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3D Printer: Tevo Tarantula

OK, I admit. This is maybe not directly RC stuff. But Many RC enthusiasts use, or have thought of using, a 3D printer to create their own camera mounts, brackets and braces, motor guards, and such.
So did I, but I was not willing to fork out €500,= to €5.000,= that those typically cost. So I was more or less looking at 3D printer kits. Kits are cheaper, because they are not assembled yet, which saves cost on labour and on shipping (as the box can be more compact).
With my newly found sponsor GearBest, we agreed that I could give the cheapest kit around a try, and they were kind enough to send me a Tevo Tarantula in it's basic configuration for free to review.

And at the current price point of about  $180,= (€ 151,=) in a Flash Sale, this is more in the range I was looking for. And I imagine that holds for many others as well... So here's a write-down of my experiences building the Tevo Tarantula.


For the Tevo Tarantula, there are a couple of options you can choose from:
  • Standard bed (200 x 200 mm) versus large bed (280 x 200 mm)
  • With or without self-leveling bed
  • One or two extruders
I got the basic version (standard bed, no auto-leveling, one extruder), but all the other choices can be put on later as accessories. Actually, I got two extruders: the Standard one, and the Titan clone one. But with only one single hotend, a dual extruder setup is still impossible. So it's a choicce of either one or the other for now.

Packaging of the kit is phenomenal. Layered foam fillings contain parts, grouped together per subassembly with the bags of fasteners to go with them. It all looks very well thought out!


Also, the assembly manual that is the first thing you see when you open up the box, looks well organised and easily readable at first glance. Lots of big pictures, not too much text. Just like it should be.
And up to about page 10 out of 30, it really is well organised and easily readable. From there on, however, the pictures and text start to mis-match. Which is a pitty, because it all started out so nicely! Not that it is impossible to figure out what goes where, especially when you also have a look at some of the many unboxing and assembly videos on YouTube.
Since there are so many of those videos out there already, I'm not going to do that all over too. I'm just going to list my personal experiences with assembling this printer here. In future episodes, I'll write more about prints, and printing. But this episode will focus on the assebly process.



Assembly starts with crossing the 20x40 Y-rail with two short pieces to form the bottom of the central square of the frame. Because it is of the utmost essence that the basic frame is truely square, it is a good idea to already temporarily mount the top bar as soon as you mount the side bars already. It will have to come off later, when the X-carriage is slid on to the side bars. But until then, it is a good measure to square out the standing frame, as the length of the top bar is exactly the width needed for the vertical pillars on theit top side. If you tighten the bolts at the under side of the frame after installing the top bar, chances are you will end up with a nicely square frame!


From there on, things start out reasonably straight forward, and just like the pictures and text in the assembly manual. Just a couple of things to keep in the back of your mind when assebling, that will make life easier: Excentric nuts go into the bigger holes. The wheels with the white plastic stand-offs get two (!) spring washers, and go into the smaller holes.  If the long bolt will not go through the bearing of the wheels, rumble around inside the inner bearing ring with the delivered screw driver to center the positioning ring that is in between the two bearrings. The large acrilic bed "X" piece sits on a rectangular acrilic plate.
I found that the bed was not sitting nicely horizontally as I had assembled the Y-carriage. Looking in the Y direction, the left side of the bed (the side with the excentric nuts on my build) was about 5 mm lower than the right side of the bed (the side with the white spacers). I replaced one of the two spring washers in the "white spacer" wheel assmblies with a regular M4 washer, and all worked out fine again.
Don't understand the double spring washer idea in the first place anyway...

From just about there on, the assembly manual becomes a mere guide for looking at the pictures. Pictures and text don't match at all, not all bags that are used are mentioned, sequence is unlogical at some points. But having assembled the first carriages, it is pretty logical what to do. So it is not something a person with a little technical background could not overcome (and it is a kit, so assuming some degree of technical knowledge is not that strange), but it could have made the whole experience more like the wow-factor the first 10 pages of the manual held.


The clear acrilic housing of the control unit (the "motherboard", not the LCD screen) is of an unusual build type. The small stand-offs take the big screws, which punch through-and-through, while the large stand-offs take the little screws. Unfortunately, the big and small stand-offs are just a tad too close to each other, so that the motherboard will fit, but it will clamp against the taller spacers. Why not leave another 5mm of clearance there?


That would also help the acessibility of the screws with which the whole control box assembly is assembled to the frame. Becuase the motherboard overlaps those screws, you need to install the base to the frame, before you mount the motherboard.

