Folger Tech Kossel Delta 2020 Full 3D Printer Kit w/Auto-Level

My box was also freaking destroyed; however, nothing was broke and besides the missing parts my 3d parts were of good quality

What speeds are you seeing on these, and what reliability once you get them up & running?

Thanks,

I havent gotten around to building mine but my box also didnt look great. Everything inside looled ok though. Gonna start building it this week.

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Djkingsley
I received my delta kit from Folger today, ordered on March 10 so almost 30 days including shipping.

I also ordered March 10th from ebay -they issued me a tracking # on March 30.The package still hasn't been picked up by UPS as of today. (paid a little more for UPS BTW)
This is about my 20th business day (I ordered when they still had 10 day shipping on eBay listing) - been almost a month of total time....
and now I guess I can pretty much count on something being missing or, possibly broke whenever I actually get it...

I did a detail inventory and everything is in the box that was supposed to be there according to the packing lists. There was even a ceramic looking screw driver for tuning the pots on the ramps board and a small sample of PLA.

My one gripe so far is that you use 12 - M3x8 bolts on each corner and the packing list says you get 30 of them. In my book 3x12 is 36 not 30.

Off to the hardware store at lunch tomorrow to pick up some hardware and a ball end 2.5 mm hex key there are some very tight spaces to work in.

Dennis

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SnapFracturePop
What speeds are you seeing on these, and what reliability once you get them up & running?

Thanks,

Speeds: At first I left the cura and slicer profiles provided stock so whatever speeds they are set to (i think 40mm/s) provides decent looking prints, prints that are better quality than the parts that came with the kit.

I tried a couple parts at 60mm/s without issue but the parts had more stringiness to them and the infill on narrow areas would not always fill in correctly (I think this had to do more with retract though).

I tried a part at 80mm/s, it printed kind of, but lots of skipping on the extruder motor especially on long lines.

I tried a part at 100mm/s, would not print, the extruder seems to run way to fast and skips constantly.

I think there must be some scaling for the extruder speed that does not match up with the machine speed, causing it to overdrive or something. I havent spent any time working on it because 40mm/s is fast enough for me and the prints look good, if you are able to get faster speeds I would like to see what you have to change to get there.

Assembling this printer was not straightforward, I compared this thread, the manual in the makerfront gdrive, and the assembly video already on youtube.

From those three sources I took what I considered the best practices and my assembly went fairly well.

I did have a couple hiccups:
--I bent up two of the teeny tiny molex connectors trying to crimp them with pliers and all I had to use in place was the piezo speaker connector out of my computer, soldering is easier anyways.
--I made the rods 250mm and put the rails all the way up as high as I could, and now the effector will not reach the entire build plate. I get a 160mm circle at the plate but about 4cm up it is much larger. Tomorrow I will be moving the rails back down a little so that I can use the entire build plate.
--Two of my glue joints on the rods broke this morning because one of the rails began binding very very badly. The x axis linear bearing would catch and stick in place so the belt jumped teeth on the pulley and messed up the print. I read a comment here about using copious amounts of wd40 to de-gunk the rails then I used motor oil in an eye dropper to lightly oil the bearings and rails. They are now much smoother and have not had the issue repeat. Only time will tell the interval I need to repeat this on, planning on doing it weekly or before I start any really long or important prints.

As an small upgrade that would also solve the second and third issue. I was looking at Haydn Huntley's zero backlash magnetic setup here: [www.youmagine.com]. Considering just using the 288 mm rods he makes, but haven't put any calculation to this to see what the end result would get me build dimension wise. $64 plus the cost of the delrin wheels is not bad to solve the linear slide issues, and give me full use of the build plate and then some (I will probably have to get a bigger plate to realize full benefit). But the downside would be reducing the usable z axis.

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jculver09


--I bent up two of the teeny tiny molex connectors trying to crimp them with pliers and all I had to use in place was the piezo speaker connector out of my computer, soldering is easier anyways.
--I made the rods 250mm and put the rails all the way up as high as I could, and now the effector will not reach the entire build plate. I get a 160mm circle at the plate but about 4cm up it is much larger. Tomorrow I will be moving the rails back down a little so that I can use the entire build plate.
--Two of my glue joints on the rods broke this morning because one of the rails began binding very very badly. The x axis linear bearing would catch and stick in place so the belt jumped teeth on the pulley and messed up the print. I read a comment here about using copious amounts of wd40 to de-gunk the rails then I used motor oil in an eye dropper to lightly oil the bearings and rails. They are now much smoother and have not had the issue repeat. Only time will tell the interval I need to repeat this on, planning on doing it weekly or before I start any really long or important prints.

