Enclosure Part 1

As I mentioned before I am planning to build an enclosure for this printer. I decided to follow the instructions from the Prusa Website and will use Ikea Lack tables.

Prusa shares the 3D printed parts on Thingiverse. But as you can see there is not much room left from the top of the printer to the smoke detector(which is a cool idea btw).

So I decided to remix the parts and extend them by 150mm in total, 75mm for the upper corners and 75mm for the lower corners. This should provide sufficient space to add the MMU 2 on top of the printer.

I also added a notch for the plexiglas sheets on the full height of the corners to give the whole construction some more stability.

And this is how they look when printed, in original Prusa orange PETG filament of course.

Next step is to remix the lower corners and print them as well as the hinges. I have not yet decided if i will go with Plexiglas® (Acrylic) or Makralon® (Polycarbonate) for the sides of the enclosure. I may also look into clear PVC and PET. But at the end the price will be the factor on which I will decide.

Choices to make

I did not expect to get the first parts that soon. So now I have to make some decisions for the missing parts. First there is the power supply. The original Prusa comes with a 24V 240W power supply. I had in mind to use it to power an LED strip and the Water cooling as well. So wanted to order a 300W PS, but they are more expensive than a 360W and hard to find.
Problem is that those have a Fan installed, the 240W PS don´t. But I wanted to have a silent printer and as the PS would be installed outside the enclosure I would hear it. I could replace the Fan in the PS with something more sophisticated and silent fan.
But then I realized it is hard to find a Water cooling set for PC´s with 24 Volts pump and fan.
I could use a DC-DC step down module, but I think I will go with another 12V PS instead.

SO the other missing part is the water cooling system. There are some 3D printer cooling sets for sale, all around € 50. But not very appealing to me and the size of the cooler implies that the Fans have to run at full speed all the time.
As every PC water cooling set will do just as fine, I think I order one of those, with a nice look, big cooler and attach then some silent fans.

The first parts came in today

Felt like early Christmas today. The first parts I ordered on Oct. 24 2018 arrived today, Nov. 7 2018!
I am impressed as I expected 3-4 weeks lead time at least.
Here is what should be in the kit I have ordered.

One box contained the MK3 frame. Everything is nicely packaged and looks good. While the surface of the anodizing seems to be a little bit rougher than the original Prusa parts, they look good.
They even copied the Prusa Logo.

The MK52 heat bed looks pretty much like the original, but this time no Prusa markings.

I won't using the cable covers, I´d rather use the 90 degree version, so the printer fits better in the enclosure. It is printing right now :-) 

The spring steel build has some line pattern printed like the original, but comes as a blank. Not sure yet what I am supposed to do with those small stickers.

 There are 2 PEI sheets included, for both sides of the spring steel. They come with attached adhesive, so at least I cannot screw up this part of the installation.

It seems like they have cut them already to size, including the notches. Not sure if this is really good, as I have to attach them very precisely now and make sure the sheet is square to the spring steel. I think I would have preferred an oversizes sheet that you just cut off the overlap when it is attached.

The Einsy Rambo Board even comes with the fuses, some heat sinks for the TMC drivers(usually not included when you order from Prusa) and the same type of blue USB cable.

Last, but not least the Bondtech Gears clone. The set comes with the screw, bearings, shaft and an allen key. We will see if this is as good as the nearly 6 times more expensive original.

My parts list for the MK3 clone.

The 11.11. is coming and I started to print the plastic parts for my MMU 2 clone. Everything is printed in black PETG vom Prusa, except for the Idler. I will print this one in Polycarbonate(PC) as soon as my order from HobbyKing arrives.
This is how the parts came out of the printer, I did not do any cleanup yet. But it is not really necessary to perform much cleanup. I printed them in 0.15mm Layer height and with no supports.

I am also thinking how to use the Filament Sensor with the Titan Aqua Clone Hot End. I guess once I received the parts I will design a housing that fits the extruder.

Meanwhile I also decided what enclosure I will built. There is a very good article on the Prusa Website how to build an enclosure with the Ikea Lack tables.
Prusa Ikea Lack Enclosure
Why this one? Well, they spent already some thoughts how everything goes together in a way that you can easily access the printer for maintenance. Also the idea of mounting the power supply outside the housing is good and they provide parts for this as well.
But I guess I will slightly modify the parts to have more height inside the enclosure. So that I do not have any problems with the MMU 2 on top of the printer.
And lucky as I am, the Lack table is on sale currently for just € 5.99.

This is a list of parts that I already ordered for my MK3 Clone.

