How do.

Hello all. I am very interested in this tech, but my needs seem to be a bit larger then any of the non-comercial models I have seen. Most being smaller then 11" x 7"x 6". I need something a bit closer to 26" x 15" x 6 " for my particular aplication. Any thoughts? Or would it be simple enough to scale up one of the mendal or prusa mendel type units? Thank you for any input.

john,
i have just started trying to print larger objects - problems to do with warping start to arise - other people seem to be able to print these bigger parts - but it something to consider if you want to print even bigger things.
roger

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Prusa 'Explorer' (3dStuffMaker), GEN6, J-head Mk III-B, Bowden Extruder, Marlin 1.0.0 RC2, Repitier-Host V0.84 and Slic3r 0.9.8, PLA. Live at Victoria, Australia.

It should be straight forward to upscale something like a Mendel Max - the extrusion would handle twice the size easily. To go bigger than that I think you would need to build a rigid steel frame like welding up some angle iron into a table height self contained unit. The marlin software would handle the larger size but you might want to look at larger steppers so that you could run them faster so you might need gruntier stepper motor controllers. The prints would take a while to do but it is do-able

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Richmond, New Zealand
Thingiverse ~ YouTube

When you are printing really big parts, even on the smaller available platforms, the only consideration is cost.

1. How much filament are you willing to sacrifice to tune in the settings? Sudden USB fail, Warping, Z-Wobble, Layer Separation, Miscalibration, Missed Steps, Blobbing, Adhesion to print bed, Print Bed Even Heating, Nozzle Drag, back lash. These will all need to be addressed in a large print. It won't do to just work these out on small parts. Small is hard enough.

2. What's your electric bill like? An 8 x 8 inch (200mm x 200mm) cake of Prusa Mendel parts takes 10 to 16 hours to print. A platform of the size you say you need would take several days to yeild results. I'm talking a week or more to fill that kind of volume. Keep in mind that just because the machine is three times bigger, it does not mean it can print three times faster.

3. Are you single? Spouse/Significant other, and offspring will have to fall by the side. You gotta keep your eye on this machine when it's printing. We call it a Bird Nest, when parts fail in a certain way after being left unattended for an extended period. Im your machine, this would be like a nest for an albatross, or some other really large dinosaur.

These machinses are going to be a bit inadequet for my needs it seems. Oh well, is there anouther type of machine that might fill my needs better? The ones that print with lasers and powdered plastic don't seem to share these issuses, but I don't really know. Any info is better then clueless.