Howdy y’all, much like the title says, I’m looking to build a Hypercube. I have what was once upon a time an Ender 3 V1 that I’ve rebuilt with an Ender Extender kit. I’m not happy with the aggressive ghosting I get from the 400x400 bed so I wanted to cannibalize the electronics and build the frame from scratch. I was also planning on keeping the bed since it’s got a stick on heater and thermistor that’ll work well with the new setup. Hotend too, probably, since it’s an all metal Micro Swiss.
Any gotchas to look out for? I know belt tension is a biggie once I get it together, but any gotchas to look out for in the build process?
I’m not too nervous about throwing together a custom firmware for this, it’s not my first custom firmware and I’m a software guy by trade so it’s pretty straightforward for me.
You wanna be mindful to get the plane that the hot end moves around on parallel with the bed as best as possible. Software leveling and adjustment are nice, but starting with something very parallel is a whole lot better.
And if you have the option I’d consider using precision rails instead of steel rods for movement in the x/y axis, you can get cheap ones from like Ali express but they’ll be better for print precision.
With the hypercube we built at my last job, we were building a second printer but with rails instead of rods and my boss said he was way happier with the result, and we spent a while re-leveling the extruded aluminum pieces that our rails (that the hot end moved along) were mounted to, and that also helped.
Regardless, its better not to worry too much and just get started. I’m really bad about trying to perfect things or get everything just right right off the bat when I’d be better served by just starting and then figuring things out from there