Building a massive printer.

Hello All,

I completed a Prusa i3 build in May, and now that I've gotten it to work well, I am thinking of building a larger machine, with a build area of 1 meter cube [1000 mm x 1000 mm x 1000 mm]. For this, I need your assistance and advise. Here's what I'm thinking (open to suggestions):

1. It won't be cheap. My budget for this is 2000 dollars, including shipping and import duties (all the way to India).
2. Build area of 1 m³.
3. I want to use linear rails (extruded aluminium),for the mechanical frame (perhaps these)
4. Smoothieboard as the controller, with Smoothie-ware and OctoPrint.
5. I want a fixed printbed.

Here's what I am not so sure of:

- Delta or Cartesian? This is where I'm stuck right now. All my research suggests that I build a Delta format printer, and I'm leaning strongly towards it. However, as I've never built one before, please advise!
- If we decide to go with a Delta style printer, then what are the dimensions involved in creating such a huge build area? I read somewhere that the vertical rails of a Delta must be double the horizontal rails in length for it to create a square... you can see that I'm not very clear here.I tried working out the lengths using a Delta Frame calculator I found online, but I'm not sure if that's correct.
- If Cartesian, how do I get a fixed print bed (CoreXY?).

There are so many other things that I'm not sure of, but we will get to that once we settle the Delta vs. Cartesian discussion for such a large build area. Is it even achievable?

Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions. I want to do this well and do this right. Once the bill of materials is finalized, I will be posting the build process here and sharing the experience with all of you. This is going to be exciting!

Thank you!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/06/2015 05:20AM by rohitnalluri.

If you want a bed that doesn't move, you're probably going to want to build a delta machine, but a Delta with a 1 m^3 volume is going to be tall. You could make a CoreXY type machine with the XY mechanism on a lift, but I think it would be easier to lift the bed (less wiring).

What do you intend to print? With which material(s) do you intend to print? How will you get those materials to stick to the bed? Have you considered the increased time it takes to make larger prints? What are your target specs for layers thickness, print speed, etc.?

Take a look at Gigabot.

---

Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Sorry, but this is just the N+1 post on the very same recurring subject, and to summarize what happened to the other almost identical first posts: people are never heard of thereafter, probably because after giving it a little bit of thought, they realize that building a large FDM printer is neither feasible nor interesting in practical terms.

Just look back at the past posts here in the General forum, I think you are the 4th or 5th one in the last 30 days with the line "... I am going to build a large printer..."!

If you have a working Prusa i3, I wish you very good prints with it. That's about as large and as good as it gets with current FDM technology.

@AndrewBCN: Thank you Andrew. I hope at the end of my research I still find a large printer feasible.

@the_digital_dentist: I've been keenly following your MegaMax and Son of MegaMax builds, and I was actually hoping you'd reply, so thanks for replying. I'm consider a CoreXY, and I'm also thinking of emulating the Son of MegaMax.

I intend to print everything that I can get my hands on. India hasn't really taken off in terms of 3D printing, and I want to start offering the choosy Indian consumer be-spoke 3d printer objects.

I am leaning towards an aluminium heat bed with kapton/acetone for stickiness, but truth be told, I haven't really given 'stickiness' much thought. (Thanks for bringing this up; I will consider it).

I don't mind the increased time. This is passion, not fast food. I'd be happy with print speeds of 50 - 100mm/s, but I know I can go higher. Now layer thickness is crucial, and this is where I am considering using stepper motors with 32 steps - ideas more than welcome!

After considering a few designs for the frame, and looking at your own build, I am thinking a moving bed wouldn't be that bad if the frame were solid and rigid. So the plan now is to design and create a rigid frame, using T-Slots. I have a design in mind. I'll draw it up and share here as soon as I can.

Quote
AndrewBCN
... building a large FDM printer is neither feasible nor interesting in practical terms.

If you have a working Prusa i3, I wish you very good prints with it. That's about as large and as good as it gets with current FDM technology.

