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

[uncle_bob]

Hi

One other subtle point:

Some printers have heated beds, some do not. On a heated bed printer, the properly heated area is what sets the size of the build platform. On a printer with an unheated bed, the size is a bit more arbitrary. Comparing a heated bed to an unheated bed may leave out the "what if I don't heat the heated bed printer?" option. In the case of the printer in front of me, the bed would go from 12x 12 to roughly 13.5 x 13.5. I feel that having a heated bed is a needed thing on a printer. Some manufacturers don't seem to agree.

The same issues that make a Delta print a cone, also mean that it actually prints something other than a circle at the base. It is possible to have an odd looking print area on a Delta and get a bit more "area". The obvious question is how useful that area is.

Bob

[DarkAlchemist]

Hi

One other subtle point:

Some printers have heated beds, some do not. On a heated bed printer, the properly heated area is what sets the size of the build platform. On a printer with an unheated bed, the size is a bit more arbitrary. Comparing a heated bed to an unheated bed may leave out the "what if I don't heat the heated bed printer?" option. In the case of the printer in front of me, the bed would go from 12x 12 to roughly 13.5 x 13.5. I feel that having a heated bed is a needed thing on a printer. Some manufacturers don't seem to agree.

The same issues that make a Delta print a cone, also mean that it actually prints something other than a circle at the base. It is possible to have an odd looking print area on a Delta and get a bit more "area". The obvious question is how useful that area is.

Bob

Very true and Delta printers don't do straight lines all that well since it is having to interpolate what a straight line is, unlike a Cartesian printer. You can see this on the prints with long walls as it has a sort of moire pattern to it due to that.

[uncle_bob]

Hi

Delta's drive with threaded rods. X/Y's often have belts for at least one axis. There is a lot of debate about the accuracy of belts vs rods. Delta's have some really tricky bearings right at the effector and some non-trivial bearings back at the rods. All of the bearing stuff needs to be very consistent and fully modeled in the driver software.Net result is that it is a bit harder to get a real Delta to be accurate than an X/Y.

If you like playing with things, you will likely get into dropping modifications onto your printer. Most of the action is at the print head. On a Delta, the part that carries the print head is designed to be very small and light. That limits your ability to add things like auto bed leveling, print cooling fans, and second extruders to a Delta. You *can* design a Delta with a nice big carrier, but you slow things down a bit. If your delta has 2 meter drive rods ... that may not be a major drawback.

There are at least three major filament families these days. Two of them are not really happy printing on a un-heated bed. At the price point you are looking at, simply cross off any printer that does not have a heated bed. You *can* afford to get one, so don't scrimp in that area.

I realize this isn't helping much at all in your quest to pick between two Delta printers ...

Bob