Project
FireFly Consortium The FireFly 3D Printer
Design and development of a custom control board for an advanced-materials FDM printer
The FireFly 3D printer is the combination of multiple disruptive technologies that address the market’s current performance bottlenecks, primarily in terms of processor and command execution bandwidth and material flowrate. Additionally, the Firefly kinematics, flow control and closed loop feedback offers extremely reliable printing and excellent layer adhesion for high quality parts. The high-powered heating chamber and quick-change toolhead allows for the full spectrum of material support from basic PLA to advanced engineering polymers. The Firefly architecture was also designed for full customization and scalability, with the existing baseline efficiently integrating all the above features at a price comparable to competitors.
Custom electronics control board with closed loop feedback capabilities
Closed loop algorithm to detect and correct skipped steps of the motion system
Closed loop algorithm to improve the extrusion quality based on extruder pressure feedback
Light-weight custom HMI interface to interact with the printer
FireFly Consortium
The Firefly Consortium is a consortium of three companies (Wrecklab, Veda, Tiamet3D) who have joined forces to create an innovative printer
Challenges & Objectives
The printer was designed to be innovative on every single aspect of the FDM printing and Wrecklab contributed to it creating a new control board (PrintHAT Pro) engineered to support and push the limits of the machine. The key aspects of our work were performance and reliability. The first was achieved by implementing an efficient power stage that could drive up to 4A RMS with minimal power losses. Moreover, we customized the printer software to use the motion controller embedded in state-of the-art stepper drivers, which enable precise closed-loop control and extremely quiet operation.
Results
The Firefly has been show-cased at Formnext 2019, where it drew a lot of attention from the general public, also thanks to the advanced control system developed by Wrecklab.
The Firefly is the compendium of years of experience of Wrecklab, Veda and Tiamet3D
Future Plans
The printer is currently being finalized for the early adopter customers
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