Heaven help me - I've just bought a delta kit :-)

pc psu's - got a few - even a mini-itx one from an itx case that's now on my sisters desk in canada :-)
Cost me £50 to get her a 120volt one - same psu would have been £15 over here.
Watching alexa print this overhang is pretty amazing.

Oh yeah when I'm wearing the helmet this is pretty much exactly what I'll look like - though I'm more a quarterstaff and axe man than swords.

Don't have the costume but I do have the big ginger beard :-)>

Might have to paint my pla viking axe as well lol (it's what i use to knock prints off the printbite when i can't be arsed to let it cool down)
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-CaAFyeHM20...Horrible+1.jpg

wow 6mm aluminium bed !
why ? That's massive overkill, plus would take all damn day to heat up.
3mm should be fine, 4 at a push, what am i missing ?

Plus if I'm using a pc psu for the bed, why not use it for the board as well.
Easy enough to use a 500watt.

Also why 1.8m vertical struts ? Current struts are 680mm. so to extend print height to 600mm I would only need 980mm verticals - you'd use 1metre lengths, just to save messing about chopping little bits off. If you go any taller you'll need to switch to 3mm filament and life's too short to have to buy two different filament thicknesses.

You're talking about a 1.5 metre build height. That wouldn't even fit in my workshop, unless I left it on the floor lol

The struts I'd have to buy, but any plate would be free.
These guys are clients of mine - and I like to keep the favour ratio in my favour :-)
http://www.jskaluminium.co.uk/engineering.html

Thinking about it, pretty much the only thing you can't buy off the shelf or easily make are the corner pieces. I love the multi use design of those.

But I guess it would be simple enough to design something much easier to print.

Wonder what it would cost to do it completely from scratch.

The arms are only aluminium rods in sockets. So might be able to get them free as well.

lol yeah but can you get it off again ?

That's the real beauty of printbite, not only does stuff stick to it - but it comes off without any hassle as well.
And as I've had prints richochet around the room in the past - getting it to stick is not as important as being able to get it off afterwards.

Getting struts cut to size - not a problem I've got a bandsaw, but in reality I'd just pop round to jsk and get them to do it :-)

At the moment if I'm going to build from scratch I'll probably have a go at the inverted delta first.
That looks like fun :-)

Helmets looking good. Although at thye moment looks like a standard bmx helmet. Guess the last 3 bits make the difference.
And the painting.

Spotted need for another mod.
The carriage wire bundle really needs to be held either up or out a lot more on larger prints.
The second set of helmet quarters are the other way round, and i can see the cable catching it at later points in the print.

The cable really needs to go almost straight up with a flexible rod to hold it away from any prints.
At the same time you've only got a few cm if it's at the edge of the plate and near a strut or belt.
Hmm, I'll have a think :-)

Attachment 10770

That's the easy bit done :-)
had the annual visit with my accountant yesterday. she has way more good ideas than I do.
So she reckons find someone who already does craft shows and fairs and let them sell widgert and things for you.
So that's one thing I'm going to try.

You're missing the point of printbite. You don't have to bugger about bending the plate. once it's cooled down - the print is no longer stuck, at all. Tpu sticks to pretty much anything and just peels off - so that's probably the worst test you could possibly do.
If they can show me printed polycarbonate sticking to something and then easily releasing - that I'd be impressed with.

So plans for the helmet.
File the joins as flat as possible, glue. Then run round the seams with the printing pen and sand flat. Should give a reasonably seamless finish. Currently about to print a couple mini helmets to play with.

here's the 2 small ones:
Attachment 10771

Attachment 10772

Given that they were knocked out at 150mm/s and 0.3. Not bad. The inside at the top is pretty good.

The quarters at the apex were actually building out on the horizontal. Bloody impressive.

Need to get some silver/metallic paint now :-)

where'd you get the bearings ?

And have you got pictures :-)

So I'm thinking what is the actual physical speed limit of the printer ?

If she can do 150mm/s at 0.3mm - she should be able to do 200mm/s at 0.2mm layer height. Same volume of plastic right.
Or will that make her explode !

How fast can the stepper motors turn ?

I think it's something to do with inverting the y axis.
It used to be fine, just printed what showed in the preview. then when I installed version3 it started showing text reversed in the preview but printing it fine.
But with the delta it doesn't seem to matter what shows in the preview it always prints it reversed. Which is bloody weird.

Sod it going to give it a go :-) Also test if text is right way round yet.
right here goes super speed !

