My Scalable Delta
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Quite an impressive delta machine. Nice work.
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Impressive indeed.
I spy 'Draper' tool and UK-type power sockets, which hopefully means you're in the UK, in which case - what's your source for circular Robax plates?
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@phaedrux thanks!
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@achrn very observant sir! Yes, I'm UK based.
I got my Robax plates from an eBay seller here called Firebranchdesign.
I highly recommend them - excellent fast service, custom shapes and sizes and very quick delivery. The plates come well packaged and in perfect condition - they are extremely durable too.
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@slimshader Great to see your design(s)!, and thanks for publishing them here.
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@slimshader
Really impressive build..I am thinking of embarking on a similiar project in the new year.A large delta approx 700mm x 1000mm build height and have started the long hunt around for parts.I see you are using printed corner brackets and have opted for screwing the whole thing to the wall..Has this worked out? I was hoping to go freestanding.I could draw up the brackets and get them machined as I can't find anything really up to the job off the shelf.Would you share your bracket design? I too am in the UK.Have you gone for Nema23 or 17s with 0.9 on your towers?
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@dken21 Thanks! Its nice to know others are looking to build larger format machines too, and I'm not just mad!
My design would accommodate your proposed dimensions, although it would need to be slightly taller than my 2m version in order to achieve your 700mm build plate and still hit the 1m build height, due to the arms needing to be longer.
Printed corners have worked out well for me, each bottom corner uses almost 1kg of PETG and has 3 shells (around 3mm thick in total) printed at 0.6mm layers with a 40% rectilinear infill - in other words, extremely strong. The top corners follow the same infill/shells, and come in at roughly half the weight - again, very strong. Combined with 4040 extrusion it makes for a very rigid platform.
As you will note from the post, I have created two machines, one is 1120mm high, the other 2000mm. I found when testing that on the larger of the two, that bracing it to the wall was a good idea for a couple of reasons - firstly it adds an enormous amount of rigidity to the frame - my particular implementation actually uses 500mm extrusions bolted to 1500mm extrusions to achieve the 2000mm height - because at the time the stockist I was using couldn't source any 2000mm 4040 stock! These joints, although mechanically stable, aren't as good as a solid length.
Finally, the primary reason for bracing the machine was safety - I have a curious six year old who likes to climb on stuff and I didn't want the entire assembly coming down on her if I turned my back for 10 seconds....
Another side effect of adding wall braces was that it made the entire machine quieter on high speed moves - I suspect it's dampening a resonance.
For the other (1120mm) machine, bracing wasn't required at all - it is a very rigid machine free standing. I suspect that machines greater than 1500mm in overall height will require bracing though.
You can get STL and design files for my brackets here - they are functional, but not especially pretty! I suggest printing them with the settings I mentioned above in PETG. If you decide to use them, I designed them with being screwed onto strips of 2 by 4 in mind - additionally, depending on your effector design, you may find that the machine needs to be placed further from the wall than you first think in order to stop the effector fans etc hitting the wall when moving to the bed extremes. For that reason, there is also a printable 'spacer' included in the design file.
On the motor side, currently I'm using Nema17s all round - 0.9 deg on the smaller machine, 1.8 deg on the larger machine - mainly so I could compare the two systems practically. I'm toying with putting Nema23s on one of them, but to be honest unless the tool weight increases a lot I don't really see the point.
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@slimshader
Thanks all the info..Sorry when asking about the STL for brackets I meant your lovely corner ones for the 3 towers not the ones back to the wall.
Oh and no you are not mad! Who can resist going bigger!
I have a WASPdelta 4070 which is now 6 years old but still going strong and a SEEMEcnc machine.Like you I am looking at taking the best bits of both and combining into a bigger machine.Don't really need an enclosure other than keeping dust out as I print mostly in PLA.Parts and sculptures that are than sandcast or investment cast in brass and bronze.
Is that what appears to be cork sheet between your glass and Ali plate?
I'm sure I'll be picking your brains over the coming months if that is ok? -
@dken21 Sure! Not a problem, I intend to share all designs publicly anyway - for now I'm compiling the correct versions so it's all in draft via this link (different from above) and once it's all complete I'll put it on the usual repositories.
Yeah that is a cork sheet between the glass and bed plate - getting a perfectly flat aluminium plate of that scale when it's going to warp on heat/cooling cycles is something of a nightmare, and my top surfaces were being unevenly heated as a result - I found a 1mm cork spacer/buffer made it a whole lot more even during heating and also protects the glass from me not tightening the bed plate bolts down enough.
Mostly I only use the cork spacer in the middle, and over the three bolt holes of the bed on the smaller of my two Deltas, when using Schott Robax Glass as the build surface. If I'm using a flex sheet I cover the entire bed with a larger cork disk.
The larger machine predominantly only uses a Robax glass bed, and I haven't needed to add cork.I'm always lurking around here and am happy to share my experiences with you - feel free to ping me here anytime!
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@dken21 I just uploaded both the top and bottom vertices.
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Where can I find the info to this build diagram and parts lsit??
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@eddygara said in My Scalable Delta:
Where can I find the info to this build diagram and parts lsit??
Hi @eddygara ! You can find all the resources here.
Let me know if you end up building it!
Colin