I found a working F170 for £1,200, supplied with spare heads and material. Then a second machine with a reported heater fault came along for £50. That brought the purchase price for the pair to £1,250, before collection and any conversion parts.
Having a working machine alongside the repair project appealed to me. It gives me something to run and compare against as I start to understand how Stratasys put these together. I haven't settled on the conversion sequence yet.
The £50 machine
I collected the repair machine on 14 October and started looking inside. The heater fault appears to be on the heater control board, which is encouraging: the heaters themselves might still be usable. I haven't confirmed that yet.
The board deserves a closer look, but so does the rest of the machine. The motors have separate motor, Hall and encoder connections. That makes keeping the original brushless motors an interesting possibility, provided I can find suitable replacement drives.
I'm still identifying the hardware. I don't yet have enough information to choose drives, and replacing the motors with steppers remains an option. At this point I'd rather understand what's there before deciding what to remove.
More room than I expected
My first look at the X travel gave me around 410 mm. There also appears to be some extra movement available if I remove the arms that operate the nozzle lift, although that would mean giving up that part of the dual-nozzle arrangement.
That immediately creates a more interesting decision than simply fitting the largest bed I can. How much space do I want, and how much of the existing head mechanism is worth keeping? The next inspection should help answer that.
