Bead Sprite 3D Printer

I think this ingenious machine qualifies as 3d Printer :-)

Proton and Neutron Open Source 3D Printers

Layer One, creators of Atom3D printer, have released two open source RepRap 3d printer. Proton and Neutron. They are open sourced under Creative Commons licence.

Proton has total volume of 38 cm x 28 cm x 37 cm, assembled weight of 4.25 kg and printing volume of 18 cm x 18 cm x 15 cm.

Proton assembly video:



Proton Thingiverse page:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2149685


Neutron is a delta configuration 3d printer. It has total volume of 32 cm x 33 cm x 54 cm, weight of 3.75 kg and printing volume of Ø14 cm x 20 cm.

Neutron video:




Neutron Thingiverse page:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2149660


You can also find both 3d printers on MyMiniFactory Atom3D page:

https://www.myminifactory.com/users/Atom%203D%20Printers


Full details on both printers can be found at company webpage:

http://www.atom3dp.com/zh/mini/

How to attach a pencil to your Delta 3D printer and make it into a plotter

Here is an attachment made from plywood that can hold a pencil for Delta configuration machines. it can turn them into simple plotters enhancing your tool options. 
Video of plotter attachment in action connected to RDelta 3d printer:




All the files and instructions can be found at:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2120341

Six Axis Delta 3D printer from ZHAW

Oliver Tolar and Denis Herrmann, students from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW)  developed a six axis Delta 3d printer with movable build plate.,


Here is the video demonstration:




Sources with further information:

http://hackaday.com/2017/01/19/3d-printer-with-tilted-bed/

https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/3D-Drucker-mit-beweglicher-Druckplatte-3594506.html

Six Axis Delta, image source: ZHAW

Hack a Coffee Maker into a Delta 3D printer

Tropical Labs team made a coffee maker into a Delta 3d printer. Interesting hack. Tropical Labs engineers have been developing a flexible design for ultra-affordable 3D printers and this a part of their efforts.

Video of the Delta printing:




Printer features:

• Coffee maker, Tropical Labs used an old Norelco 12 model they found at a thrift shop, but any coffee maker with a hot plate could potentially work 
• Arduino Mega 2560
• RAMPS 1.4
• A4988 Stepper Motor Driver Carrier
• Nema 17 stepper motors
• Home switches, optical or otherwise
• 3D printer hot end/extruder – again, any kind will do; Tropical Labs snagged theirs on eBay
• 12V power supply
• Solid state relay (Fotek SSR-40 or similar)
• Ball joints
• 4-40 threaded rod

Project homepage:

http://tropical-labs.com/index.php/3d-printers/coffee-maker-delta

Source:

https://hackaday.io/project/11346-coffee-maker-delta-3d-printer

MERL 5D Printing on a Custom Delta

After 4D printing comes 5d printing. It's just a fancy name for five axis 3D printing that enables more strength due to layers being extruded in optimized paths to resist more pressure force.
It is developed at  Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) on a custom delta machine with movable printbed.

Here is the explainer video:





PDF research paper on the topic:

http://www.merl.com/publications/docs/TR2016-101.pdf

More on the researcher:

http://www.merl.com/people/yerazunis

Real-time Wireframe 3D Printing Directly from CAD

Researchers at Cornell made a modified 3d printer that prints on-the-fly as the model is developed in a CAD software. It has 6 axis of movement with mist cooling and cutter head to produce wire-frame objects.

Project description:

On-the-Fly Print is a 5DOF modelling and design prototype that allows the user to design 3D models digitally while having a low-fidelity physical model printed in parallel. Our software starts printing features as soon as they are created and updates the physical model as needed. Users can quickly check the design in a real usage context by removing the partial physical print from the printer and replacing it afterwards to continue printing.

Video of the entire process:




Source:

http://mediarelations.cornell.edu/2016/05/31/on-the-fly-3-d-print-system-prints-what-you-design-as-you-design-it/

Delta Flying Extruder

Direct and Bowden extruders both have their limitations and advantages. Flying extruder for Delta 3d printers should have the best of both types.
Flying extruder should have few key advantages:

• Remove weight from the moving portion of the printer, making momentum shifts much easier
• Remain “close” to the hot end to enable effective printing of flexible materials and remove tube friction
• Reduce motion “lag” caused by lengthy tube traversals

It was introduced on RepRap forum thread:

http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?178,218716

It was described as:

The extruder is suspended by rubber bands. These are running around several rolls to increase the length (each around 2m relaxed) to have more or less the same force over the whole vertical range. The extruder is connected with a very short latex tube (around 75mm) to the nozzle. This tube decouples the high frequencies between the nozzle and the extruder.
Long story short: I'm printing with no problems with 75m/s and 3mm retraction and still with the same acceleration of 800mm/s². But this was only a short test and I think I can bring it up with a bit optimization.
Another advantage is, that it's now easier to build an enclosure and that the printer is much quieter, because the extruder is decoupled.