***

well that works, still got text issues. doing it again with no inverted y. test looks mirrored on preview, so might print right way round.

The fine detail isn't brilliant - but i reckon it would be good enough for that marble run - if I can ever slice it lol

how'd you get 3 colours ?

Looks neat.

I'll try the visualisation thing :-)

200mm/s is pushing it a bit - kinda loses the edges a bit.
I'll stick to 150 I think. :-)

***

yep that works - looks like crap, but doesn't crash.

layer height 0.25 and 20% infill gets it down to exactly 8 hours. 270gms
Hmm, dunno if I've actually aroll with that left. I will see.

weird.
Cheers - good call :-)

***

found a full roll of blue ingeo pla. The good stuff !
This could end up being the biggest plate of spaghetti I've made to date, lol

Holy crap it's 1.68 MILLION lines of g-code !
45mb text file. average novel is around 0.3mb

Wow.

Hmm, I think alexa is having problems counting up to 1.68 million.
Just locked up.

we'll have another go.
Ah that's better, think it was s3d disconnecting that locked her up.
here we go :-)

I was playing with printed bearings a short while back. Got it down to about 1.5 cm. Didn't work.

I reckon you could go down to about an inch and get it to work.
Nozzle thickness not as much of an issue as getting the gap between gears right.

Worth a play when I've done the marble run :-)

Easily the single largest print I've ever done, as well as the most complex.
1.68 MILLION instructions - I'm not getting over that in a hurry lol

nope, what actually happened was that she stopped about an inch or so into the job.
No jams, not a power cut, just stopped. All settings were fine when i went in yesterday morning, still heated, just waiting for the next instruction.

I have been using the dirt cheap sd card that came with the printer. So presuming somewhere in the 1.68million lines of gcode, it got corrupted.
Got a few brand new 4gb sd-cards lying around, I'll try again tonight with a new card.

And the marble run will definitely print at 0.3 layer height. The bit that was done was at 0.25. No issues at all bar some stringing. So a furtle with the retraction settings, drop speed down to 120 and up layer thickness to 0.3.
It'll probably need some blowtorching - to kill the cobwebs :-)

Might have a go at painting a helmet to day.
Though if my cases arrive, I have got a couple of base units to build for actual paying customers.

Time lapse wise - remembered I got a better webcam with the ciclops 'scanner' (yeah right) so I'll dig that out of the box and find somewhere permament to attach it. Also need to source the professional version of the software.

yeah I was thinking that. Plus proved that you don't need to print it on silly resolution settings.
Attachment 10776

Just unticked: 'only retract on travel'. Should get rid of a lot of the thicker stringing.

Under tools, options, machines. the y axis box is ticked for flip table axis.
There are four combinations of this as you can have it on and off both from the tool/options/machine AND from the gcode page in the printer profile.

I have tried all four combinations - and none of them worked.
When i first got simplify 3d what i saw on the preview screen was what printed. Then when I upgraded to version 3, the text on the screen showed mirror reversed but the text printed normally. So that wasn't an issue.

But with the delta, it doesn't matter whether the preview shows normal or reversed text it just prints reversed.
I've got a vague feeling that playing with the 'x' axis inversion is what sorted the printed text.

No cases yet so I'll have another play with the settings.

well sometimes the gods smile on you.
Cases just arrived and after unticking both y axis - text both displays and prints normally.

But when you go into tool-options it says I'm using a non-right handed coordinate system.
weirdos.
I'm more than happy with widdershins if it works :-)

yeah, that is ticked - otherwise it gets confused between which orinter you're using. Or something like that. That's always been ticked, as far as i can remember.

So basically what obviously happened was when it updated to version 3 - it automatically ticked the invert y axis box. Seems a bit bizarre to me.

But working now anyway :-)

Right off to build a system.

Surely you need 6 tubes.
how much more expensive are carbon rods over aluminium. I've got no issues with the aluminium rods.
And how about magnetic sockets and bearings ?

not yet. Keep forgetting to bring a new sd card into the workshop.

The mirrored weirdness continues. Printed a couple of those plastic strut nuts. Thought this is odd they are the wrong way round.
Had look at thingiverse page, had look at s3d preview. s3d has reversed the y axis.
I mirror the mesh they look right.
They printed brilliantly and i've got a bag of m3 nuts.:-)
Tell you what that filament that came with the printer is really really good stuff.
Might buy a bulk batch from reprapmall.
Think if you buy 8 rolls it's free postage. Plus they've got the good metallic stuff as well. The aluminium one is just like metal.
Nah no free postage :-(

So I can have mirrored prints with text, or non-mirrored prints but with mirrored text.
is that in any way logical ?

