AutoShield – Automated Bed Removal Face Shield

Inspired by Prusa, 3DVerkstan, and MakeAnything, the AutoShield is designed to print faster and support automated bed removal for continuous printing at about 30 minutes per print. It uses a US standard 3-hole punch with 1″ offset holes that are compatible with Prusa and 3DVerkstan bands.

Of course we’re biased, but we also think it’s the prettiest.

Timelapse of the part removal: https://youtu.be/UQWTNyh6ZjY

More on why we made it: https://youtu.be/gVObd0i1pr8

The stl can be printed on any machine, but gcode needs to be created to work with anything other than Prusa. Gcode to print 16 bands on Prusa MK3S is available at github: https://github.com/LivingTesla/autoshield

The band is designed for the draft profile, vase mode, with 0.8mm external perimeters. We’re using 0.4mm nozzles, but 0.6 or 0.8mm would work great as well and could offer additional speed improvements.

Use automatic bed removal with CAUTION. The extruder is not designed to be used as a battering ram, but that’s exactly what we’re doing! Be prepared to stop the print and for the extruder fan or fan mount to break over time. Some combinations of print beds, filaments, and z-heights may need tweaking of the printer and/or gcode. This is working on our printers, but YMMV!

To perform the automated bed removal, it works best if the part is placed at the front right corner of the bed. From there, we edited the start and end gcode to print the purge line on the Y axis and to cool the bed to 40C prior to pushing the band off. To reduce cooling time, the extruder moves to the center of the band and turns on the part cooling fan to accelerate cool down.

For continuous printing, we duplicated the gcode for one part and manually adjusted the placement of the purge line in the X direction by 1mm for each subsequent print.

To reduce print time further, we added instructions to change the print speed multiplier to 150% when vase mode starts and to start reducing the bed temperature to 60C at 12mm z-height.

Remixes and gcode improvements are needed and encouraged! Let’s work on it at github: https://github.com/LivingTesla/autoshield