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Prices are without shipping, buyer to pay actual shipping cost. Links to the power supply and other parts used can be found on the main page for the project.

Preassembled Resin Wash Station V1

US $40.00

Includes assembled and programmed Resin Wash Station controller. You will need to fine tune the stepper driver to the output current required by your selected stepper motor. Prewired JST pigtails included for switch wiring. Pre-assembled boards will include the jumper fix needed, as well as the buck tuned to 8 volts.


Resin Wash Station V1 DIY Kit

$25.00

Includes all components required to make the Resin Wash Station Controller, including PCB, the Arduino, stepper driver, and the buck converter, and the JST pigtails. The Arduino Nano is pre-programmed.

If you don’t want any of the JST parts, I’ll do $20 on the kit. You can definitely solder your switch leads directly to the pads on the board if you choose.

The kit requires some soldering skills and of course soldering equipment. All components are through hole and anybody with soldering experience should not have any difficulty putting the board together. However, I do not recommend this as a first soldering project.

The assembly guide can be found here (PDF).

The schematic can be found here (PDF).

So here’s a quick video of the first try at an impeller. I haven’t found much info on materials that are suitable to being soaked in denatured alcohol or other solvents for long periods, but I’m open to any suggestions. I have never done resin casting, but would be open to trying that that if there was something that can take being submerged in all the various cleaning options for resin.

The problem of the magnets coming out has been solved with the new revision. But I did have problems with the hot filament sticking to the cold neo magnets on that first couple passes over the top of them. I had to watch and kind of press down the plastic that was starting to lift on those layers. I’d suggest heating up the magnets before imbedding them. Just sitting them on the heat bed for a while should suffice.

V2 could still take on the bend from always being coupled. Maybe a simple piece of carboard between the bucket and the base, when not in use, is enough to break the tension and take the pressure off the part. I’m not sure, drop a comment if you have any ideas for a fix. In the meantime v2 is printed with 999 walls, and in the bucket. We’ll see what happens after this one sits for a few weeks.

I designed this based off the 3 major wash and cure stations, Anycubic, Elegoo and Prusa. I was looking for a way to do it a bit cheaper, I have a DIY cure box, so just needed the wash. This will spin one direction for half of the cycle, then reverse and finish the cycle. I suppose if you find a big enough wash bucket it could also be used for the larger format resin printers like the Elegoo Saturn. It’s arduino based, I will include the arduino sketch, as dirty as it is, I’m not a coder by any means. Also I will have links to all the files I have created for this project to include Fusion 360 STEP files, STL’s and schematic. I will include a parts list with Amazon links, as well as a download section at the bottom.

I will have a kit available for the remaining boards I have. There is one board error, as this was the first version, it’s easily fixable with a cut trace and a jumper. There is a pic in the electronics section that shows the repair. If there is enough demand for kits I will have a version two printed with the proper fix and maybe a slight layout change.

BOX AND BRACKETS

The gray box I have based this off of is just an off the shelf electrical box from Home Depot. I designed a new top because I thought I would need a thinner plastic layer for the magnetic coupling to work on the first design. Honestly I haven’t tried it with the original top, but I would try it before you spend the time printing the new cover. If your magnets are strong enough you might not need the new one, just adjust the spacing of your armature magnets to be as close to the cover as you can without rubbing.

I designed all the printed parts for this in Fusion 360. I’ll include the STEP files below in the downloads section.

ELECTRONICS

I ended up mounting the board upside down so that if I ever wanted to change the arduino code I would just have to remove the cover and plug into the nano. I will probably change board layout if there is a future version of this going forward. All switches, both latching power and momentary contact for the timed cycles, are wired using JST-XH connectors. A special crimper is needed for these connections, so if you don’t have them, you could solder your switches direct to the board.

The unit is powered by a 12V 5A power supply, this is enough to power the stepper at the speed it needs to turn to provide the vortex in the tank. The 12V is fed to an adjustable drop down converter, I’m outputting around 8V. WARNING: WHILE THE NANO CAN TAKE UP TO A 7-12V SOURCE ON PAPER, IT’S SUGGESTED TO INPUT CLOSER TO 7. I RECOMMEND ADJUSTING VOLTAGE OF THE CONVERTER BEFORE YOU PLUG IN THE NANO.

The stepper used is a basic NEMA 17 series. Depending on the motor you use, you may need to change your pin locations on the motor to get the proper locations to work. If you get the same motor I list in the parts section it should be plug and play. There is adjustment on the DRV8825 driver board for current limiting, make sure you set this according to the needs of your stepper. If you DIY this from scratch other driver boards can also have this setting.

