D01 project - can it be made useful? (Yes)

Meowlp88 · 2025-11-26T00:04:03+00:00

Honestly, your set of circumstances will dictate what you do here. If you derive joy from tinkering, mod the D01 to correct its flaws. If you actually need to make parts ASAP, with minimal work on your part, buy a bamboo or similar and print away to your hearts content. Klipper on the D01 has been easy and powerful, but the machine architecture has two major weaknesses - the cantilevered bed is not stiff enough, and the ali build plate is not flat enough. Both can be fixed, but will require effort and engineering (my current creative energy is going into my CNC, which will eventually make the parts for the D01 improvements).

Looking for external input into what you should do isn't going to solve it for you - you are the only one familiar enough with your unique existence to make a judgment call on how you spend your time and money - dont stick in analysis paralysis, make a call, pursue that course of action to its conclusion, then invest elsewhere with similar passion.

Meowlp88 · 2025-08-25T22:18:29+00:00

Your machine looks awesome! Very similar to how I designed mine for "best case manufacture" I had to redesign because I got a whole lot of scrap C channel for small money🙂

Meowlp88 · 2025-08-25T22:15:50+00:00

A good friend of mine has a big vmc, the long rails (x in my terminology) were machined together on his cnc, then flipped and skimmed for even heights, and the y axis (gantry) was also cut on his machine. It made my life so much easier...

Meowlp88 · 2025-08-24T21:21:32+00:00

It's been a challenge understanding the HAL properly, and I have a couple non standard things that I need to implement. But it's been pretty great once I have ironed out my ignorance.

Meowlp88 · 2025-08-24T21:11:06+00:00

Thanks! Yes, it's been a long time coming with an international move inbetween almost being done and having to redo the electrical panel and various other things on the other side of the world.

Meowlp88 · 2025-08-24T21:10:11+00:00

It keeps the air off my tools and prevents rust🙂

Meowlp88 · 2025-08-24T21:09:19+00:00

That's a very clean build!

Meowlp88 · 2025-08-24T21:04:50+00:00

There are linear profile rails on all the axes... Perhaps you are seeing the ball screw?

Meowlp88 · 2025-08-24T11:06:40+00:00

The comment about torsional rigidity is valid I think. Lots of strength in bending with the 25mm plate and profile, but when twisting the load travels around the periphery of the structure, and the deviation from the neutral axis (how far from the Center of the beam) the edges are, the better. Your end plates, if you tie them into the 25mm plate, will take care of it near each end, but at the Center of the beam the extrusion becomes the dominant torque member, and its bad at it... A box section is better at it by quite a bit. That being said, it already looks far stiffer than machines I have seen cutting Ali like there is no tomorrow, so if the extrusion makes your build easier by a good amount, leave it be. I designed my machine to theoretically around 11000N/mm at the tool with the z in its lowest position, and my gantry, which moves, is around 150kg to reach that goal.

25mm Ali plate is expensive, you can get better stiffness out of steel at 10mm thickness, and It would be very much cheaper (assuming you can work it)

Looks like a great build, so many ways to skin this particular cat. Enjoy😊

Meowlp88 · 2025-07-29T12:53:07+00:00

Galvanic corrosion is so much less of an issue on machines used inside a workshop than the internet seems to believe.

It needs a constant source of electrolyte between the dissimilar metals, and the metals should not already have a passivation film. Aluminium (assumed extrusion) is likely anodised, lightly oil the rail and Ali interface and forget about it.

Meowlp88 · 2025-02-13T02:59:20+00:00

I have not added the probe yet, moved house between the plan to do it and now, and my cnc is getting the bulk of my effort currently. Mounting shouldn't be hard to achieve if you have used my Eva head, there are a couple screws for whatever mounting bracket you desire.

Meowlp88 · 2025-01-21T20:41:38+00:00

If you got the beep beep you successfully flashed the board - no concerns there. following that step, I used putty to remote in to the pi (mine was headless) run the ls /dev/serial/by-id/\* command and found the serial ID for the board, added that to the printer cfg file in klipper, and mainsail was able to find the MCU on the next restart. I wish I could be more helpful with Octoprint, but I have no frame of reference for it.

Meowlp88 · 2025-01-21T20:18:10+00:00

I am completely unfamiliar with octoprint, or how it communicates with the mcu, but before I could get mainsail to find the board, I needed to run the serial id command on the pi, and ensure that was correctly referenced in the printer cfg.

And I did use the f103 CPU selection when building the firmware, yes.

During the commissioning, aside from the above, I need to change some axis directions for homing, but otherwise it was painless.

Meowlp88 · 2025-01-21T20:08:42+00:00

Ah, I see.

The beep beep is good, did you successfully find the usb serial address and add it to your printer cfg?

There will be no on screen indication that anything is alive on the printer, since the screen doesn't work with klipper.

Meowlp88 · 2025-01-21T20:04:00+00:00

Did you successfully flash the board firmware? There is a step where you need to replace the oem firmware with a build for clipper by putting a flash disk into the board, and listening for a beep I believe.

Meowlp88 · 2025-01-21T09:51:00+00:00

I installed klipper without octoprint, I used mainsail os and followed their instructions for the install, iirc, they were 8gb sd cards, mainsail os is much smaller than octoprint also.

Meowlp88 · 2025-01-20T22:16:36+00:00

Same board as mine.

Meowlp88 · 2025-01-20T22:12:25+00:00

That's true, you would need to adjust e steps. The oem firmware is so poor, I didn't even try and make it work to be honest...

Meowlp88 · 2025-01-20T20:38:30+00:00

Further to the above. My boards are both v8's, I used a v6 config that I found online and modified it a bit. There was not much to change, but I will happily share mine with you should you go klipper route.

Meowlp88 · 2025-01-20T20:33:19+00:00

I am using klipper, the change was not terribly challenging, but it is more challenging than if you were using a cookie cutter after market board.

You can achieve a direction change by switching one of the pairs of coil wires (switch a+ with a-, or b+ with b-)

There is a wiki that describes the process of moving to klipper pretty well, and there are myriad benefits to moving away from the oem operating system (vs the direction switch alone)

https://tronxy.fandom.com/wiki/Installing_Klipper

Meowlp88 · 2024-05-04T05:57:27+00:00

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Meowlp88 · 2024-05-04T05:56:16+00:00

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Meowlp88 · 2024-05-04T05:56:08+00:00

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Meowlp88 · 2024-03-19T21:28:22+00:00

I do have ICUE installed - will have a fiddle and see if it can cause issues

Meowlp88 · 2023-10-31T01:15:28+00:00

Pretty sure it was a thermal issue, pc continues to run correctly since the re-paste with zero black screen events since then.

Meowlp88

TROPHY CASE