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

[curious aardvark]

Right had quite a good go yesterday. After mounting a stepper motor the wrong way round - twice, I called it a night.

I tell you what though - she's a big girl !
Not fat, just heavy boned ;-)

Here's the bits laid out on the table. Leaving everything in the relevant boxes till I need it.

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And here's where I stopped last night. Frame isn't actually bolted together yet, I just loosely stuck it together to see what she looked like.
That's a litre bottle of Russian standard vodka for size comparison :-) Best vodka money can buy !
Top and bottom are done. pulleys and stepper motors mounted. Just needs 9 bolts to make the frame solid. And loosening bottom of base so struts fit. See point below on not tightening every thing up too soon ;-)

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So far it's been pretty straightforward. The corner pieces are very solid injection moulded, I presume abs.
I absolutely love the way the weird shaped nuts grip the channels in the aluminium struts. Need to find somewhere to buy these from as I can see myself bolting all sorts of things to the outside of the frame in the future :-)

So far I've just been using the video guide to building. Once I get to installing the ramps board and upgraded psu (which will not, no way, no how fit inside the base) I'll start using the other videos out there. It'll have to attach to the outside somehow and I'll need to make a cover for the contact area.
There are only a few wires to connect to anything and clearly labelled on the board.

Two pieces of advice so far:
1) do not tighten the bolts when building the top and bottom frames untill you have the entire frame together. Otherwise you'll just end up having to re-loosen them every time you add something else. Yep, learn from my experience lol

2) if you have a small child around - use them. Fitting the stepper motors in particular would be much easier with really tiny hands.

Oh yeah - this only comes with an american plug. So if you don't live in the states you'll need to supply a plug and cable yourself - like me.
If you don't go for the heated bed option - I think all you'll need is a travel adaptor. I have to wire the cable directly into the psu, so I need a plug and cable.

Everything so far has been good quality and gone together with a minimum of fuss. It's all quality and heavy duty. The printed extruder carriage is interesting in that while it was printed, all the holes were clearly drilled afterwards.
Weird.
Wendy from reprapmall is going to send me the stl file so I can print a higher resolution version.

Won't have time to do anything else today, but tomorrow should have time and the weekend's clear.
I envisage the biggest issue will be the belts and sliding carriages. We'll see.

Including the printbite (which has got a lot more expensive since I bought the last sheet) and import taxes, (cost was listed at $99 - so they weren't too bad) I'm currently in for almost exactly £250:- £193 for the machine, £26 for import tax and charges for the privilege of paying it and £30 for the printbite. If I didn't already know how good it was - I doubt I'd be tempted to try it at todays prices. Personally I think they're going to price themselves out of the market if the cost continues to rise at this rate.
All In all I'm happy with the cost - assuming she actually works :-)

I did look around on amazon and ebay and an equivalent kit sourced from the uk - but with smaller (much smaller in some cases) build volumes would have cost me well over £300
With the upgraded psu and heatplate - nearer £350.

I think, the closest in build volume was 180x250.
Bear in mind the k200 is 200x300.
At 0.3mm layer height it'll take a 1000 layers to build something the full 300mm height !

Oh yeah the auto calibration 'kit', consists of a piece of wire with a plug at one end and a pressure pad at the other that fits over the extruder nozzle. That's going to be an interesting experience :-)

Right, more as it happens - but most likely over the weekend.