It’s often said that there are pros and cons to the different printer designs out there. I was curious, what are some of the pros to the prusa, the moving y bed design?
Isolating x and y axes is useful - Easier to set up and the design can be a little stiffer.
Prusa style printers also tend to have larger build areas for their size than Makerbot style printers.
Ultimately though, it’s not there most elegant solution.
Moving the bed makes the machine take up a lot of space, and acceleration settings are usually lower because of the large moving mass. These machines usually have direct drive extruders mounted on the X axis, so that’s at least matched. Bottom line, these machines are some of the biggest and slowest when compared to their print volume.
I don’t see much in the way of pros. Sure, X and Y are not mechanically linked, but now the X axis rides on Z. I’d rather have the Z isolated.
Z axis wobble can be dealt with by using properly straights screws, or carefully designed wobble isolation.
@Dale_Dunn the Z axis is always tied to the base and it uses screws not belts, so also tends to be the most solid. Hanging the weight of extra stiffeners and guides off of it isn’t a problem as it doesn’t have to be fast. You could argue it’s the better axis to branch something else from.
When I said Prusas are compact… they are when stationary, but I agree, they need more space when they are swinging the bed around. And the bigger the bed, the slower they have to go.