I bought extra rods, screw posts (6mm) magnets and steel balls with m3 threads in them to make a magnetic effector once I had this up and running. I was wondering about moving the rails up myself and then going with the longer arms. How does this affect overall build height versus the usable area on the platter?

Thevisad

There is a calculator posted earlier in this thread (posted by vorpal on page 13). I dont think it is 100% perfect for predicting the outcome, but at first glance it seems to be close. I planned on measuring my current setup, checking it against the calculator, and using the difference I find to give me an improvement on the calculators prediction to determine if it is worth it to do the upgraded length.

As I understand it, the longer the rods the wider the diameter of your usable area on the build plate (assuming your rails and lower stops are low enough to allow it). However, the longer your rods are the more useful area is lost at the top and upper sides.

I think of the usable volume as somewhat egg shaped with the egg standing up on the rounder end and the point straight up. The longer the rods, the shorter and fatter it will be the shorter the rods the taller and narrower. One thing to keep in mind, no matter the length of your rods, accuracy decreases near the edges so building well within the available dimensions is a good idea.

Part of the reason I want longer rods is because I intend to eliminate the linear bearings in favor of running delrin wheels on the extrusion using new carriages. Doing this will move the axis on which the carriage moves vertically out a couple cm and partially take up that extra 38mm rod length vs. what I have now. And in the extreme future I could always purcahse the extrusions to make the side rails 360mm and with the 288mm rods I would be able to utilize a much larger build volume then I can currently

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2015 04:06AM by jculver09.

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jculver09
There is a calculator posted earlier in this thread (posted by vorpal on page 13). I dont think it is 100% perfect for predicting the outcome, but at first glance it seems to be close. I planned on measuring my current setup, checking it against the calculator, and using the difference I find to give me an improvement on the calculators prediction to determine if it is worth it to do the upgraded length.

As I understand it, the longer the rods the wider the diameter of your usable area on the build plate (assuming your rails and lower stops are low enough to allow it). However, the longer your rods are the more useful area is lost at the top and upper sides.

I think of the usable volume as somewhat egg shaped with the egg standing up on the rounder end and the point straight up. The longer the rods, the shorter and fatter it will be the shorter the rods the taller and narrower. One thing to keep in mind, no matter the length of your rods, accuracy decreases near the edges so building well within the available dimensions is a good idea.

Part of the reason I want longer rods is because I intend to eliminate the linear bearings in favor of running delrin wheels on the extrusion using new carriages. Doing this will move the axis on which the carriage moves vertically out a couple cm and partially take up that extra 38mm rod length vs. what I have now. And in the extreme future I could always purcahse the extrusions to make the side rails 360mm and with the 288mm rods I would be able to utilize a much larger build volume then I can currently

I purchased Haydn's rod set. I also initially set up the delrin roller sliders. I noticed the delrin roller mount has a lot more radial twist play than the original rails have. I never actually tried the delrin rollers because of this as I suspect this will allow the effector to resonate more when it changes direction, with this less rigid mount. I instead found some magnetic effector and rail mounts on Thingiverse and modified them to acccept Haydn's ball mounts. I uploaded my modified parts to thingiverse here: [www.thingiverse.com]
I initially setup everything this way with his 288mm rods. This ended up not working very good as my effector now could reach 2 to 3 inches outside my build plate, included easily smacking my power supply. In addition to this, my build height was reduced drastically.

I decided to shorten Haydn's rods from 288mm to 235mm. They are effectually much longer as the new effector plate and carriage rails each add effective length as they both have the ball mounts sticking up or down, respectively. With this setup, I now have a build area of 200mm in diameter. At the corners I can actually build off the plate if needed and my height is 245mm at the center and bout 205 at the edges. This is quite a drastic improvement over the stock setup and with the nice benefit of much greater precision with zero backlash and very little noticable resonance in my prints. If you look a few pages back in this thread I posted some of the pictures of the prints I created that are no larger than a quarter, with amazing detail. I have not yet found the limit to the detail I can produce with this setup. I give credit for this ability to Haydn's rods and ball studs. I highly recommend them to everyone.

See attached pics for more detail...

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2015 05:02PM by mmcginnis9272.

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mmcginnis9272
I instead found some magnetic effector and rail mounts on Thingiverse and modified them to acccept Haydn's ball mounts. I uploaded my modified parts to thingiverse here: [www.thingiverse.com]
I initially setup everything this way with his 288mm rods. This ended up not working very good as my effector now could reach 2 to 3 inches outside my build plate, included easily smacking my power supply. In addition to this, my build height was reduced drastically.

