Using H-bot in design and fabrication of a three-dimensional printer

Abstract

A structure transmission of X, Y, Z axes of CNC machine in general and 3D printer in particular is one of the important factors affect the machining speed and the precision of machines. At present, most of commercial cheap 3D printers use popular structure transmission where each axis is transmited by an independent motor and a transmission such as lead-screw, belt, chain… A disadvantage of this structure is the inertial force of the transmission. If an axis (eg. X) carries another axis (eg. Y) includes their motor the inertial force will bigger because of increasing of mass. Furthermore, the motor need to be more powerful. To over the disadvantage of the popular structure transmission, this article presents a dynamic analysis of H-bot structure and then proposes to use it in design and fabrication of a 3D printer. The results show that using H-bot, suppose for X, Y axes, not only simplify the structure transmission of X and Y axes but also can increase the machining speed significantly. In other word, using H-bot allows us to reduce the machining time of 3D printer.