Ah the strutnuts print fine , but are too thick too fit in the struts and turn to lock.

It's something to do with version 3. before that I had no problems. And it's not just on the delta either.
The flashforge shows reversed text but prints fine.

Yeah the nuts need to be about 1mm thinner to actually turn in the channel.
Other than that, they look great and are certainly strong enough to hold most things. Printed at 0.2. 3 minutes per - saves 20p per knut :-)
Damn fine idea.

I loaded up the basket at reprapmall with about $100 worth of filament, but wanted another $74 for postage. Which begs the question how the hell do they offer free postage on the printers ?

that's clever. so normal flat rare earth magnets on the base of the carriege and normal non-magnetic ball bearings on the top.
Very neat !
I think the ones I've seen have been spherical magnets - which obviousuly would cost more.

I like that balloon - so how do you do the change filament thing - via the printers control panel or through simplify3d ?
Something i've never done.

Saw those cable clips. Looked quite good.

I wonder if part of the size issue is that those things are designed for abs. I only ever design for pla, and dimensions are either pretty close or slightly smaller than I designed. As these are generally too large - could simply be that they've already factored in the abs shrinkage.

for the magnets, why not set them in the actual hole itself so the ball contacts it directly. Just cut a slot so the magnet pushes in from the side.
It'll give the same amount of movement but with a much stronger attachment.

Think I'll have a play with the laser tonight. See if i can't set fire to the workshop or blow something up :-)

Nah going to check voltage on the laser socket and use that.
The gcode specific to repetier switches it on and off. So I want to try both.

measured the strutnuts and they're designed too large.
I'm slightly smaller (few huindreths of a mm) in all directions - which is what I've always found. So it's the design that's wrong.

Got an idea to try for a sort of 'supercharger' nozzle as well

what do you model with ?
software I mean :-)

And worth a look at how tevo do that suspended extruder trick on the little monster. You can get some pretty lightweight stepper motors that would be fine for the job.

It's suspended by gt2 timing belt that attaches to the carriages, so just moves with the hotend - would be a simple adaption. Trying to find the assembly manual in pdf.
But can't see any problems in duplicating it. Genius idea !
Attachment 10797

Attachment 10798

build height is only limited by the amount of wire you have and the length of the struts :-)
Really bloody clever.
Looks like they're just using standard nema 17's for everything.
Pics from here: https://www.tevousa.com/products/tev...3d-printer-kit

well they claim 150mm/s print speed for the little devil. And none of the reviews I saw and read mentioned it as a problem.
It's not actually attached to the 'effector' and the carriages are held steady by the belts and motors. So even if the extruder wobbles, it can't effect the print.
It's damn clever I tell ya !

the magentic setup is brilliant !
Plus it also has the added bonus of keeping the drive belts locked in.
About the only thing that concerns me is if a belt works it's way out of the grooves, and you've sorted that. Mind you mine are that tight, it's unlikely.

here's a dinky little motor that would do the job for suspended extruder :-)
https://www.amazon.co.uk/sourcingmap...+stepper+motor
And if you print the parts for the extruder instead of the solid metal ones, they'd still work fine but be a lot lighter.
It's a great little extruder, don't think you'll get one much simpler.

I'll have to set the endstop z-probe up at some point - still levelling by instinct, using the Force - as it were :-)

It works, but it'd be nice to do it mechanically lol

Probably work up a clip on/off holder for the switch. Nozzle won't be heated, so no reason can't use the throat to clip onto.

Love the magnetic arms - has it made any difference - either better or worse to print quality ?

So thinking back - about the only things we've not covered are the corner joining parts and the actual wheeled carriages themselves. Other than that I think we can now build a delta printer of humoungous size, from scratch with almost no size restrictions.
Hot diggity :-)
I just need a spare month or three to get it done :-)

So let's assume we build a delta with a 1 metre print height and say 350mm heated build plate - could go bigger but then you've got all day to wait for it to warm up.
We'll resize and print the strutnuts. The ones I've done are pretty tough and i can use pet-g if necessary.
I'll do some field trials when i get the time.