Awesome, thanks! I will look over those, the magnets I bought look like a flat disc with a angled hole in the middle to accept the ball, so a little different then your design. They look more like the original then some of the other parts on the site.

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thevisad

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mmcginnis9272
I instead found some magnetic effector and rail mounts on Thingiverse and modified them to acccept Haydn's ball mounts. I uploaded my modified parts to thingiverse here: [www.thingiverse.com]
I initially setup everything this way with his 288mm rods. This ended up not working very good as my effector now could reach 2 to 3 inches outside my build plate, included easily smacking my power supply. In addition to this, my build height was reduced drastically.

Awesome, thanks! I will look over those, the magnets I bought look like a flat disc with a angled hole in the middle to accept the ball, so a little different then your design. They look more like the original then some of the other parts on the site.

Yeah, the problem with those is that the ball is in direct contact with the donut magnet which caused a lot of friction. Besides stressing the system from the friction, the chrome coating on the magnets will not last long. Haydn's design creates a fraction of a millimeter spacing between the magnet and ball, and the ball rids in the plastic cup on the end of the rod.

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mmcginnis9272

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thevisad

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mmcginnis9272
I instead found some magnetic effector and rail mounts on Thingiverse and modified them to acccept Haydn's ball mounts. I uploaded my modified parts to thingiverse here: [www.thingiverse.com]
I initially setup everything this way with his 288mm rods. This ended up not working very good as my effector now could reach 2 to 3 inches outside my build plate, included easily smacking my power supply. In addition to this, my build height was reduced drastically.

Awesome, thanks! I will look over those, the magnets I bought look like a flat disc with a angled hole in the middle to accept the ball, so a little different then your design. They look more like the original then some of the other parts on the site.

Yeah, the problem with those is that the ball is in direct contact with the donut magnet which caused a lot of friction. Besides stressing the system from the friction, the chrome coating on the magnets will not last long. Haydn's design creates a fraction of a millimeter spacing between the magnet and ball, and the ball rids in the plastic cup on the end of the rod.

Hmm, good point and a great way to cover (heh) the issue. I have a ton of round cleaning patches I bought on accident for the wrong caliber and had thought to put that in between the ball and magnet. They are little cotton discs and would lower the friction dramaitcally. Another design I saw on there did a pocket for the magnet and placed a socket above it to receive the ball. I was going to play around with a few designs, I bought a bunch of different types of magnets to have fun with. How does your's hold up under high speed printing?

Thank you mmcginnis. This answers just about every question I had about setting these up.

The geometry of the effector and carriages is what I think the calculator I mentioned is missing.

So you would recommend I order 200mm long rods (I am assuming this is still measured center to center on the balls). I may order them from him or make them myself because he has a 3 week lead time, it looks like when you shortened the rods you still used the ends he provided, I was thinking these would be glued in is this not the case?

The other calculator simply multiples the horizontal extrusion length by 0.8 resulting in 240mm for rod length and no account for effector or rail offsets.

I posted a link earlier to a far more detailed delta calculator which takes into account more offsets.
Reposting:
Detailed delta printer spreadsheet

Just spread out my parts. Looks to be complete. I did get the 36 tooth not the 20 tooth. Do you guys suggest I order the 20 tooth instead? Also what are most of you cutting your rods at? I know a lot of people have been saying the length on the manual is no good. Is this the case?

I cut mine right at the 230 mark as indicated in the manual. I am more concerned about height then I am width/depth in my prints (for this printer's use). I read this earlier (great read!!) [nutz95.wordpress.com] which gave a ton of detail that I was missing. My kit must have just been the one that was put together first, I got 20 tooth, a 12v hot bed that hits 110 (115 last night) without an issue and quickly and all the parts were ok for the most part. Only a few items seemed to sourced from the shenzen market that day.

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cman8
Just spread out my parts. Looks to be complete. I did get the 36 tooth not the 20 tooth. Do you guys suggest I order the 20 tooth instead? Also what are most of you cutting your rods at? I know a lot of people have been saying the length on the manual is no good. Is this the case?

Here is my videos of us throwing it together so you can get a timeline of what to "expect" [www.twitch.tv] got my first successful print last night and forgot to put a home command in I guess. So when the print finished you see the motors shut off and the arms drop a bit, sticking the hot head in the perfectly finished part I had just spent 48 minutes printing. Something happened to the audio in the last couple. You can see me fiddling with the servo arm to manually swing it into place to do the bed leveling.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2015 01:47PM by thevisad.

