Building a large 3d Printer for pattern making

HI there,

I'm a furniture designer currently on placement in London, learning to program Cnc Machines (Flexicam) to make high end furniture.
I've almost finished building a mendal but I find the scale of it a little limited and I'm looking to build a bigger printer with a printable area of at least a cube of 1m.
The Idea would be to print parts with wax which could then be used to cast aluminium parts.

At this stage I'm looking for as much information as possible from people who have tried to do anything similar.
If you live in London and are interested in the project perhaps we could meet?
I also have full access to a cnc machine, which I am planing to use to make most of the mechanical stuff.
I have very little experience in electronics but I'm hoping to use the same components as the Mendal?

Any help/advice is much appreciated!

Many Thanks
Charles Fried

Delta bots are scalable, I and a few others plan to build a 1 meter 3D printer, and larger.
Our problem today is that the software to drive an inverted delta robot is not able to print accurately.
A few of us are working on the machine design, and more importantly the software.

If your product "fits air" (i.e. accurate reproduction of geometric form and dimensions are not important),
as most external features of a piece of furniture are,
then you probably could use the inverted delta printer software in it's current state.

Accurately = Deviating only slightly or within acceptable limits from a standard.

New arm design for Simpson style printer.
[forums.reprap.org]

Grounded Experimental Delta Printer
[forums.reprap.org]

I'm curious, no need to answer:
What kind of plastic do you pan to use?
Can you post a picture of the piece of furniture that you want to 3D print?
How many do you want to manufacture?
Is the cost of manufacturing a concern?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/03/2013 04:32PM by A2.