Here is a video of flying extruder in action. The developer claims that the strange motion is due to Kisslicer and that prints are very good.




You can find all the files to build it here:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:756426

More extensive article:

http://www.fabbaloo.com/blog/2015/11/15/the-flying-extruder-the-best-of-bowden-and-direct-3d-printer-extruders

Looks like it is not developed further, but the design is interesting ...

Does anyone have any experience with it? Let us know in the comments!

Custom Color Mixing Rostock Max by Jason Powell

Jason Powell made his highly customized Rostock Max V2 delta with the Diamond hotend and upgraded the firmware to do color mixing. He made multi part .stl-s to enable multiple colors.

Detailed video:



Instructables project homepage:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Full-Color-Mixing-3D-Printer/

His Thingiverse page:

http://www.thingiverse.com/jjpowelly/designs

Tractatus 3D has some BIG Deltas

It is 3,5 meters tall!!!

Tractatus 3d homepage:

http://tractus3d.com/

Priming, Dumping and Wiping Add-ons for Your 3D Printer

John Fuoco developed several printable add-on upgrades which will enable you to prime, dump excess filament and clean the nozzle for Delta 3d printers and other machines.

Here is a servo powered arm for Deltas:



Here is a simillar apparatus on a Bukobot which could probably be customized for most machines:




All the files and instructions:

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:958642

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:961135

Excess filament dumped in small bin with cleaning edge

Delta-T 3d printer has no rails, bearings, belts, pulleys or lead screws

Jeff Kerr who developed Lobo now has this cool Delta-T which has some crazy mechanical movements :-)

I'm not sure what are the advantages or specifications but I like the inverse looks of it :-) Print results also look solid. It should be very cheap since it uses fishing line, rubber bands and other low cost materials.

Nice work Jeff!

Delta-T in action:






Delta description:

This new 3D printer is a delta-type design but with a flying carriage suspended by 6 strings that wind up directly onto the motor shafts. No rails, bearings, belts, pulleys or lead screws.

This new version uses a Bowden-type extruder and a single spring-loaded tension post to keep the strings in tension. Still more work to do, but it's coming along.

You can follow the development and get much more information at:

http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?1,525804

RepRapPro Fisher Delta 3D Printer

RepRapPro launched their new 3D printer and it is a low cost Delta! It is named Fisher Delta and it is priced at £199.00+VAT

Printer description:
The latest 3D printer from RepRapPro. Benefits from simple assembly, auto calibration and very fast motion. We are currently offering these kits as a beta version, for a discounted price. The machine is fully functional, but the design is likely to evolve a little before a full release.

Basic specifications:
– Build volume 150mm diameter, 180mm height
– Nozzle diameter 0.4mm

Mechanics:
– 12.5um resolution in all axes
– Removable print surface
– Spring loaded kinematic locations, 1um repeatable positioning and bed probing
– Direct drive extruder with all metal stainless steel nozzle

Electronics:
– Duet electronics
– 32 bit ARM cortex microprocessor
– Ethernet and USB interface
– On-board microSD storage

Firmware:
– Automatic calibration of print surface and delta parameters
– Smooth realtime motion
– Internal webserver for access via ethernet, with DHCP and netBIOS

Software:
– Machine controlled via web interface
– Prints gcode files provided by Slic3r and other open source slicing software

Delta homepage:

https://reprappro.com/shop/reprap-kits/fisher-delta-full-kit-beta/

Here is Fisher Delta printing:



We are still waiting for third party reviews and tests.

Hack your FDM Delta into DLP 3D printer

As I was researching low cost DLP solutions I found this project by sirocco where he converted his old Delta into DLP SLA 3d printer by putting a projector on the top opening and adding vat resin. Delta configuration looks like good option due to hight.

I'm not sure how he moves his vat with salt water and resin, it could be done by separate mechanism or by some type of vat tray mounted on three points to the Delta frame and moved by existing motors.

