Step one: Frame it up.
As a side note, aluminum extrusions are an absolute joy to work with. It’s like a giant grown up erector set.
How much did that little lot cost?
Is it sturdy?
About $120 total, including shipping.
The bottom is rock solid, and the rest is very solid but needs another connection point for me to really feel secure about it.
Brilliant, expensive though, but then I am a Yorkshireman!
How do you see your printer fitting into it? Were you tempted to have a second base section to hide the electronics?
The $120 includes parts not pictured too (the extruder gantry assembly and the print bed assembly). That’s actually considerably cheaper than I was expecting it to be, I was under the impression aluminum extrusions are incredibly expensive.
It’s a little tough to visualize now, but the print head will be mounted on a plate that slides on rails in the X direction, which is mounted on a bar that slides on rails in the Y direction, and the print bed is on a ballscrew moving in the Z direction.
The X/Y movement will be handled by an H-rigged syncromesh belt (which moves things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei4lPk_aM9Y - two motors mounted at the back corners control X and Y together with a single belt) and the whole thing will be running on 400steps/rev (so 0.9 degree per step) motors and the electronics I have will be able to run up to triple extruders (although I may wait to add the third extruder to the setup).
There should be room for the electronics inside the base, it’s a little tough to tell in the picture but the base itself is about 60mm tall.
Those OpenBeam items look very good but £120 is a huge cost in my opinion! Wish you well!
They’re actually from Misumi USA, not open beam, although the two things are extremely similar. It’s also about £80 (so 120 US dollars).
Even openbeam (which is a bit cheaper!), is a lot when you can do similar for much less.
Whats your final design look like?
Im knocking together a respstrap, using some high precision rods from some high end colour laser printers and steppers, probably using RAMPS electronics. I then want to make some parts for a delta design, probably using the repstrap to print the parts but im going to use as cheap a possible extrusions.
I don’t have a final cad drawing together, at least not that I’d like to show off yet. I like the concept of the delta printers, but I’m not confident enough of my skills to try building one just yet.
I know how you feel, just feel your way forward one step at a time!
Spending so much was a bold move, I thought you would see how it was going…