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The WhamBam Mutant from WhamBam is a new system that will give your 3D printer the ability to change your hotend on the go. Utilising various mounts, hotends and other tools such as laser cutters, pen plotters, food plungers, ceramic printers, dial gauges and just about anything you think of can be fitted in place of the hotend.
WhamBam Mutant
Development started in mid-2018. In early 2019, James Tongue joined WhamBam and co-developed the MUTANT with Peter Solomon. The WhamBam Mutant has been in beta testing for 5 months as of August 2020 and is production-ready and shipping as of January 2021.
How Mutant
Simplicity really is best when it comes to reinventing the wheel. According to WhamBam’s own site, the steps for fitting the Mutant are as below.
- Shut down and unplug the printer
- Remove your current hotend and mount an Interface Plate or swap out machine X gantry for Wham Bam Universal X Gantry Plate. (see below Mounting the WhamBam Mutant to your machine for the appropriate mount)
- Mount the MUTANT Fixed Plate to your machine using the 4 included screws.
- Remember to shut down and unplug the printer. Cut your wire harness one cable at a time and use our handy wire labels and record keeper to label wires and keep track of where they go.
- Screw wires from the printer into terminal blocks on Fixed Plate.
- Mount your hotend to the Mobile Plate and screw your wires to terminal blocks on the Mobile Plate.
And you are done! According to Whambam there is no need to change any settings or firmware. Personally, I would say that you may want to set your new Y offset in the slicer or do one of the Y fixes to get the full length out of the new system. This can be done in the slicer program, and some printers can even be modified to move the Y end stop or Y-axis rail to gain the 15mm lost. Michael from Teaching Tech has been beta testing this with WhamBam. In addition, I strongly suggest watching his video:
Mounting MUTANT to your Machine
You will need either of these:
- Download and print one of the many interface plates available. You can use WhamBam’s included heat press inserts to create the 4 threaded mounts for the Mutants Fixed Plate. They currently have plates to fit nearly every Creality and clone machines. BLV Ender 3, Geeetech A10 and A30 series. and Open Builds 3 and 4 wheel V slots, and Prusa i3 style machines.
- On the Off chance your bit of kit isn’t listed WhamBam provide the resources to create your own interface plate, use their template (pdf) or 3D files and design the hole positions needed to mount it to your machine, and again use the included heat press inserts to create the 4 threaded mounts for the Mutants Fixed Plate.
- Purchase one of our two types of Universal X Gantry Plate Kits. WhamBam offer one for standard V Slot 3 bearing wheel carriages and one for linear rail carriages.
Mounting your hotend or tool to the WhamBam Mutant platform
Print out one of the many available hotend mounts from the list below. Alternatively, create your own with our mobile plate mounting template. The list is always growing. Check out the Mutants Thingiverse collection page here.
WhamBam Mutant Where
Everything you need for the WhamBam Mutant can be sourced from Thingiverse at the link above or WhamBam’s online shop here.
Tool Changer Competition
With WhamBam firmly aimed at the home user and budgeted so, you can find E3D at the other end of the scale with its fully automated tool changing system – not yet ready for release you can find details here
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