Another thing to notce is that the base plate is not symmetrical! There is a little bit more room between the bolts that fix the assembly to the frame, and the stand-offs on one side than on the other side, which means that the entire assembly will be off a little to the left or to the right, depending on which side up you mount the base plate.
It shoud go on to the frame in such a way, that the control box goes a little more inward of the machine, rather than outward.


This is because otherwise, the X-steppermotor will clash with the base plate.


The fan of the control box should fit with 4 screws, but I could not find any fitting ones in the bag that I used to assemble the rest of the control box with. The only ones that sort of fit were these long M3 bolts, but I think it was meant for M2.5 bolts, because these M3 ones were actually tapping thread into the acrillic plate. Either I should have used the smaller bolts that I could not find, or the hole should have been bigger.
Further on down the assembly process I lacked a couple of long M3s, so I bet I should have used other ones here, but I got it solved anyway, so I just left it as is. This is one of those moments a clear user manual, and properly marked (and filled) bags would have been helpful. Ah, well, ... , those screws come nowhere near the electronics, so I'm good like this :)


The USB connector almost gets touched by the X-stepper motor. There's less than 1mm in between. This also means that if you should want to keep the printer connected through USB, you should tie-wrap the USB cable away from the steppermotor, e.g. to the top plate of the control box.


Another thing that bugged me was that I thought I had assembled the Z-axis lead screw and nut as it was on the picture in the manual (with the acrillic plate on top of the X-axis rail). It turns out that the heads of the bolts touch the under side (the serrated side!) of the belt. That cannot be how it was meant to go, because that will make noise and introduce a lot of vibration when moving in the X-direction (so pretty much all of the time...). So I swapped that to the bottom side of the X-axis rail (no belt there): problem solved :)


Maybe a bit hard to see in the above picture (I couldn't get a better one of it), but the top idler roller is just a touch too narrow for this belt. It creaps up against one wall, effectively enlarging the pitch diameter. This could cause heaps of problems in the prints, because as the belt gets tensioned, it will pull inward, releaving the belt tension. And on direction changes of the belt, it will do the same in the other direction, but in between it will expand and then contract the belt again. It will leave a kind of hysteresis effect on the X-axis stepping. I have left it like this for now, because I did not have another idler, and I did not feel like cutting away some of the width of the belt. So we'll leave that open as an opportunity for improvement. Once I have part cooling installed, I might just try to print an idler... (without part cooling, it would have to be in two pieces, because the overhang will be too big)



As said before :I did not have enough of the long M3 screws to mount the smaller stand-offs with, but hey, I had an assortment box of plastic stand-offs laying around, so I used thode instead. I could also have used two of the four bolts with which I had attached the motherboard cooling fan, but this looks just as neat. Using the smaller bolts to mount the longer stand-offs, it appeared that the bolts were just a touch too long (or the stand-offs did not have enough length thread inside). The bolts tightened strongly, but the plate was not fixated yet... A few washers, one per bolt was enough, fixed that.


Speaking of missing threads: I had one grub screw, and one t-nut that simply had no thread at all. Luckily, those are in abundance in the kit - there's enough spares. I still have some in the "left over" bag (which is menat to be like that, it's not an indication of me not putting everything on there ;) )


Time to print!

Once it was all assembled, it was time to test print. I decided to use the Cali Cat (From Thingiverse, by user "dezign"), instead of the boring calibration cube as my first print. That way, once I had the product in my hand, I could right away measure it, and modify X-, and Y-steps, if necessary.

But before that:


My very first print came loose from the bed. I had leveled the bed manually, using the cover of the assembly manual as a thickness gauge, so that should be in between a once-folded-over sheet of 90 grams paper, and a credit card. My best guess is the bed-to-nozzle distance would be around 0.3mm. So that should not be the problem. I cleaned the entire bed with acetone, which was the best solvant I had readily available, and tried again:


Much better! Not sure if it was the cleaning, or the longer time to get everything heated up through-and-through, but now, bed adhesion was no problem. But after  a little wile, the print stopped "growing" - which is difficult to see, by the way, with 0.2mm layer thickness.


It appeared my nozzle was not being heated anymore, and slowly cooling down to room tempreature. And then, of course, at some point, the plastic does not melt anymore...
Troubleshooting the problem, I measured infinite resistance from one wire of the heating element to the other, while I measured 0 Ohms along each wire (yes. across the crimp connection too, which is "usually" the problem). So there must be a fracture inside the heating element. That's a bummer! Now I can't print anymore... While removing the heating element, I noticed it's set screw was tightened very strongly, so I assume that was the cause in combination with heating up a brittle ceramic material inside.
After a single mail to GearBest, I got sent a replacement heating element the next day already. But since shipping from China can take 3 days or 6 weeks - or anything in between - I decided to also buy one from a local store which had them on stock, and was along a route that I was going to drive anyway.