So printed parts, looking at:
9 corner pieces,
effector
3 vertical roller carriages
3 magnetic arm addons
filament holders, extruder parts, fan duct, various little stuff

Non printed

2020 strut for verticals and diagonals
heat pad for aluminium bed (aluminium, just because I can get that free)
springs and bolts for bed - I like the suspended setup.
15-20 metre roll of belt
3 nema 17s + metal gear cog thingies
1 nema 14
4x endstops - might as well keep the z-probe as one, cheaper and works.
Motherboard: I'd like to use the same board as the he3d 200, just like the design - but is there cheaper and better ? I have no clue on this.
500 watt pc psu - cheap as chips and easy to hotwire - plus has on off switch.
And mount all the crap on the top rather than at the bottom. makes more sense, gives better access and you can always put a dalek head over it if you wanted to :-)
hotend - be nice to have one that runs up to 300c but a bog standard 260 e3d would be fine too.
Top plate - I can probably get an aluminium one cut to size and shape while they do my plate. Either that or 5mm plywood painted black. That would make mounting stuff as simply as using self tapping woodscrews of which I have an abundance :-)

What did I forget ?

got sidetracked by work.
Looks like the motherboard connector kicks out 7 volts.
My mini-engraver machine is 5 volts as it's powered by usb ports.

So figured I'd look around and see if there were any cheap 500 or 1000mw 3 pin lasers on the chinese vendor sites.
plus why i have the gcode to switch the printer to non-printer mode. Can't figure the code to turn it back to printer mode.
Not a big issue i can just turn the printer off and on again. Just be more elegant to do it in the gcode.

If I find a 3 pin connector I'll maybe plug it in, but I'd prefer one that was already setup for the board.

Oh yeah was thinking about the arms. How well are the balls attached to the shafts ?
If just glue they could easiyl work loose over time. So was thinking why not print a piece that captures the ball with a shaft that glues into the end of the carbon tube for a much more secure connection.
this kind of thing:
Attachment 10804
Attachment 10805

lol yeah I've spent some time scouring the net as well.
Only thing I can figure is that he3d have them custom made or they are so new nobody else has seen them yet.
And looking around, I can't see anything that covers everything you need as neatly in a single compact board. I've seen a few thousand motherbaords over the years and the layout and design on the k200 is really good. Easy to wire, properly labelled and seems pretty reliable.
It's not a ramps 1.4 and there's nothing anywhere about a ramps plus board.
or a ramps 1.8 - which is what it seems to be.

None of the boards they sell on reprapmall are the same. It's pretty weird.
It's like they mated a mega 2560 with a ramps and this board is the mutant offspring.
But it's a single piece and everything else I've seen is the two boards stuck together like lego.

From what i found out, laser wise last night (and bear with me electrickery is not my thing) the right hand pin is red and the other two are both black. So connecting the red probe from my multimeter to the right pin, either of the other two give me 7 volts positive with the black (I can never remember which is + and which is -).
So i was just thinking attach my red wire from the laser to right and black to left and leave the middle one alone.

I'll pull a 3 pin connector from one of the dead pcs in the workshop.

Oh yeah and you only need 6 corner pieces as stepper motors sit on top.
PLus use either plywood or aluminium for a twin top and bottom plates. which will help stabilise everything.
And all the corner pieces have to do is hold the belt pulleys and attach to 2020 struts.
So nothing tricky to print.

found it !
they've got it listed under mainboard for the tricolor i3.
http://www.reprapmall.com/index.php?...product_id=175
$100 !
https://ae01.alicdn.com/kf/HTB15flmO...8dee1b3629e798
So if that's $100 by itself - how the hell are they making ANY money on the delta kit ?

lol - yeah the dimensional accuracy is pretty cool on vertical cylinders.
But would you trust them in serious use ? Nope.

Those boards look pretty good. Not exactly the same but pretty close and cheap as chips too :-)
Oh yeah:
Attachment 10806

roughly glued, needs tidying a fair bit of work. But it's definitely me, lol

And I have no clue what the mystery part is.

right update for the list of parts:

So printed parts, looking at:
6corner pieces,
effector
3 vertical roller carriages
3 magnetic arm addons for roller carriages - unless you can do an all in one desig that incorporaes cable locking as well as magnetic arms.
filament holders, extruder parts, feet, fan duct, various little stuff
flying gantry for suspended extruder
Stepper motor 'cages'.

Non printed

top and bottom - 10mm plywood for rigidity and ease of attaching stuff to. I could go aluminium, but so much easier to screw stuff to plywood than bolt it to aluminium.