I reached out to Folgertech via ebay yesterday and received an update within 3 hours to contact the orders department if possible, since he was the sales guy and did not have the techinical expertise needed. He provided the tech support email as well in case I had any questions they might be able to answer. I reached out to orders, John at folgertech replied within a few hours asking for my address and I received a notice this morning that a package had been shipped first class mail, so it should arrive by Friday.

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thevisad
How does your's hold up under high speed printing?

I've printed about 3 KG of filament through my machine with the mag effector setup and so far I see no noticable wear on the sockets, and I haven't even lubed them like I thought I should. I simply forgot to and they are still holding up fine. Haydn prints them in PLA.

I noticed a dramatic increase in print speed with the longer rods. It makes sense to me because with the belts traveling at the same speed, with longer rods the effector has to move side to side faster. I am no math genius, but it seems to me that all the speed ratings (like 30mm/sec for instance) are based upon the belt speed and not the effector speed. If the software were accounting for the longer rods, it would have to slow down the belt speed to make the effective print speed stay at 30mm/sec and I am certain that my effector moves much faster than it did with the shorter rods. If this is my imagination, and the software DOES slow down the belt to maintain the rated speed, then one should then be able to increase the print speed even higher befor the motors start skipping due to CPU limitations. Some one smarter than me, please correct or confirm what I am saying.

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jculver09
Thank you mmcginnis. This answers just about every question I had about setting these up.

The geometry of the effector and carriages is what I think the calculator I mentioned is missing.

So you would recommend I order 200mm long rods (I am assuming this is still measured center to center on the balls). I may order them from him or make them myself because he has a 3 week lead time, it looks like when you shortened the rods you still used the ends he provided, I was thinking these would be glued in is this not the case?

Haydn only sells rods in 288mm lengths. I asked him for shorter ones and he said he only has one jig that is set for 288mm.

If his lead time is three weeks, this is new, as he shipped mine out the next day.

I first made a jig from an extra piece of OpenBeam where I put two bolts with nuts sticking out, kinda like the original instructions say to do. Then I stuck a 3/8 ball bearing in each magnet socket and let the other end of each ball bearing stick to each post that was potruding form the OpenBeam jig. This allows you to make all your rods the exact same length. And yes, he glues them together. I simply cut off on end flush with the plastic casing, used a drill to drill out the carbon fiber that was glued into the hole, cut the rod to length and super glued it back in the hole.

I just measured my rods and I was a little off on my last post. Counting a 3/8 ball bearing stuck in each mag socket, they are exactly 250mm. The true rod length is measured to the center of the ball bearings. Since a 3/8 ball bearing is eactly 9.525 mm that makes the rod length actually 240.475mm long.

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cman8
Just spread out my parts. Looks to be complete. I did get the 36 tooth not the 20 tooth. Do you guys suggest I order the 20 tooth instead? Also what are most of you cutting your rods at? I know a lot of people have been saying the length on the manual is no good. Is this the case?

It is really up to you to decide but I recommend the 20T pulleys as they give more resolution at the expense of slower printing. The 36 tooth ones will give you the opposite. Also, 36T cause your motors to be more likely to skip than does the 20T. If you run 36T, you will want to increase your motor voltage to provide more power to overcome the skipping, causing them to run hotter. Without heat sinks and/or fans, you then run the risk of the PLA motor mounts melting. I personally use 20T pulleys, run a higher voltage to my motors, and have heat sinks and cooling fans. I am probably overly concerned about skipping than I need to be, but that being said, I have not had a single motor skip in over 4 spools of filament since I set it up this way.

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mmcginnis9272

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cman8
Just spread out my parts. Looks to be complete. I did get the 36 tooth not the 20 tooth. Do you guys suggest I order the 20 tooth instead? Also what are most of you cutting your rods at? I know a lot of people have been saying the length on the manual is no good. Is this the case?

It is really up to you to decide but I recommend the 20T pulleys as they give more resolution at the expense of slower printing. The 36 tooth ones will give you the opposite. Also, 36T cause your motors to be more likely to skip than does the 20T. If you run 36T, you will want to increase your motor voltage to provide more power to overcome the skipping, causing them to run hotter. Without heat sinks and/or fans, you then run the risk of the PLA motor mounts melting. I personally use 20T pulleys, run a higher voltage to my motors, and have heat sinks and cooling fans. I am probably overly concerned about skipping than I need to be, but that being said, I have not had a single motor skip in over 4 spools of filament since I set it up this way.

