Hey all,

Here are my models, I'm currently playing with the idea of redesigning the effector with a diiicooler for a full (mostly full due to the inductive sensor) 360 degrees of cooling. I'm getting stringing on the non active cooling sides of my print with PETG. Either way, the effector needs some love, the bolt brackets for the layer fans require a bit more reinforcement. a failed calibration broke one of them and it's now being held on with a dab of hot clue and a zip tie.

Otherwise it's printing great, I'm almost fully happy with the results. I'm going to be ordering external stepper drivers, I want to eliminate the vertical banding however minor they are with this setup. This whole build was fueled by the motivation to fix those surface defects on my Rostock. So I might as well do all I can.

All models were done in 123D Design, my modelling skills are limited

 

Hey all,

Just an update, I am running the Silencioso microstepper drivers at 1/32 steps, and all banding has been completely cleared up! I'm super excited for how clean the surfaces look on this printer. I've also updated the effector and layer fan models to reinforce the mounting point for the fans and allow the proper mounting of the inductive sensor. Update attached.

Checkout that smooth finish!

 

Finished my Delta6 and thought I would share some pictures of it. I used several modified parts for the printer.



The printer in all its glory. Just ignore the junk around it. It is powered by a Duet 0.8.5 controller and I have installed a 4.3" PanelDue display.

Some closer images of the display...



Still working on a status panel to show if the heated bed or hot end is on...



The heated bed is a 250mm Mic6 aluminum build plate with a 10" Keenovo AC heater. I made some covers to fill in the space between the bed and the towers.



The printer uses a 12v 8A power supply. Was playing around with changing filament colors when I made the enclosure for the power supply. There are two 40mm fans on the back blowing onto the power supply. I built a little power distribution panel for 12v connections. Only using 2 of the 7 outlets right now.



The heated bed is controlled by an AC SSR. I have connectors for the bed so I can easily remove it to get at the insides.



The effector is a modified version of Arondite's effector. I have an E3D V6 hot end and DC42's Mini IR Probe.



Mounted some 5mm LEDs on the effector. They are controlled by a pin on the Duet board.



The carriages...



The ring at the top was for mounting a flying extruder, but couldn't get that to work right so went with a bowden setup for now. I am using an E3D Titan extruder with a pancake motor.



Have printed a few things with it so far. First thing I printed with it was the 3DBenchy and it came out nearly perfect with out doing any tuning of the printer before hand.

 

Looks fantastic! I really like how clean your electronics are, and it looks like you planned ahead for a future flying extruder I've been considering moving towards that setup. How's the Duet? I've been using smoothie and have had a rocky experience with it, although I probably spent less going smoothie a raspi/touch screen than Duet with the paneldue haha

Do you mind sharing your files? I'd love to print out the panels you have around the heated bed.

I'm still working out some models and such, but here's mine so far

 

@Elmo Clarity - Congrats and well done! Please post details of arm length, extrusion lengths, magnet & ball sources, print area. No need for diagonals?

Everyone. Attached is work in progress alternative E3D mount. Drops onto Jerry's 1.75 compact effector. Uses M3 x 20mm screws and full nut that inserts from back.


Jerry recommended using channel lock pliers to insert the E3D, but my printed pliers just kept breaking from the amount of force required , so opted for a clamping mechanism. (pliers - Adjustable Groove-Joint Pliers by jsteuben)

 

It's really not for a "future" flying extruder. My original design had one. I just ran into too may issues with it that I switched to bowden until I can get those issues worked out.

I love my Duet. I have two right now. One on the Delta and one on my C-Bot. The C-Bot has a 7" screen. I like the 4.3" one, but might switch to a 5" later. I am thinking about modifying my Printrbot Simple Metal to use a Duet board. I originally tried the Smoothie. While the hardware was nice, the software left a lot to be desired. It has been awhile since I used the Smoothie so I'm not sure what has been done with the firmware since.

I did the panels using OpenSCAD. I'll include the file and you can modify for your needs. The file contains both the bed mounts and the caps.

 

The towers are about 700mm tall and the cross pieces are 300mm. We (a co-worker is also building one and did the cutting) took a 1 meter V-Rail and cut exactly 300mm from it and then we trimmed the tower pieces to the same height.

I got the magnet/ball/rods from Ultibot and the rods are 288.27mm long.

