Geoff's Mini Kossel Adventure

[Geoff]

Hai!

**Edit now that it is finished and working... I have to say, this is the quickest, easiest printer to build.

2 days build time - taking it slowly, I could do it in half a day now after building one. Calibration took about a day of tweaking, another day of just adjusting and tightnening things, belts etc, getting all the little artifacts out of the prints, and yeah.. about 3-4 days total buld to print time and it was my first one. The prusa took me days to build, ordering more parts, printing more crap... and it was about a 2 week process of getting it right, and still, the delta prints are AWESOME!!!

This is hands down the best machine I have used for 0.1mm prints... it is flawless, zero wobble and backlash, even if your print comes unstuck from the bed, there is so little backlash the thing doesnt move!! not joking, my hats off to you Mr Kossel, you design a magnificent printer.

Well, I thought I would have a crack at building a mini Kossel, mainly for the small footprint they have, which is only about 30cm wide, fits neatly on my desk

I started my journey by buying one of Blomkers kits, and while all his parts were great, the plastic frame parts he sent were unusable.

The picture below is the reason I not only decided to print my own parts, but also because ABS in my simplistic brain is far more durable, stronger and overall more feasible to use when building a printer.

"OH BUT PLA IS FINE!!!"

Ok ok calm down, I didn't mean to offend you PLA fanboys, but let's face it - it does degrade over time, no one can deny that. ABS does not degrade.

This is the Orange 'Blomker Industries" PLA parts I was sent, they all have the same warped split quality. If I didn't have my own printer and ability to make my own parts, I would have been very angry.



I don't think I need to point out the issues with these parts. The main one, the Openbeam 240mm V-slots DID NOT fit in the holes, they were so far out I had to drill new ones, and then the structure was so weak,
they split like when it was all put together..

So using my flashforge in 1 day, i pumped out all my kossel parts AND prusa parts, the flashforge was glowing red hot by night time... 20 hours straight printing.

YES ITS A MESS!
The prusa build is my "Tinker' machine... I plan on it never being finished and upgrading it constantly. haha



Base was relatively easy, now onto the rest




Gizmo the cat, photobombing...




And we are almost there, there is more done than this photo, but still messy, am doing the final wiring hookup tonight and then the auto level probe..

of all the things I didn't have in my house, a safety pin... I can't believe I didn't have a safety pin lol... so yeah tonight is test night