2020 strut for verticals and diagonals
heat pad for aluminium bed (aluminium, just because I can get that free)
Short length of tubing for extruder.
springs and bolts for bed - I like the suspended setup - easy to adjust and level.
10 metre roll of gt2 belt - 3 x 2.2(ish) metre and three little bits for suspended extruder
3 nema 17s + metal gear cog thingies. 3 for motors and 3 for lower belt support.
1 nema 14 + hobbed bolt and groove roller thingy.
4x endstops - might as well keep the z-probe as one, cheaper and works.
Motherboard: Probably MKS GEN of some kind.
500 watt pc psu - cheap as chips and easy to hotwire - plus has on off switch.
And mount all the crap on the top rather than at the bottom. Keeps wires short, so no extensions necessary longest wires go to extruder and hotend - and they'll be pretty much standard length anyway.
hotend - be nice to have one that runs up to 300c but a bog standard 260 e3d would be fine too.
Carbon rods for diagonal arms, plus 8mm ball bearings and magnets.
4x stepper motor controller chips + heatsinks.
Bag of strutnuts - the metal ones are pretty cheap in bulk.
3 & 4mm bolts. From my local hardware store as they have phillips heads which are way better than bloody hex head allan key jobs and come in decent sized bags of all lengths for £1 a bag.
wheel sets for roller carriages

how easy is the carbon fibre rod to cut to length ?
looks fairly cheap to buy. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-x-3k-Car...QAAOSwwE5WVTJU

And whats the equation to work out length needed (obviously minus length of end pieces).

Right go look for wheels.
best buy looks like around £1 per wheel includign bearing. Bolts extra.
The swivel to tighten thing is neat. But I dropped them down from the top anyway. so that's not actually necessary. 3mm bolt and printed insert/washer will work just as well.

So we'd be looking at 3 x 1.5(ish) metre struts
and 6 x ?

nope.
Only 1 watt.

what's wrong with printed effectors ?
You're just trying to make stuf cost more :-)

lol
bottoms up !

magnet wise I've got quite a few.
Duct wise, yep a bit more width and depth wouldn't hurt the airflow :-)
No clue if the turbo nozzles work or not. definitely no air coming out the holes, but even a small bit of tissue doesn't stick, which you assume it would if there were a vacumn being generated.

As far as hot glue guns go - I'm not a big fan. Rather use epoxy putty or uhu all purpose glue. Particularly for something as smooth as a ball bearing.
For the arms I'd probably go with the uhu glue. the magnet would hold the ball tight to the tube while the glue set, which is pretty quick.
Dunno what solvent they use but it even eats pet-g :-)

Dogs back - gotta go wield a towel :-)

what are you printing on ?
350mm printbite runs at around £40.
Your print surface seems to work just as well, presume it was cheap :-)

well the round parts, don't actually need to be round.

Make the round parts square and move the bar back, then lay it on it's back to print.
The other approach is the flatten the bottoms of the round parts slightly, move the holes up the same amount and use support under the cross bar.

Also....

The clip-on kid strikes again !
Attachment 10808
Attachment 10809

Does it matter which wire I connect to which ?
IE: one of the z probe wires is white and red and the other is just white. Both wires on the end stop are white.
Tell a lie, if you turn it over, I got a red and white and a white as well - seems obvious put like that :-)

inline with nozzle.
Attachment 10810

Now got to go look up the gcode thing for nozzle touching. I did the wires the same way round - just to be sure :-)

I'll upload to my thingiverse collection.
It's an entire 5, short lines of code in openscad :-)
At the very least we might get something out of wendy ;-)

Right lets see if this works.

Yep that works !
just 3 100ths of a millimetre between all three points.
I can live with that :-)
Much better than it was before. I knew one screw was off, but this really helped put it right.

clip unclipped. Need to make a holder for it.
Right redo z=0 and job done :-)

One of these days I'll have to try and work out how it's supposed to work.

That's enough for one day.

The springs are fine. It's the crappy one bolt connectors to the frame that let it wobble.
Should be easy enough to make a connector that mounts with two bolts so it can't move.

0.1 layer height ?

And yep, good print :-)

seems to work :-)

light for the printer - or something else ?
There is a 'light' connector on the board.

About to try some wood filament. - Works great :-)

Also it's occured to me that unless you include a touch in the centre of the build plate as well as the three outside touches - how can you calculate any kind of topography map ?
Just won't work.

Attachment 10815

Not sure about the wooden one. Maybe varnish rather than colouring the cup green.
Got a couple more printing.
Unfortunately the brown filament has been discontinued. No idea why it's my all time best filament ever.
And because it's semi-translucent, it really catches the light. Was reprapper tech ltd wood filament. The same stuff now just looks like chocolate. Completely different.
My design and not shared :-)