I have a comfortable print diameter of 240mm but can push out to 250mm if I have too.

Build plate came from Midwest Steel Supply. We cut a 300mm square to a circle about 265mm in diameter. I have a 250mm piece of PrintBite attached for the surface. The heater is a 400W 120V 10" Round Keenovo I ordered from Amazon. Check both eBay and Amazon for them as sometime one will be significantly less than the other. But both are ordered directly from Keenovo.

I haven't seen a need for diagonal supports so far, but have only started printing with it. This is my first delta so still learning the differences with this type from cartesian and core xy style. It is pretty solid so I don't think extra support will be needed.

 

awesome thanks!

Are you using auto bed leveling with the Duet? I think their algorithms might be better than smoothie, I had to deactivate the multi-point grid leveling... it was absolutely terrible. At this point I use the sensor to automatically calculate delta radius and endstop offsets (whenever I pull the bed off or replace a part), and then using a 0.1mm thickness gauge I calculate the exact distance from the sensor detecting the bed to the nozzle touching it. that way I can calculate Z0 to an exact value before every print, the gcode looks something like this: G90 G30 Z0.45

I've seen a few Duet delta videos where the auto leveling seemed to work great.

 

Since this is my first delta, I don't have any other experience on what it takes to calibrate a delta for printing. But the Duet auto-calibration is great. Takes less than a minute to run and does all the calculations and adjustment automatically. But from what I have heard others say, it is probably one of the best, if not the best, delta auto-calibrate.

 

Yeah that's what I thought, I've been kinda regretting going smoothie. My first printer was a Rostock Max V2 delta. Decent first printer but I was obsessed with having perfect calibration. Using calipers I calibrated everything by had down to +/- 0.02mm.... auto calibration is a godsend on these printers.

 

Do what I did then. Consider the money spent on the Smoothie as a learning experience and move on to the Duet. I'm hoping someone ports the Duet's firmware to the Smoothie so I can at least use my board for something other than a paper weight.

 

It's not worth the money at this point. I've made the smoothie work for me and print quality wouldn't change with the new electronics. But this is my third smoothie board and I've had issues with all of them, probably won't ever buy another one. If only I had waited a month I could have gotten the new Duet wifi with built in stepper drivers that go up to 1/128th stepping.

Edit: Between the board and the touch screen it's a 300ish investment

 

Nice use of materials 300/700! Covers will be standard issue going forward.

Thanks for the Midwest Steel Supply link. They have a 15% sale going on. Reasonable prices. Did you do anything special to cut the circle?

 

Seems Midwest Steel always has some sort of sale going on. They were the best price I found in both material and shipping.

My co-worker did the cutting. He tried the standard pivot with a bandsaw to cut circles. While that works pretty good with wood, didn't work out too well with the aluminum. He ended up using a chop-saw and cut the corners off a square until it was pretty round. If you can find someone with a CNC or access to some other type of cutter, probably would be worth it to see if they can do it for a reasonable price. Midwest said they would, for about $200. That was a bit too much.

If you are referring to the covers to close up the bottom, I am glad I did those. They really clean up the look of the printer and helps prevent debris from falling in. I always like the look of the printers that had the bed cut from a single piece of material and wanted to make something like that.

 

I ran into some issues and need to put my Delta build on hold. Is it ok to post some Delta related parts for sale here? I completely understand if not.

 

Ok so here's what I have for sale. If this is not acceptable in this thread please let me know and I'll delete:

For Sale - NEW Duet 0.8.5, NEW Haydn 400mm (Custom) arms w/balls, NEW E3D Titan Extruder

Unfortunately I ran into some financial issues and need to put my Delta project on hold and need to sell off some the parts I have gathered. At this time not looking to separate / not parting out and would like to sell as a package deal.

Asking $265 USD plus actual shipping cost for:

NEW never used Authentic Duet 0.8.5
NEW never used Authentic Haydn 400mm Custom Arms w/balls (+ 4 spare balls)
NEW never used Authentic E3D Titan Extruder w/Bowder Adapter

Asking price is well below what you would pay if purchase direct.

Thanks in advance.

 

That is a great deal, and if I just hadn't found out that our contract has been cancelled 2 years early for the place I work....I would be on this like white on rice.
But since I don't know how I am gonna pay my mortgage, and my wife has a mean right hook...I better pass.

Merry Christmas to me.