Large FDM printers are feasible and very interesting to many people. There are large format commercial printers available, Gigabot, for example. There is no reason a resourceful and committed amateur or hobbyist couldn't or shouldn't build a large format machine. You have no idea what the OP's finances, level of interest, education, or other resources are. If you're tired of threads about large format machines, just ignore them.

If the Prusa i3 is your reference for as large and as good as it gets, I can understand why you are so negative about scaling up FDM printing. There are so many things wrong with it that its most amazing property is that it works at all. Everything in that "design" is the way it is to minimize cost, without regard to printing performance. It's as if someone sat down with a printer and said "how much can I take out of this thing and still get it to squirt out plastic in a recognizable shape once in a while?"

Unfortunately, many people's only exposure to 3D printing is in the form of a $300 kit that barely works. While such exposure appears to have discouraged you, others find inspiration. My own first exposure to a machine was a Makerbot Cupcake. It was a horrible little thing. I didn't let the poor design, construction, and performance discourage me from building a much larger format machine. On the contrary, I found it educational - it demonstrated many things that one should not do. The i3 can be a similar inspiration for others- it hints at what can be done with a 3D printer and provides excellent examples of what to avoid, but only if you have developed the critical eye to see them.

---

Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Quote
rohitnalluri
I don't mind the increased time. This is passion, not fast food. I'd be happy with print speeds of 50 - 100mm/s, but I know I can go higher. Now layer thickness is crucial, and this is where I am considering using stepper motors with 32 steps - ideas more than welcome!

After considering a few designs for the frame, and looking at your own build, I am thinking a moving bed wouldn't be that bad if the frame were solid and rigid. So the plan now is to design and create a rigid frame, using T-Slots. I have a design in mind. I'll draw it up and share here as soon as I can.

I wouldn't try to scale up my printer's design to 1m^3. The bed and undercarriage will become so heavy that it will be difficult to control its motion without a really big motor and control electronics. Throwing all that mass around is going to require a super heavy duty frame design to maintain rigidity. A machine where the bed moves only in the Z axis (which only moves slowly and typically in small steps) would be more practical for such a large build envelope. Also, my machine is quite large relative to its build envelope. Moving the bed in the Y axis means the Y dimension of the machine has to be at least 2X the length of the bed. A machine in which the bed moves in the Z axis need only be a little larger than the bed dimensions. The smaller overall size and lower kinetic energy in the bed mean it will be easier/cheaper to make a rigid frame.

Take a look at what some of the people are doing over here: [plus.google.com]

---

Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

@ rohitnalluri

Here is a RepRap designed to be scalable from 300mm x 300mm x 300mm to 1m x 1m x 1m: the Alto (according to its designers, who have a comparatively vast experience in RepRap design).

Personally, I'll continue to stick to my opinion that anything larger than a Prusa i3 (in terms of print volume i.e. around 8l) is a waste of time, energy and money, and I have yet to be shown any solid arguments to the contrary.

Imo you should seriously ask yourself what kind of object you are going to be printing in a very large volume printer (apart from vases, I don't see many use cases), how long these objects will take to print (are you OK with 3 days to one week prints?), and what is the probability that these objects will print successfully in that amount of time (that would be nearly zero).

You could also investigate other technologies apart from FDM that would allow you to manufacture the very same objects more economically. In any case, good luck with your research.

Quote
AndrewBCN
Personally, I'll continue to stick to my opinion that anything larger than a Prusa i3 (in terms of print volume i.e. around 8l) is a waste of time, energy and money, and I have yet to be shown any solid arguments to the ...

I started with an Ormerod, which has a 200 x 200 x 200mm print volume, which I believe is the same as the i3. I never wanted to print an object with anything approaching that volume. But I frequently found I wanted to print an object too long to fit on the bed. I occasionally wanted to print an object more than 200mm tall. So I built a printer with a 300mm build diameter (400mm would be better) and 500mm build height, so that I can print these wide or tall (but not both) objects.