Source, more details, but no clear instructions:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Delta-Robot-to-Sla-Printer-Top-Down/

Print results look decent:

TwinTeeth home manufacturing PCB factory mulitool with 3d printer

There are more and more home manufacturing tools and TwinTeeth is one of the more developed I saw.
It is a multitool reversed Delta machine mainly orientated towards PCB manufacturing but it can serve as 3d printer also. It is fully open sourced with plans so you can easily build it yourself or customize it to your needs. True ability for distributed manufacturing.

It has following functions and exchangeable tool options:

• UV Laser photoengraving on sensitive film or pre-sensitized boards using an ultraviolet laser.
• Drilling vias and holes using any mini-rotary tool like Dremel® or Proxxon®.
• Dispensing solder paste with precision on SMD PCB pads.
• Plotting circuits with a permanent pen-maker
• 3D printing knobs, casings, front-panels, even print circuits with conductive filament, or make circuits supports.
• Milling/Carving soft materials or etching PCB copper with a v-bit (if you prefer this etching method).

TwinTeet core inverse Delta and replaceable toolheads in front of it

Here is a video of it in action:



TwinTeeth technical specifications from the project page:

• Working area (X,Y,Z): 70x80x60mm reduced considerably to an “Arduino™ shield-size” because it's preferred to do something small but precise. Users rarely create big circuit boards and reducing the working area has some benefits: the robot is cheaper, more precise, more robust, smaller and more manageable. However, it’s scalable, so you can make it bigger if you want.
• Motion: TwinTeeth is powered by three Nema 17 motors, lead-screws and anti-backlash nuts.
• Speed: it can go as fast as 1200-1500mm/min.
• Code: it supports G-Code, postscript and BMP files. Eagle CadSoft can export to postscript format very easily. Support BMP files means than in addition to PCBs it can also print and etch photos on copper, alu or bronze.
• Laser: using the same PHR-803T optical pickup than DiyouPCB with a wavelength of 405nm.
• Rastering: the robot draws the PCB circuits in rastering mode in a similar way any paper printer does: moving the laser (or the bed in our case) from one side of the printer to the other.
• Resolution: In rastering mode it's printing at 600DPI resolution. The laser beam spot is approx. 0.04 wide when is focused. Incredibly thin! Theorically mechanical precision is 0.94um.
• Auto bed-levelling – it keeps the bed flat with a tolerance of less than 0.01mm while the robot is moving. It’s very important to improve printing quality and provide precision.
• Auto-Focus: - small focus differences on the PCB surface affect printing quality so implemented a robust focusing system which takes some points on the PCB and extrapolates the results with a bilinear equation. With that info the robot adjusts the focus automatically while printing.
• Infrared focusing: the auto-focus system uses an infrared laser to avoid film blurring. Films or presensitized boards are only sensible to ultraviolet light.
• Electronics – using the well known combination of Arduino™ Mega + RAMPS 1.4 + A4988 Motor Drivers. Improved the Pickup Driver Circuit developed for DiyouPCB and now it includes new features.
• Precision fixture bed – it is very important to keep the PCB fixed to the bed while the robot is moving. Also, when printing two-sided PCBs you have to be sure that both sides are correctly aligned. TwinTeeth includes a precision aluminium fixture bed and dowel pins which allow correct fixing and positioning of the PCBs. A stencil is also included which helps to drill the PCB’s 4-positions holes.
• Camera – included a small USB camera because it is difficult to see tiny details on high-density PCBs. The camera is also useful to set the home position which is very important to obtain accuracy.
• 3D Printing:  FFF (Fused Filament Fabrication) with 1.75mm PLA/ABS and a 0.35mm extrusion nozzle. Printing quality is similar to any 3D printer you can find in the market.

TwinTeeth software:

• TwinTeeth Firmware: deeply modified Marlin firmware to support multiple tools, manage and control the laser, implement the auto-focus system, print in rastering mode, improve the buffering, and much more.
• TwinTeeth Management Console – TwinTeeth comes with a new easy-to-use management console which includes functionality specially designed for the multi-tool environment. Included functions to calibrate the printer, move the axis (jogging), and adjust the parameters of each tool. This software communicates with the robot through an USB 2.0 port.
• TwinTeeth Eagle ULPs – developed some ULPs (Eagles’s user language programs) to generate the drilling and paste dispensing g-code files. You can also use the files generated by other ULPs like PCBCode.
• Eagle Cadsoft – It is a popular electronic CAD software company. They provide a freeware version for non-commercial use. It easily generates the postscript, drilling and solder paste dispensing files which TwinTeeth uses to make the circuits.
• 3D Slicing software– for 3D printing you can use any slicer software like Slic3R or Cura.