 

Extremely tempting, Unfortunately they just released the new Duet wifi with amazing built in stepper drivers. Are you not building a printer at all? or are you just not building a delta? I ask because I've seen you poking around a few forums here and you may have better luck selling just the magnetic kit and holding onto the controller board and extruder for a later project.

Unfortunately those arms are extremely long. Between the long arms and the titan extruder you must've been planing a beast of a delta

 

I have another running printer but need to stop building the Delta I was planning thus reason I'm selling all of this as I don't plan on making one anytime soon. Yeah was planning a beast. Wanted to have a 300mm -> 320mm diameter printable area.

 

If it puts it into perspective for you I have a 310mm diameter build plate with ~360mm arms, and my arms are way too long

Edit: This no longer applies, the forums are back up and running
Also, if you want to post something, you need to inspect the html and remove the `display:none;` from the textarea css. The site is all buggy right now.

 

Thanks for the info! I guess maybe if these don't sell I'll redo things and make a smaller version. Maybe have these arms cut down to size.

 

Love the build. If my stuff doesn't sell I'm just going to build. Would you be will to share all your printable parts .STLs and dimensions?

 

I'll share what I have. It's a combination of the original files for the build, some moded ones, and a couple original parts. Just let me know what you need and I'll do what I can to get the files for you.

 

Great! I really like all the part you made to enclose, mount, and distribute the electronics. What are the sizes of your horizontals, verticals, arms, and bed diameter? I'm getting no bites on my stuff so I guess I'll bite the bullet and complete

 

The horizontals are 300mm and are cut from 1m 20x40 VRails. After all 3 (6 with the horizontals for the top) were cut, the remaining part of around 700mm were trimmed to the length of the shortest piece. So the verticals are about 695mm or so.

The base is 100mm and consists of the 300mm 20x40 VRails and another 300mm 20x20 piece. This leaves a gap of 40mm between the rails. The horizontals only goes down 40mm, like the original design has. This leaves lots of space for mounting things.

The bed is about 260mm in diameter with a 240mm printable area.

I think you would probably get more bites on your stuff if you left the rods out. My arms are 288mm. With 400mm arms, you would probably have a bed over 350mm. Seems most people are making ones around the 250mm.

 

400mm x .80 is 320, 20 a 310 print area plus a little for rod angle at lowest point...those 400's should work fine, and not leave the arms horizontal when printing at the edges.

Jerry is using them on his 320mm printing are with great success, according to him.
I just got a set of 400's for mine, and if the job scene was better, I would be up for this set.

 

Oh yeah, 400's will work but you will lose print height. what you are capable of printing with your arms are also dependent on your carriages and effector sizes. with my ~360mm arms I can print at the edge of my 310mm bed without being anywhere near parallel to the bed.

If you think about it, with the nozzle at the center of the effector, the furthest point you can print from a given tower with fully horizontal arms is the radius of your effector (or distance from nozzle to center of joint), plus the arm length, plus the distance from the tower to joint. that puts me WAY past my 310mm printable area.

It's really dependent on your printer design, frame and bed size, effector and carriage design, etc. Arm length is something that's debated frequently, as long as you can reach all points on your bed without being parallel to the bed you're pretty much good to go. Just note that the longer arms don't really give you too much of a benefit compared to the loss in z height.

 

It's a good thing that I was only pointing out that they will work. With the height of any of my printers, I have never been close to being out of Z. But I don't claim to be printing swords and giraffes and things.

 

Jerry426 -- I'm embarking on the journey of printing your modded design. This should be interesting.

I'm converting a WolfStock printer designed by Jim, into this. So, I'll be recycling my 20x40 OpenBuilds V-Slot extrusions into this design, and using my Traxxas-style links for the arms.

The current printer I have uses 500mm sides, and 1000mm vertical pieces. I have a 300mm Seemee CNC circular heated bed and borosilicate glass platform.

Looks like I'll need to purchase three more 20x40's in order to complete your design due to the doubling-up you use at the base.

According to S3D, the bottom towers printing at 80mm/sec ... will take more than 29 hours. This will require Patience(tm).

Before I really get into it, are there any parts I should particularly pay attention to ... or that you will be changing soon?

 

You might want to print these one at a time in case there is a problem. Nothing worse than getting to the end of a long job like that to have one unit break free and mess up the other two.