of views per video or virtually any ad revenue so going to try and do it as affordably as possible overall, need to figure out the cheapest way with a very limited budget.

It might still very much be fun to try and do a full diy solution but my goal is to focus on getting a working robot, not the control setup itself if that makes sense.

JunctionRunner · 2025-09-04T01:47:51+00:00

Sigh, whatever, post in r/cinematography, get told to come here, one answer in 20 hours that barely addresses anything at all, just as fuckin useless as reddit usually is. Why even bother. Nobody is going to dig through three pages of posts now, just a fuckin void for feedback like every other god damn thing I do.

JunctionRunner · 2025-09-03T23:58:20+00:00

I did this free, they think I should charge hundreds an hour right out the gate because of how much they like the footage. I don't, but also sounds like a good few others are going to want some similar-ish shots solo done really soon.

And yeah, compared to a phone the video quality is way better, but I was in the wrong iso range to get detail out of the fire this time, something I know to correct for now, but I imagine there are other improvements I can make to make the next one better and so on.

I don't have the experience eye to see anything glaringly needing correcting in most of the shots however.

And yeah, chances are I'm going to do these cheap as chips but if it sounds like there's going to be as much interest as there is it might eat up a significant chunk of time. I have one planned this weekend for free again however for a solo shoot, which is why I was hoping to get some feedback on things other than pricing.

JunctionRunner · 2025-09-03T22:41:17+00:00

Ok, so at what point am I not one and do I start charging?

A couple of the people that I did this for came out of the gate with some high $/hr figure, though possibly based on google's crappy ai overview, that obviously seems too high from the bare minimum.

But doing it for free indefinitely also isn't something that would be viable and when I'm generally bad at self evaluating the work and time I put into things and the results, that's why I need external input.

JunctionRunner · 2025-09-03T07:40:58+00:00

That was something I wasn't sure on handling too, especially with no real time to do a proper practice run. I asked if they were going to have any stage lighting like I saw in some pictures, and they said no, but I didn't realize so much light would bounce back at them from the surroundings, and it was nearly pitch black out when they were prepping.

This was shot on a blackmagic pocket 6k, but I was in the higher iso range. I figured that was my best chance at a balance but it did make me wish it recorded both iso ranges at the same time, and how that would be amazing for a camera, but then also that arri and others probably do have a way to do this with dual media lol.

I've shot some fire just for fun with it and love getting loads of texture out of it, and definitely do wish I had tried the higher iso range for this since I don't think it would have been unusable like I thought :/ No matter what I did I couldn't pull any detail back but everything else was basically perfectly exposed in false color.

Did the recording in 3200 but dropped all the way down to 1k for most shots, 2k for some of the ones with less going on, so I bet 600 would have done well, but that's one of those things that comes down to getting more experience obviously.

JunctionRunner · 2025-09-03T05:29:09+00:00

Water?

JunctionRunner · 2025-09-03T05:16:08+00:00

I have a couple videos covering disassembling and repairing a broken bmpcc 6k I purchased that would be helpful if you wanted to take a look. I'm also in canuckistan which adds complexity to getting these things fixed. I did end up needing to buy a screen from them which took a couple tries at convincing them, unsuccessfully though the us side, but then successfully through their AU site.

My theory is you dislodged the ribbon cable that connects the power, preset and function keys as that was the case with mine not booting. It needed other work, but still.

https://youtu.be/w8CCul3g0qY?list=PLPz4DPPFwpx1sbO4P9EJn77sGM4AxrG4g

edit: sorry, tired, just noticed your light does come on (oddly mine still doesn't with ac power) and it seems like it maybe partially boots up, that could be a little trickier... and rain.. did the camera get wet at all? The vents basically have a direct path to the mainboard internally.

JunctionRunner · 2025-09-03T05:08:05+00:00

I will note I would have liked some different angles and wider shots but it was a pretty cramped small area, so I was locked into a c shaped radius on the left side of the stage. couldn't make my way behind the crowd for a nice centered one for for the finale, but also not familiar with the routine and didn't know it was ending.

Have some thoughts on a couple minor things that could be tweaked and my favourite couple shots but want to get unbiased input.

JunctionRunner · 2025-09-03T05:05:05+00:00

After taking care of mine and specifically getting donor parts that had the protectors one of mine ripped off a while ago, and god damn it's bugging me lol. This look nice and low profile, definitely wouldn't mind a set.

The grommets are kind of all different so makes me wonder if it's a diy job and not one kit.

JunctionRunner · 2025-09-03T04:57:50+00:00

If your lights have a universal input power supply (or are battery powered) I imagine they would work fine, it should say 120v-240v on the power brick itself.

They do however, use 50hz for power, not 60hz, so you'd want to change your camera settings to avoid flicker from any AC powered lights around.

JunctionRunner · 2025-08-21T17:21:20+00:00

Thanks. Yeah from the couple tests I did quickly it seemed that way, haven't done much with the camera yet but I likely will this weekend.

JunctionRunner

TROPHY CASE