Recommendation Needed: Small Footprint, Large Capacity, under $1k?

[DarkAlchemist]

never used a delta, like watching them. One thing nobody else has mentioned is that deltas are pretty much all bowden printers.
So flexible filaments are always going to struggle - it's a long way to push a flexible filament and still expect precise amounts to be extruded at the other end.

So bear that in mind.

There is hope about the Bowden as Lin Engineering has made some Nema 14 and 17 motors with enough torque to extrude with a 3:1 gear AND is only about 12mm deep.

[curious aardvark]

the other option I really like is flex3drive: http://mutley3d.com/Flex3Drive/

I'm surprised that you aren't seeing the manufacturers using this type setup on all bowden setups. Gives you the best of both worlds. Lightness of a bowden extruder and the control of a direct drive.

[uncle_bob]

the other option I really like is flex3drive: http://mutley3d.com/Flex3Drive/

I'm surprised that you aren't seeing the manufacturers using this type setup on all bowden setups. Gives you the best of both worlds. Lightness of a bowden extruder and the control of a direct drive.

Hi

That is sort of a subtle gotcha with some of these kits. They seem to go into hibernation design wise for quite a while. They sell the "same old design" until something happens (sales drop off, they get bored, people on forums yell at them). Once they wake up, they do this and that to upgrade the design.

Bob

[DarkAlchemist]

the other option I really like is flex3drive: http://mutley3d.com/Flex3Drive/

I'm surprised that you aren't seeing the manufacturers using this type setup on all bowden setups. Gives you the best of both worlds. Lightness of a bowden extruder and the control of a direct drive.

Flex3Drive has been out for a long time now (long in the electronics world) and over on the RepRap forums they had a discussion about it and it is not without issues. From what I gathered it is better to just go with a Bowden due to the cabling and some other things. Been a while since I read that thread, or even heard of this product being mentioned, so go grab a look over on the RepRap forums to see what is good, and bad, with its design.

[dungdn93]

There are lots of options and some printers do not handle all of them, If you like playing with things, you will likely get into dropping modifications onto your printer. A printer that only handles PLA may be fine if PLA is all you want to work with. If you have your heart set on printing Nylon, a different printer might be called for.