CoreXY or Delta ?

I'm wanting a printer to replace my Monoprice maker v2. I've been lurking on this and other forums for some time now trying to educate myself on the pro's and con's of all of the different platforms. I have narrowed the field down to either a delta or a core xy machine. 300x300x300 or thereabouts is all the build area that I need. I would like to build a high quality kit and on most days I tend to go for the Seemecnc Rostock v4 kit. But I also think the Hypercube Evolution is a good printer. The difference is the Seemecnc has good factory support and comes as a complete kit vs the total diy aspect of the Hypercube with no factory support, only community support. I like the idea that the Hypercube allows for some flexibility when building such as different extruders etc. I'm an Rc'er that has built many fixed wing and helicopter kits and flown them successfully over the years so I'm 100% sure that the Seemecnc kit would get built and work as advertised. On the other hand there is that sense of pride and accomplishment that comes from building something from plans. Now I have read of problems that some Hypercube builders have had and I'm curious to know of the percentage of successful builds there are, or are many Hypercubes a perpetual work in progress? And I'm not trying to start any format wars here but a good well tuned Hypercube made from premium parts vs a well tuned delta with premium parts such as the Seemecnc, which would produce the better prints, or would it be a wash? Is there a design advantage of one format over the other that lends itself to higher print quality? I can see that the potential for aggravation would be much greater building Hypercube vs the Seemecnc but the Hypercube could likely be built for less than the Rostock V4 and there is that accomplishment factor again. Your thoughts on this are welcome.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2019 03:47PM by luckyflyer.

If you really want a sense of pride and accomplishment, build your own design. Take the best aspects you can find from different designs and combine them, or come up with your own solutions to problems you don't think have been solved well by others. The research is very educational and the build is more fun that way.

I believe that a corexy may have a slight leg up on a delta in terms of print resolution because the resolution is constant regardless of coordinates. As I understand deltas, resolution decreases away from the center of the bed. Maybe not enough to matter. I'm sure a delta expert will chime in here.

All 3D printers are always a work-in-progress until you decide to stop tweaking and build the next, better one.

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

I have no where near the knowledge to make rational decisions regarding the shortcomings of any 3d printer, by having only owned one low end printer I simply have not paid my dues if you will. But I do take seriously those who do speak to the strengths and weakness of various printers based on their ownership of multiple if not many different printers and will generally follow their advise. Tdd, dc42 et al. on this forum have probably forgotten more than I ever knew about these beast's so when they speak I listen.

Look at other's designs and think about what can go wrong, starting with the printer you have now. Make a list of every little and big thing that is wrong with it and think about what you'd have to do to make it better. Forget about cost and just think about the mechanics/electronics. Look at photos of printers you see online. Start picking apart the designs based on your experience with your own printer. Did they make the same errors or did they fix the problems? How? That's how you start to develop a critical eye for this stuff. Then set some goals and try your own design and start posting drawings and questions.

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

I just built a CoreXY printer using the design provided by BLV (Ben Levi), thingiverse project [www.thingiverse.com] and It was quite fun. So I just wanted to throw that design out there. You will have to print some of the parts on your existing printer first and the printer has designs for heights of 365, 465 and 565. It is easy to modify if you can do some of your own basic designing/modeling using software like fusion 360. I am using the bed designed for the railcore II 300ZL on mine so my printer can do 340x, 325y and 465z for print size.

The BLV looks like a very nice printer, How is the print quality?

If you have never built your own printer before, then I suggest you choose either a good kit or a good existing design. You will have plenty of opportunity to make changes to it later. Here are some options:

Delta kit: SeeMeCNC Rostock 4 or Artemis
Delta self-build: my large Kossel design (see link in my signature)
CoreXY kit: RailCore or E3D Tool Changer
CoreXY self-build: RailCore, Hypercube

My take on Delta vs. CoreXY:

- Both need to be built accurately and solidly to work well
- Delta is mechanically simpler and costs less than CoreXY, but is still not cheap to get a good quality printer with decent build volume - mine cost over £1000
- CoreXY will cost more and take up more desk space, but is more versatile. It's hard to do multi-extrusion or tool changing on a delta, and Bowden extruders are normally used on deltas (sometimes with a flying extruder to shorten the Bowden tube).

The RailCore guys are working on a tool changing variant, which could be an interesting upgrade if you choose that design.

HTH David

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/19/2019 04:17PM by dc42.

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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
luckyflyer
The BLV looks like a very nice printer, How is the print quality?

I'm still tweaking it but so far pretty good. Much better than my Taz6 and on par but faster than my modded Ender 3.

The picture I attached is a custom knob I made for my neighbor printed in Priline Carbon PC filament.

[prntscr.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/19/2019 07:01PM by dysan.

I'm still looking around, I won't be able to order until the first of Oct. I have found this [bd3dcustoms.com] , looks interesting.

dc42, I completely agree with your advice.

I'd recommend going for a coreXY. For a beginner, especially if you're thinking of self sourcing/self designing, a coreXY is much simpler, more intuitive and forgiving. If something is off with the print, like squareness, dimensions, flatness etc. it's much easier and more intuitive to diagnose. I'm not saying deltas are bad, or can't achieve good results. More so that they are more "fussy" mechanically. On a coreXY if one rail is slightly longer than it should be, no big deal. If the two Y rails are a few mm further apart in reality compared to the plans? Again, no big deal. If the print is a few degrees off square, easy diagnosis and easy fix. On a delta if any one of the arms aren't the same in length it'll cause issues (granted, whether they matter depends on your use case) that aren't as easy or at least not as intuitive to diagnose. Same if the towers aren't all parallel to each other, square to the print surface and equidistant (with a specific distance) to each other it'll cause errors in the prints because the kinematics wont quite match up with the real printer. On a cartesian/coreXY machine the kinematics are constant and don't depend on the mechanics beyond the basic assumptions of squareness.

Another thing to consider is space. If you want a 300mm CUBE build volume a coreXY will be much more space efficient if that is of concern. A delta will be taller by default which may or may not be an issue. However to fit a 300mm square in a delta print bed which is typically round, you'd need a ~425mm diameter print bed.

I second TDD's suggestion to design/build your own. It'll take a bit longer but in the end it's a rewarding accomplishment. Not only will you know exactly how everything works if you need to fix or modify it, but you can make it exactly to your needs and you will learn a lot in the process regarding mechanical design, CAD (if you're not already familiar with it) and more. There are plenty of people here that would be happy to give suggestions and advice to help you along with your design.