GENERAL NOTES

  • There were a few issues with v1 of the impeller, so I redesigned. I will post a video of the problems in a separate post on this page.
  • The impeller STL in the download zip is redesigned for imbedded magnets, 3x18mm magnets used on both impeller and armature, I got these from Ace Hardware. The redesign also includes a plug for the bearing cavity, so it will print with no support junk to dig out of the hollow. But make sure you use support blockers where the magnets will go, ask me how I know. In Cura you can pause at a specific layer, in my case it was 22, to imbed the magnets. You will want to verify the layer needed to pause in your slicer preview. I printed with tree supports for just the bottom of the impeller post, there is a concave spot there because most plastic buckets have a little dimple in the bottom center. The concave makes it so you don’t have to sand down that dimple. The original design was giving problems with the magnets coming out even after trying to glue them in with resin, CA and epoxy. Due to the flexing in v1, I’m going to try printing the next version of the impeller solid, the first try was 5 or 10% gyroid and the arms flexed. Using 999 walls instead of 100% infill seems to give a stronger print overall, so we’ll see what happens. I have a feeling the PLA may still soften up and be a problem.
  • Make sure when you set your magnets that they are offsetting poles.
  • The included schematic is corrected, so the board problem above shouldn’t be an issue if you decide to DIY your own homebrew board from the schematic using the included arduino sketch.
  • Depending on your 3d printer and your parts, you may have to adjust tolerances. The center post was designed using a cheap metal 608 bearing, but when I got the ceramic I needed to sand the post down because it was a hair smaller.
  • Center post is just glued to the bottom of the bucket wit CA glue, but I did have to scuff it up with some 80 grit to get the glue to hold.

PARTS LIST

These parts may be bulk packs but it’s often cheaper to buy that way. A lot of these parts I had on hand, from other projects, so I worked them into this design. I used a ceramic bearing, because in testing, even a few hours in water was making the cheap 608 bearings rust.

DOWNLOADS

Trainfest is the largest model railroad show in the country, and it just happens to be held here in Milwaukee, 1 block from my house. So camera in hand, I headed over to meet my uncle, cousins and a few other people for a day of trains and flashbacks. I haven’t been to this show in at least 10 years and it didn’t disappoint.

I’ve had an interest in model trains since I was a kid. I can remember being really young and playing with an old HO layout my uncle had setup in grandma’s basement. Which I then altered a few times over the years myself, but due to the space needed I never continued in the hobby. The technology has come so far from what I remember as a kid, and even more since the last time I was at this show. With the introduction of much smaller scales needing less room, maybe someday I’ll get back into it with an N scale set.

For me the trains are just one part, the modeling that is done for these layouts are in my opinion where things really shine. The level of work and detail that go into modeling and painting a whole town is amazing. Likewise the work that goes into painting, flocking, and detailing the landscapes is no less impressive. There was a huge hand built bridge that I overheard a guy explaining he cut, glued, assembled and painted over 5100 pieces of wood himself. That’s dedication. There was even a complete working layout made completely of LEGO sets, including the trains and tracks.

The modeling is mostly what I dedicated most of my pictures to this time around. 80% of shots were taken with my manual focus 50mm 1.7 Minolta Rokkor, the rest were taken with the standard kit lens 18-55mm. Some of the focus and depth of field are off, but I was trying to get pictures in between a ton of other people and kids around the layouts. Enough rambling, on to the Gallery.

A Few Words

I normally just post pics, but for anybody that should end up here after a net search about this segment, I’ll include a few comments about the marking.

It was a beautiful day for a hike, about 61 degrees at the start, with sun all day. This segment has a lot of different things to see. We hiked up and down sand dunes, along a solid sand ridgeline, then on the beach right next to the water before heading into the Point Beach State Forest. The beach section was pretty poorly marked, we weren’t sure if we were supposed to be on the beach or on the ridgeline. The area between the ridge and the beach is all wetlands, the trail looks like it goes to the beach, but it was all under water and would have been a great place to put a boardwalk, as we’d find out there was a rather nice one on the opposite end of the beach section, so we stayed on the ridge until we could get through to the beach. Once we got on the beach there wasn’t a single indication we were on the right “path”  there could have been some yellow painted rocks, those yellow fiberglass sticks for marking plow areas or anything along the way to let us know, nothing. After a couple miles or so we found a way back across the wetlands to the sand ridge. Not knowing if we were where we were supposed to be we took the chance to get back  to dry land when we could. We followed that ridge another couple miles along the wetlands, we eventually came to a boardwalk that went all the way to the lake across the wetlands presumably leading to where the trail would have connected, then went the other way into the woods. Marked with yellow blazes as is common with the IAT. That led us to believe that we should have been on the beach the entire way, it also made us wonder why there was no boardwalk over the wetlands at the very beginning.

Once in the woods the blazes were plentiful, save for the few instances where there was a fork in the trail and we each had to pick a direction trying to find the next one. Usually these are marked with an arrow decal pointing you in the proper direction, a few were not. I’m thinking about adding a sharpie to my pack list so at least the next guy doesn’t have to guess. It must be snake season, saw more in various sizes today, than the rest of the season.  A lot of the wooded parts of this section are combined with ski trails or other multi-use trails so I’m not sure what does for winter, most groomed ski trails don’t allow hiking. Enough rambling, on to the GPS info and pics.

 

GPS Data

 

Gallery