Delta printer

thingiverse

Finally I’m going to share my Delta with everyone. Good day to all. It all started when I decided to build a project from the Internet called NEUTRON. I assembled the printer, but it didn't work properly - the carriage was stuck on one axis and the other was the lead screw. When working, the lead screw bent and the carriage walked around the shaft, not much, but enough that it wouldn't print with normal quality. The biggest problem was with horizontal surfaces, when the print head moved in different directions, the direction in the horizontal plane didn't change much. NEUTRON was a Marlin-based printer, which is terribly slow and worked in spurts. It started working better when I changed to Repiter Host. After thinking carefully, reading a lot of information about Delta construction, looking at possible other options for Delta projects on the Internet, I decided to build my own Delta from scratch. I took the principle of working on running screws from NEUTRON - I don't like the idea of using belts. I wanted a printer that was: 1) as compact as possible with all electronics and power supply located inside; 2) had no wires sticking out, including any garters or collars; 3) used the maximum length of running screws (500 mm) and shafts; 4) had a universal design so that if you didn't want to deal with running screws, you could switch to belts. The bulk of the materials I had were from NEUTRON. It remained to work out its own body frame. For each axis, I decided to use a hollow pipe of 12 mm and a normal shaft of 12 mm. In the pipe, the wires pass through the limit switches to the maximum position. In NEUTRON, there's a limit switch on the hotend, but it turned out to be useless, so I decided to give it up in favor of an adjustable table. It is adjusted easily and quickly on three points (each axis). All electronics are located at the bottom under the table, with a felt sticker underneath with an adhesive layer. I drew the body frame myself, using geometry from NEUTRON - this was a mistake, but more about that later. Some of the elements were fine with me: it's a frame display, a carriage for the hotend (fasteners were remade), and part of the extruder. The rods were a bit short, so I made them longer, without losing height. The tubes connecting the printer's frame elements were taken from Leroy Merlin, aluminum, 12 mm, anodized - slightly smaller than the diameter of 11.7 mm. These same tubes were used for traction. All electronics are attached to these tubes. The coil is placed on top and rests on these tubes. I printed ABS housing elements with a wall thickness of 2 mm, layer 0.15 mm, filling 20%, speed 80, blowing 25. When everything was collected, the printer immediately began to give a decent result, but sometimes skipped steps. The reason was the bearings on the shafts - they were jammed from time to time. I printed bearings from PLA. I also printed out of PLA bearings for top-acting screws, metal ones clanged. The problem of missing steps has gone, and the printer began to produce a decent stable result, which pleases me. I even tried to switch from driver A4988 to TMC2208, but they somehow wedged engines, even with no load (without lead screws). I tried everything: setting up tension, counting it out, finding empirically from lowest to limit. The result was always the same - the engines were stuck. Back on A4988. But rethinking the design of the printer, I came to the conclusion that it's not good that the lead screw is shifted away from the plane of movement (this is an atavism of NEUTRON and this was my mistake), in addition, I have screws that regulate the table, which rest against the engine, reducing the height of the table adjustment. So now I'm building a second version of my printer.