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Large delta printer [miscsolutions.wordpress.com], E3D tool changer, Robotdigg SCARA printer, Crane Quad and Ormerod

Disclosure: I design Duet electronics and work on RepRapFirmware, [duet3d.com].

Quote
dc42
...I occasionally wanted to print an object more than 200mm tall.
...

We are not talking about vases here, are we?

Thank you everyone. I am looking into Gigabot and Alto.

@the_digital_dentist: you are right - moving a heavy y-axis around will be problematic. I wanted to see if I could create a single x-axis gantry that would move in three directions (the x-axis would move the same way as in a Prusa, the y-axis movement would be achieved by moving the gantry itself back and forth, and z-axis by having an upright carriage (1 meter tall) that would raise the extruder as required). But as soon as I visualized this design I realized it would be a disaster. The x-axis gantry would knock the objects out of place.

After looking at Alto, an 'H' frame x-y axis system that lifts in z direction looks like a stable option for a large scale printer. I noticed Alto uses printer corners and M5 rods to lift the plate. I would rather use metal corners and lead screws. One question - is it better to use a belt-guided system or a something on wheels, like a delta's cheapskate carriage...? If I use wheels, then how does the software part work?

Once the 'how' of the linear movement is decided, I will draw up the BOM.

A belt-driven system can run on wheels or linear guides/bearings. There is no difference in software.
-Olaf

BigRep dropped the biggest Marvin yet on their One printer, 85 cm tall and 13 kg, in 10 days!



Deltabot 3D Printer size for 1m3 build volume.
I make it short because last night the server kept refusing my post.

Using Pythagorean theorem, the build radius is root(2* side_length^2)/2.
70.71 cm radius of build plate can take 1m x 1m square.

Frame height: about 2300 mm (2.3 m)
Frame radius: about 800 mm
Rod length: 1333 mm

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2015 08:50PM by janpenguin.

Quote
rohitnalluri
Hello All,

I completed a Prusa i3 build in May, and now that I've gotten it to work well, I am thinking of building a larger machine, with a build area of 1 meter cube [1000 mm x 1000 mm x 1000 mm]. For this, I need your assistance and advise. Here's what I'm thinking (open to suggestions):

1. It won't be cheap. My budget for this is 2000 dollars, including shipping and import duties (all the way to India).
2. Build area of 1 m³.
3. I want to use linear rails (extruded aluminium),for the mechanical frame (perhaps these)
4. Smoothieboard as the controller, with Smoothie-ware and OctoPrint.
5. I want a fixed printbed.

Here's what I am not so sure of:

- Delta or Cartesian? This is where I'm stuck right now. All my research suggests that I build a Delta format printer, and I'm leaning strongly towards it. However, as I've never built one before, please advise!
- If we decide to go with a Delta style printer, then what are the dimensions involved in creating such a huge build area? I read somewhere that the vertical rails of a Delta must be double the horizontal rails in length for it to create a square... you can see that I'm not very clear here.I tried working out the lengths using a Delta Frame calculator I found online, but I'm not sure if that's correct.
- If Cartesian, how do I get a fixed print bed (CoreXY?).

There are so many other things that I'm not sure of, but we will get to that once we settle the Delta vs. Cartesian discussion for such a large build area. Is it even achievable?

Please let me know your thoughts and suggestions. I want to do this well and do this right. Once the bill of materials is finalized, I will be posting the build process here and sharing the experience with all of you. This is going to be exciting!

Thank you!

Before giving you my two cents here, please be advised the following list refers to cartesian printers only.