So there goes attempt number three...


Succes! Wow! I had not expected the surface quality of those straight surfaces to be this good, straight out-of-the-box, and with all default settings in the firmware, and the slicer (I used Cura 3.1.0).
What immediately shows is that 45 degree overhangs are a little too much for this printer as it comes. Without active part cooling, that was more or less to be expected. So I will have to print myself a fan duct, and buy the appropriate fan to go with that duct, of course. But that requres some true-dimension printing, so I will have to get the dimensions right first.
Dimensions were close, but far enough off to dial in a different number for X-, and Y-steps. Z was exactly on par, and I had not yet calibrated the extruder, so I had no number for that yet.
So that was the next thing to do: heat up the nozzle, retract filament like crazy (at least 150mm), measure off and mark 120mm of filament from the base (entrance) of the extruder, and tell the extruder to extrude 100mm. The remaining length was a little under 20mm, so the extruder had extruded a little over 100mm. I don't remember the exact numbers anymore as I am writing this, but at least I now have three numbers to calculate X-, Y-, and E- corrections from.
With those corrections entered, it was time to print Cali Cat #2"
Bang! spot on dimensions! :) And a little less sag at the underside of the tail, and at the whiskers. But still it's there, so cooling is a necessity for this part to be printed well.

Time to try something small, that is dimension critical. Well, I still need some LEGO blocks as the under carriage of my LEGO Drone. So a double-high LEGO brick it was!





And: It fits! :)
How great is this, to design something, and see it grow in front of you, layer by layer, and then have a fully functional part in your hands!


From here on, my printing adventure starts!. I have already printed a spool holder, and a Holidays card. And I have the fan duct planned, as well as brackets to fix the printer to the table. I also want to flash the firmware with the latest Jim Brown version (which ahs a lot more options, some of which I already feel a need for - like storing parameters in EEPROM), but that's all for a next post. This one is long enough as it is! ;)

Here's a video that will give an impression of my build.


It took me about 10 hours from opening the box to printing the second cali-cat. That was spread out over approximately one week, in two- to three hour stints.

If you would like to start your own build of the Tevo Tarantula, here's some more tips:
You will need some small items you can probably find in your local hardware store, though. A bag of 100 washers, both M3, and M4, won't set you back much, but will be needed (50 will probably do too, if that's the standard qty in your store). I would put a washer under every bolt where it touches acrilic, especially on those that need to be tightened strongly, and those that cover slotted holes. Other than that, everything that is absolute minimum is in the package already, including some Allen keys, a screwdriver, and a wrench for the excentric nuts.
Also, a fan for part cooling is needed in the end, so you might as well order one along with the printer. You can print the duct without cooling; if it turns out slightly ugly, you can then print one again, with the "ugly" duct installed, and replace the ugly one with the one you just printed.
Also advisable: IKEA's "Lack" table, 55x55cm. Costs near to nothing (I paid €6 a piece), and the printer fits nicely on top. If you buy two, like I have, you can print connectors for the two tables, and put them on top of each other with the printer in between. That way, it will be easy to create a complete enclosure, which will not only look neat, but will also be necessary eventually, when you'll want to print materials like ABS.
Furthermore, I "invested" in a new, sharp spatula to get the parts off the bed. Bed adhesion is much stronger than I anticipated, and using a small potato knife to get Cali-Cat #1 off the deck only resuted in some deformed feet for the cat. Poor animal! It's good to have a good, sharp, new one, which makes life so much easier.
Some solvant, I used acetone, and later a mix of alcohol and MethylenEthylenKetone (MEK), is also very advisable to have around, so you can degrease the bed before every print. It will make sure no plastic residue is left on the plate, and that the plate is degreased properly. Which, in turn, promotes bed adhesion.



Conclusion
Although there are some remarks to be made on the quality of some parts, and the assembly manual, my overall conclusion is that it is a printer well worth buying, if you are the "tinkering" kind, like I am. Espacially because of the almost rediculously low price point, and the print quality you can get from it out-of-the-box.
If you are not the tinkering kind, you might want to spend some more money on an almost pre-assembled one, like the Tevo Tornado (which also has a bigger bed size, and can print taller objects)


If you would like to own your own Tarantula too, here's the link:

Gearbest Tevo Tarantula 3D Printer Kit  -  EU PLUG  BLACK

If you are interested in buying from China with discounts even beyond Flash Sale prices, please check out my facebook page NoHurries, like, and follow. You can get coupon codes that you won't find anywhere else, there! And every now and then, we give away some nice prizes to our followers :)

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