@Benjamin_Engel thats pretty sweet. I wonder what kind of quality a person could get
@Jack_Danos have you used a regular i3?
@nick_durrett I designed it. It gets pretty good quality, if the printer you get the parts from is quality.
@Benjamin_Engel do you have any video of it printing?
Mendel/Prusa type architectures don’t scale up very well. They need a lot of desk footprint for Y travel and the XZ gantry starts to get floppy as it gets bigger.
The gold standard right now in the 200mm-600mm cube build volume range is CoreXY with triple lead screw Z stage. Add a fourth Z screw to take it to 1 meter cube and larger. Not large, but shows the concept: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:612857
Large deltas are pretty good if you get the vertices stiff enough. I wouldn’t trust printed vertices for anything over 250mm diameter / height working volume.
Sliding bed is an increasingly bad idea as you scale up. Fine for a lot of small machines, I think it gets dodgy above 300mm travel.
@Jeff_DeMaagd I couldn’t agree more. I believe 12x12 to be the borderline, and on my base design the 12x12 is stationary but uses an additional motor for the y axis (one motor on each side) and this is not a cost most companies want to incur so the reasoning for 1 y motor does make sense.
Delta or corexy.
Cerberus Gigante Delta by Steve Graber, I’m really pleased with the Cerberus Mega delta he built for me.
Have also a look at Shauki B’s diy project “QuadRap” https://plus.google.com/u/0/+ShaukiB/posts/Y83oktZe8au?pid=6172518924815669010&oid=100389243669532992760
@nick_durrett
If you want to go with a big volume it a bad idea to make a printer with a moving bed.
I would suggest to build a herculien printer. You can find a quite active community with a very good support culture and documentation here on g+
http://www.personalfab.it/shop/deltawasp-60-100/
http://www.personalfab.it/en/products/deltawasp-40x60-2/
Agreed about not wanting a large moving bed. I’d look at these over CoreXY https://plus.google.com/communities/108524206628971601859
@Mark_Fuller Why so much Prusa i3 hate?
@Adam_Steinmark no hate at all, I just like deltas. I can only promote what I operate.
I3 shakes a bit. I have one. I think 40-60mms max it can handle without too much noticeable difference.
Go with the most rigid rep rap out there. Go with Eric Liens Herculien it has dual extrusion and a print area of 410x410x350. Along with the size and speed of the printer it also has one of the most active small communities I’ve seen. I’ll ask a question about he the build and within a couple hours I have 2 or three good responses. If you are interested go check out the Herculien community.
Is it possible to scale the herculien up in the z axis?
You can easily scale the herculien in every direction without changing any plastic part.
@shauki is that cost estimate a turn key price or only printer minus electronics