Era

thingiverse

Era Era is a fast, affordable, easy-to-use, reliable 3D printer design. This project draws inspiration from Ultimaker 2 Aluminum Extrusion 3D printer. The Era Principle Era is designed with the principle: minimal efforts to achieve professional-grade results. First, it is designed to be easily printable on any present printer. Since most printers print in PLA or ABS, which are not as strong as metal or polycarbonate (the most common casing and part material on mid-to-high-end commercial printers), Era parts are designed to be very thick and stiff. They may not look fancy, but have a unified clean look, easy to print with minimal support, and are strong enough (sometimes over-strong that you may think it is wasting material, but the structural strength will pay off in time) , making it vibration-resistant and durable. Calibrate once and run everywhere! The second is the massive use of standard metal parts. Standard metals parts are stronger than plastic, robust, easy to get, and affordable. Era features a fully printable compact dual Bowden printhead with adjustable height and cooling duct. It consists of only one-piece printed part and mostly standard metal parts. Era also uses standard NEMA17 stepper instead of threaded rod NEMA17. All M3 T-nuts on Ultimaker 2 Aluminum Extrusion 3D printer are changed to M4 T-nuts, as they are generally more common. The third is room for calibration. As low-priced materials often come with low quality, there may be a lot of issues. Consider you ordered two pieces of aluminum extrusion in 308mm, but got one in 307mm and one in 309mm, and they cannot fit on the opposite sides of a square! You ordered two "exactly same" hotends, only to find they are different in height and cannot be installed together! Era takes full consideration of these problems and leaves room for calibration. With careful adjustments on some screws, you can get a perfectly calibrated printer even with low-quality materials. And "minimal efforts" is not only for users, but also developers. All Era parts are drawn from scratch in OpenSCAD, so a lot of code can be reused and easily modified. It's also very easy to read and understand. Join the development of Era at https://github.com/sgsdxzy/era and make Era better! Or you can even use the established Era code base to build your own 3D printer! Design Objectives How fast: We design for a minimum of 200mm/s. 400mm/s is possible. How cheap: It should cost around 1200-1400 CNY (around 200 USD). If you live in China and buy all parts online. How simple: We use a minimum number of printed/non-standard parts in favor of standard parts. How robust: It should run 7/24 if you give a good supply of filament and power. Print Settings Printer: Era Rafts: No Supports: Yes Resolution: Shapes are very simple, so it doesn't matter. Infill: I suggest 40% or more for better strength. Notes: I suggest ABS over PLA as ABS is more durable. However, you can use any 3D printable material that is solid. Custom Section Visit https://github.com/sgsdxzy/era for the latest stls and source files!