Introducing the RailCore Mini.
It’s been known in the RailCore Facebook & Discord groups for months now that the RailCore mini is in the works. Steve White shrunk a RailCore down in Fusion, working with Wade at Mandala Roseworks to manufacture the parts for it. Now that the design is mostly finalized, it’s time for me to build one. Steve’s sent me the parts, and I’ve started my build.
The RailCore mini is fairly similar in design to the RailCore II. Many of the parts are interchangeable between the two. The most notable difference is the Z axis on the mini uses smooth rods instead of linear rails. (Though the parts are interchangeable, you could swap the Z tower designs between the RailCore II and a mini if you wished). The build volume for a mini is 150mm^3. Outside dimensions of the printer are 300x300x400. Part of the design change that allowed that is adding a cross extrusion at the top of the Z towers, so the hotend doesn’t run into the leads or towers.
For electronics the Mini will use the soon to be released Duet Mini, which is currently in Beta. It will run RRF 3 and have the full independent Z tramming the RailCore is known for.
Once the design is finalized, an open source BOM and full build and configuration documentation will be made available on our github site at http://railcore.org There is also vendor interest in providing kits of the Mini, more on that will be announced later.
I did a Live stream of my first day of building. I hit a few minor snags around the components, and unfortunately the build will be delayed while I wait on leadscrews (I only received two out of the 3 needed from our initial supplier, which puts the build on hold until I have the correct amount to complete the Z axis)
You can view the Live Stream here. Sample Photos below are from Steve’s Mini he’s been testing.