TwinTeeth homepage:

http://www.diyouware.com/front

Since it is an open source project you can get all the files to make it here and start your own home PCB factory:

http://www.diyouware.com/twth_getit

WASP rotating mixing clay and straw extruder for 3d printing houses

Italian 3d printer company WASP presented a novel extruder for big machines that will 3d print houses in the future. Their clay extruder has a sieve and mixing auger and rotates as it deposits building material that can be sourced locally in poor countries.

Here is the project description:

Massimo Moretti and his collaborators don’t forget their main focus: to build 3D printed houses with a very low cost, expecially in developing counties. Now here we are to the turning point: WASP exhibit for the first time at 3D Print Hub in Milan the new extruder, completely redesigned, a rotating extruder.

It is a small revolution. Advantages are several. This kind of system require little energy, it cleans by itself, it can be assembled and disassembled in a very few time, it has a costant speed control. These technical solutions can be transposed in a bigger scale. This is the reason because WASP team consider this transition as crucial in 12 meters tall 3D print building, which is in progress. WASP will give very soon more details about this new fronteer, which has been reached thanks to the constant research.

Here are the videos of extruder and Wasp large clay delta making house parts:







Here is a video of the extruder printing with long straw fibers to give more strength:



Source in Italian: http://www.wasproject.it/w/stampa-3d-dal-cubo-di-ghiaccio-al-cubo-di-terra/

OverLord multicolor Delta 3d printer

OverLord is a new multicolor Delta 3d printer made by DreamMaker. The specifications look very impressive but what I really like is the design.

Comparison of Overlord Pro to other market 3d printers:

Here are OverLord and OverLord Pro technical specifications:

Company homepage: http://www.dreammaker.cc/

OverLord had a very successful Kickstarter where they got £254,825 pledged of £10,000 goal:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1122205541/overlord-3d-printer-multi-color-smart-stylish


Here is a Kickstarter video:




It makes some nice prints (but there are no independent tests or review)... There were many 3d printer producers and Kickstarters that promised full color 3d printing, but results were disappointing or not delivered ...

Triple Delta robotic arm with extended reach and flexibility

Triple Delta is robotic arm project where three delta mechanisms are connected together to get more movement freedom and longer reach. It can operate outside of standard volume for the same sized single delta arm.
Since there are many moving parts there is a long way until making it precise enough to 3d print with. You will probably see it first in some small home manufacturing robotic line moving and manipulating parts. In theory if you know delta mechanics you could make it yourself, I have note found any instructions or guides. You could go wild and add more Deta arms and make it a quad Delta or pentaDelta ...
It is developed by Aad van der Geest. Great work Aad! Hopefully we will see more information on your project!

Here is tripleDelta robot moving and stacking wooden cubes from a conveyor belt  

TriDom crane mounted building 3d printer

TriDom construction 3d printer is machine with excellent idea behind it! While other construction printers have complex and big gantry systems, TriDom is a retrofit kit that can be mounted on static or mobile cranes that are usually used in construction work. It can basically turn an existing crane in robotic arm where a crane does 80% of work and the TriBot frameless Delta does the other 20%. Simple and effective!
I'm not sure how will the crane and TriBot interface or how the crane will be guided? Maybe it can even be done manually for rough outlines and the TriDome mechanics will compensate for precision with agile printehead. We will see... very interesting and marketable tool...

TriDom is project by Yaron Schwarcz and Anielle Guedesv, and it is still being developed.  Great work!

TriDom home page: http://www.tridom.co/

https://www.facebook.com/tridomtechnologies


Here is a TriDome video presentation:

Space Invaders Delta 3 tracked 3d printer from South Africa

Space Invaders is a team of students with Rueben Pretorius, Mathew Whyte and Jared Rheeders as members. They were South African representatives on 11th World Robot Olympics at Sochi and won the 4th place in Junior High age group.

They developed mobile caterpillar tracked robotic 3d printer powered with LEGO EV3 controller and Arduino. The Delta 3 is a concept of Mars based construction robot that can 3d print buildings, machines and even itself since it is a RepRap.

Here is video explaining their project:



Great work Space Invaders!