Frame, Einsy Rambo Board, Heat Bed MK52, Bond Tech clones € 189,33 

LCD-Controller with SD card reader  € 6,67

5m GT2-6mm timing belt   € 2,86

Prusa i3 MK3 Power Panic Board  € 10,21

Black Aluminum Extrusion Profile 3030+Smooth Rods Kit  €50,51

Black Aluminum Alloy X Shaft Carriage Kit for Titan Aero Extruder  € 21,40

(Hope this one fits for the Titan Aqua as well)

Filament Sensor and PINDA V2 probe  € 15,27

Antivibration Feet For Prusa i3 MK3  € 4,07

2 5V DC 5015 50mm Blow Radial Cooling Fans  € 3,89

9pcs 6x6x3mm Aluminum Spacers for the heat bed  € 4,07

2 30CM Textile Cable Sleeves  € 2,33

2 Idler Roller Pulley with Bearings  € 4,01

3 Sets U-bolts For Holding LM8UU on the Y-carriage  € 3,64

Black anodized aluminum Y timing belt holder   € 9,38

aluminum Z mount kit metal Z axis bottom motor mount Z axis top kit  € 12,44

aluminum Y end motor holder and Y end idler kit  € 8,67

aluminum X motor/X idler kit metal kit with X belt tensioner function  € 31,85

Improved aluminum Y axis belt tensioner kit  € 11,37

4pcs 2gt 16 20 teeth Timing GT2-16 pulleys € 4,44

Besides that I have preordered some parts for the 11.11 sale.  I needed to make a deposit and pay the rest during the 11.11.

Stepper motors with 320m Trapezoidal Lead Screw(no cupplers)  € 75,77

Black anodized aluminum Y holder   € 4,04

Titan Aqua clone Hotend   € 63,98

I will also order those parts as I wanted to experiment with different adhesives on the build plate.

Blank Mk52 Spring Steel Sheet Heat Bed  € 16,48

Buildplate Black Sticker Sheet For Prusa i3 Mk3  € 2,87

I got some discounts on my order, mainly the removed the shipping costs on my request.

But I have already spent € 559.55 and still have not all parts I need. And as I live in Germany I have to pay 19% VAT for all those parts when they arrive, so it is € 668.55 .

You see, this is not just about to save money on a MK3 built!

Cloning the Prusa MK3, is it worth the effort?

This Blog is about my journey trying to build a Prusa MK3 Clone with cheap parts from China.
But my intention is not to promote doing this instead of buying the real Prusa MK3.
I have great respect for Josef Prusa and what he did for the 3D printing community. Last, but not least it is his open source philosophy that made this possible in the first place as he shares all designs, for the printer parts, the electronics and the software. Only this enables the Chinese companies to make money with his intellectual property.
So again, I encourage you to buy a real MK3 from Prusa and support Josef, rather than support those Chinese companies that just copy his designs, bring no innovations to the community and also often don't share anything as open source.
This applies of course also to E3D. They designed the most copied 3D printing hot end, the E3D V6. You can buy a cheap clone for less than $8,-. But beside from the quality, the companies that produce and sell those clones will never bring any innovation.

Having that said I want to explain my intentions. I want to try to build a MK3 from cloned parts and see if this is really worth the effort and what the real savings are. But I also intend to improve things, where possible. Once the clone is ready I am going to compare the price, the features(if there is any difference) and of course the print results.

Recently I discovered that a Youtuber that I follow build his own I3 clone. Take a look at his channel "myfordboy". What stood out of the other clones I have seen, was that he build an all metal version. Well, as his channel has a lot of videos about aluminium casting and machining, it was obvious that we would come up with this kind of clone.
The I found some aluminium parts for the MK3 on Aliexpress.com, a Chinese platform for cheap products and clones. I knew that they sell the MK3 frame and the Y carriage as cloned parts.
Looking deeper into this I discovered that most of the 3D printed parts from the Prusa MK3 are also available in an aluminum version. The Y belt tensioner was even a better, adjustable version than the original. You get nearly everything in an aluminium version, except from the hot end and extruder housing. Well, myfordboy made a casting go the extruder housing as well, but I have not seen anything like this for sale.
They have also copied the Einsy Rambo board, the P.I.N.D.A Probe V2, the filament sensor and the power panic board for the power supply.
What I really love about my original MK3 is the flexible steel build plate. And even this is available as clone including the MK3 heat bed with magnets.
While looking for the best offer, I discovered that they even copy the Prusa MMU V2. You can get the board, the stepper motors with shafts, even the 3D printed parts, if you don't want to print them yourself. And of course all the small parts including the orange PTFE tubing.

The only thing I don't like much is the extruder assembly from my original MK3. I am one of the people that have seriously problems with PLA and retractions since a few months. I have upgraded to the version R3 (B7) of the plastic parts, the PLA compresses like an accordion until it is stuck in the heat break.
So this is an area that I want to improve. I do have a original E3D Titan Aero lying around here that was supposed to go on my Creality CR10. First I wanted to install this Titan Aero, but recently I have seen that E3D has now also a water cooled version, the Titan Aqua.
And surprisingly the Chinese already copied that design as well. Besides that many Titan Amor clones, you also get the Titan Aqua clones now from China.
I have decided to try the Titan Aqua, a clone from Chine of course as this project is all about clones.
The idea I have is that I could put a housing around the clone for printing Nylon and other warping materials. Usually the increased ambient temperature in such a housing can cause problems as the cooling for the hot end is not sufficient any more. But with a water cooled version I could place the water reservoir and the cooler outside the housing.
Just recently I decided to give the MMU V2 a try a well on my clone project.

I have started ordering parts, but some order I will hold back until the 11.11 as there is a big sale on aliexpress with some discounts. Some parts I had to preorder and make a deposit, then pay the rest on the 11.11.
I will share the details on the parts I have ordered in my next post. Then I guess there will be not much to share until the parts arrive. But then I will update this blog with lots of photos and videos that guide thru the build process.