1. I suspect 2000 dollars won't be enough a budget to take you through. I already spent around 9-10000 dollars on my printer (1272 x 1095 x 1145 mm print area) and I still feel lucky, the bigrep costs 70000.
3. I used the same rails from openbuilds, the advantage of v-slot over t-slot is in its construction. t-slot wheels are notorious for their wear, whereas v-slot wheels self center on the slopes of the v-slot during printing so you have one less headache here.
4. I chose the same smoothieboard for my printer. Due to the size, you might have to go with multiple axis so buying a smoothie 5x may not be a bad idea. If you have time and patience, check with Arthur Wolf when will the new smoothie 2.0 be released. I understand from him it's in the works.
5. A fixed bed means you will have to have the xy assembly doing the z movement as well. This was my first idea too, but then I gave up for a moving bed on inverted z axis, because the xy mechanism lift will be subject to inertial forces and might drastically reduce your ability to print with decent speeds, which is a must considering the printing volumes you have in mind. You could push the envelope further by using a combination of h bot and moving bed, thus making sure all your stepper motors are stationary.

Regarding delta vs. cartesian, there are large printers out there in both formats. A delta has the disadvantage of needing lots of top room to allow for the arms to complete the upper layers. A Cartesian printer, on the other hand, does not have this inconvenience. The choice is up to you.

To give you an idea, please see attached picture. The printer uses v-slot rails, all metal dual extruder from Micron 3DP, Nema 23 steppers (465 oz*in) for the z and y axis and nema 17 for the x axis. For the heated bed, it uses a custom order etched foil silicone pad (it cost me 450 dollars from china, shipping included).

Good luck.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/06/2015 05:01AM by val c..

Quote
AndrewBCN
Sorry, but this is just the N+1 post on the very same recurring subject, and to summarize what happened to the other almost identical first posts: people are never heard of thereafter, probably because after giving it a little bit of thought, they realize that building a large FDM printer is neither feasible nor interesting in practical terms.

Just look back at the past posts here in the General forum, I think you are the 4th or 5th one in the last 30 days with the line "... I am going to build a large printer..."!

If you have a working Prusa i3, I wish you very good prints with it. That's about as large and as good as it gets with current FDM technology.

Gee, had you told me this one year ago, I probably wouldn't have started my large printer, seeing how I gave it lots of thought and it's almost done. But now it's too late, so I guess i'm going to have to finish this non feasible, non practical, large format printer. But I'm with you on the redundancy of topics regarding large size printing, I found at least three topics on this very same subject.

All that time, effort, and expense, and for what? Now you're stuck with that impractical and uninteresting machine. Just think of all the Yoda heads and iphone cases you could have printed if you hadn't wasted so much time on that monstrosity.

I'll give you $200 for it if you can pack it up and ship it to me.

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Ultra MegaMax Dominator 3D printer: [drmrehorst.blogspot.com]

Quote
the_digital_dentist
All that time, effort, and expense, and for what? Now you're stuck with that impractical and uninteresting machine. Just think of all the Yoda heads and iphone cases you could have printed if you hadn't wasted so much time on that monstrosity.

I'll give you $200 for it if you can pack it up and ship it to me.

indeed, i should stick with making ashtrays and pencil holders. what was i thinking building a large 3d printer?

Actually, you only have to make pencil holders. If you want an ashtray just cut a couple of notches in it!
Worked for me as a kid in the metal shop.

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Bob Morrison
Wörth am Rhein, Germany
"Luke, use the source!"
BLOG - PHOTOS - Thingiverse

Quote
rhmorrison
Actually, you only have to make pencil holders. If you want an ashtray just cut a couple of notches in it!
Worked for me as a kid in the metal shop.

i always maintained one should keep the pencil holders and ashtrays separate, otherwise one risks ending up smoking one's pencils.

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val c.
...otherwise one risks ending up smoking one's pencils.

Would probably be healthier that way!

---

Bob Morrison
Wörth am Rhein, Germany
"Luke, use the source!"
BLOG - PHOTOS - Thingiverse

Quote
rhmorrison

Quote
val c.
...otherwise one risks ending up smoking one's pencils.

Would probably be healthier that way!

3d printing in asbestos, anyone?