Croxy is a Crossed Gantry 3D Printer. Pronounced "Crock-see".
Designed and built by Wes Cherry (Ocho Camino, [email protected])
CroXY is a fully enclosed 3D Quadrap printer with a crossed linear rail gantry design, direct drive extruder and a kinematically mounted bed that moves in Z with three ball screws.
It is simple to build, align and provision. It uses a minimum of printed parts, many of which will be easily machinable out of aluminum. Print quality is superb.
It is a ground up design, loosely based on concepts from the Annex Engineering K2 and the Hypercube Overkill Project.
This is an BETA release. The printer has been assembled and is printing with excellent print quality for three weeks now. No significant changes have been made to the printer in that time.
- 3030 and 3060 frame members for stiffness and ease of assembly
- Crossed rail gantry design with 4 motors driving 9mm or 12mm XY belts
- Triple SFU1204 ball screw driven Z for automatic bed levelling
- Linear Rails are all MGN12H
- Fully Enclosed, with option for 20mm of insulation. Printer functions fully without panels for materials that do not require insulation.
- Bed is 6mm Mic6 and is kinematically mounted with Kelvin kinematic joints preloaded by magnets. Thicker beds are possible.
- Hemera Direct Drive E3D extruder toolhead
- Magnetically coupled switch based probe picked up from a dock for super accurate bed probing. Repeatibility of 0.005mm.
- Dedicated area for nozzle purge and wipe.
- Z Towers are built on a single 3060 extrusion making ball screw and rail alignment extremely simple.
- Duet2 or Duet3 electronics with Reprap firmware 2 or 3. Klipper support is planned
- Built in optional drawer for tools and or a spool that feeds the extruder.
- Feet with sorbothane vibration isolation.
- Footprint comparable to other printers of same bed size.
- Design is for 250x250x250 nominal size. Up to 350x350x500 should be easy.
- MGN15 Gantry mod in development will enable build sizes up to 500x500x500.
- Minimal printed parts. Most are designed to be easily machinable by aluminum for even more stiffness. Aluminum Z lifters are already designed. Aluminum toolhead, XY motor base plates and XY carriages are also in development.
- Belts are shorter and have simple paths, alignment is easier and less ringing
- Less friction in motion system makes for more accurate positioning making for exceptional layer stacking.
- 4 motors moving the XY gantry make for more torque for more accurate positioning (1.4x-4x more torque)
- Motion is simple X motors move X, Y motors move Y, so troubleshooting is easier
- Requires 3 more rails and 2 more steppers/drivers than a CoreXY.
- Visibility of the build area is lessened. Though the printhead has been designed with nozzle visibility in mind.
- Toolchanging is more difficult, but it is possible.
- Hemera toolhead is relatively heavy at 500g. The benefits of direct drive extrusion vs bowden make it worth it. CroXY's crossed rail design allows it to carry a heavier toolhead than other single rail gantry printers.
- Cost. It's not a cheap build, but it is still within the price range of similar cube design printers.
- Finish lid and enclosure, including front hinges
- External insulated enclosure
- Exhaust Fan and control
- Some trim pieces
- Wiring diagram
A CroXY build will cost approx $1500 with budget rails. A first class build with Misumi rails will run around $2500. An incomplete BOM can be found here BOM Panels have not been specced or priced yet. That is the biggest missing piece from the BOM.
The current Fusion 360 CAD Files. CroXY is still in development and not everything is 100% complete.
Video of CroXY bed probiing and automatic bed levelling
Older pic of CroXY
XY Gantry
Toolhead
Toolhead
Z and Bed
Z Lifter with Maxwell Joint
Crocodile Z lifters are optional!