It's a shame these machines can't print HDPE. It's very stout and the steppers wont melt it, My CNC Machine has HDPE motor mounts and my Nema 23's get pretty hot, hot enough you can't hold your hand on them.

I had the same experience with Folger. I ordered mine on March 9 and still haven't got it. I did complain, politely, to Danny at Folger and got lots of apologies and excuses. I'm sure they're busy but they really shouldn't be telling people they ship in ten days. The delays are much longer and they know it and they just don't tell anyone because they don't want to lose orders.

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3D52

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mmcginnis9272

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cman8
Just spread out my parts. Looks to be complete. I did get the 36 tooth not the 20 tooth. Do you guys suggest I order the 20 tooth instead? Also what are most of you cutting your rods at? I know a lot of people have been saying the length on the manual is no good. Is this the case?

It is really up to you to decide but I recommend the 20T pulleys as they give more resolution at the expense of slower printing. The 36 tooth ones will give you the opposite. Also, 36T cause your motors to be more likely to skip than does the 20T. If you run 36T, you will want to increase your motor voltage to provide more power to overcome the skipping, causing them to run hotter. Without heat sinks and/or fans, you then run the risk of the PLA motor mounts melting. I personally use 20T pulleys, run a higher voltage to my motors, and have heat sinks and cooling fans. I am probably overly concerned about skipping than I need to be, but that being said, I have not had a single motor skip in over 4 spools of filament since I set it up this way.

It's a shame these machines can't print HDPE. It's very stout and the steppers wont melt it, My CNC Machine has HDPE motor mounts and my Nema 23's get pretty hot, hot enough you can't hold your hand on them.

HDPE extrusion point is 230 c from what I can gather, why would it not be able to handle it? Doing a google for that comes up with a few items of people turning HDPE into printable filaments. Igus is sending me some samples of their bearing filament, I should have that next week sometime to play around with and that has a higher temp requirement from what I gather. I have been considering getting some of the carbon fiber/nanotube stuff that is available as well to play around with.

Awesome. Thanks for the advice. I think ill order some 20t then.

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Vanbot
I had the same experience with Folger. I ordered mine on March 9 and still haven't got it. I did complain, politely, to Danny at Folger and got lots of apologies and excuses. I'm sure they're busy but they really shouldn't be telling people they ship in ten days. The delays are much longer and they know it and they just don't tell anyone because they don't want to lose orders.

Here is an email I recieved from Dan at Folger Tech this morning: We are a bit backed up on the Kossel right now due to a supply issue with our plastics vendor in Ohio. I am just in the process of trying to notify all our customers and I think I saw a contact form with your name on it this morning. We are behind about an additional 3-6 business days on the kit. I have plenty pre packed and ready to go just waiting on the plastics. You should get a tracking number in the next day or 2 and then it might sit for another day before you see movement as I prepare it for shipment. Thanks for your patience.
I ordered mine on the 18th of March...

Ordered mine March 10 - issued a tracking number on March 30 (after I sent an email) -a week later and tracking is still showing no pickup/no movement... Today I message them again - no response but suddenly my tracking shows that it was scanned (minutes after I sent my almost friendly email)

I'm really over Folger Techs supply problems ... -worst transaction I've ever had on eBay so far. Any missing parts or other problems with the package at this point will certainly cause an aneurysm. They better not ship without the plastics.

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mmcginnis9272
Haydn only sells rods in 288mm lengths. I asked him for shorter ones and he said he only has one jig that is set for 288mm.

If his lead time is three weeks, this is new, as he shipped mine out the next day.

Emailed him yesterday about this and he said that custom lengths are available up to 490mm, but they're more expensive.

I also found out the lead time is because he is waiting for a new batch of studs from the manufacturer.

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3D52

It's a shame these machines can't print HDPE. It's very stout and the steppers wont melt it, My CNC Machine has HDPE motor mounts and my Nema 23's get pretty hot, hot enough you can't hold your hand on them.

I am almost certain this machine can print HDPE. While I have not printed in HDPE, i have printed in PET+ which uses a similar temp. I had to print a bit slower, but it worked well. As long as them temp can be reached, we can print it. I'd love to be proven right or wrong on this, however.

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jculver09

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mmcginnis9272
Haydn only sells rods in 288mm lengths. I asked him for shorter ones and he said he only has one jig that is set for 288mm.

If his lead time is three weeks, this is new, as he shipped mine out the next day.

Emailed him yesterday about this and he said that custom lengths are available up to 490mm, but they're more expensive.

I also found out the lead time is because he is waiting for a new batch of studs from the manufacturer.

That explains it. He must have decided start making custom lengths recently as well. Cool.