DeltaPrintr review

[626Pilot]

I backed the DeltaPrintr kickstarter in late 2013. For $500 shipped, I got this:

Build Envelope

• About 12" tall by 9" diameter.

Structure

• All structural parts are made out of either 5-ply plywood, or laser-cut acrylic.
• Aluminum extrusions are 15x15mm, compared to the Rostock's 25x25mm.

Electronics

• Power: 12V brick.
• Controller: Azteeg X3L populated with 4 out of a possible 5 stepper drivers.
• Panel: Mini-VIKI LCD.
• Steppers: Standard 200 steps/rev NEMA-17, just like on a Rostock, mounted on the bottom.
• Top endstops: Mechanical, like on the Rostock but smaller.
• Bottom endstops: Three FSRs connected in parallel.

Hot End

• Hot end: Generic J-head
• Hot end snaps into effector and is not secured, relying on friction to keep it in place (yes, really)
• PEEK cooling fan: None (yes, really)
• Heater held in place by a grub screw
• Thermistor held in place by friction fit + wires lashed to the heat sink (yes, really)
• Part cooling: None.
• Extruder: Driven by a regular NEMA-17 stepper, no gear reduction.

Cable Management, which is Awful, and also Bad and Not Very Good

• Stepper wires wrapped several times around all the motors like a serpentine belt, along with endstop wires, before connecting to the board (yes, really)
• Endstop wires run along the outside grooves of the extrusions and held in place via tension alone (yes, really)
• Hot end power+thermistor wires just hang sloppily off the side and have to be manually held up during bed leveling so they don't interfere (yes... really... this is not a joke, they really did this)

Firmware and Bed Leveling

• Firmware: Marlin (yes, really) hacked to use FSRs for bed leveling
• Z probe: Three FSRs, one near each tower, connected to the heated bed thermistor port on the controller in parallel

Drivetrain
The three axis steppers are mounted under the bottom plate of the frame. They drive spools that sit over the bottom plate. Through a system of static (non-turning) plastic pulleys, the spools drive fishing line (printer ships with 60-lb. test) out towards the towers and in then up to the carriages. The line is supposed to be simply tied to the carriages, but this means you can't remove them without destroying them, or using a fancier knot than I know how to tie, so I'm working on a better solution. Delta arms are made out of paired acrylic cut-outs, two per "arm" and four per carriage. This setup is necessary to get the arms out of the way of the Traxxas ball joints, which are used on both the carriages and the effector platform. The arms are more prone to flexion than either the SeeMeCNC or Trick Laser arms, which are far stiffer, while weighing about the same. There are no rubber bands to help control the arms, either - they would probably flex the arms too much, so I wouldn't bother.

Bed
Laser-cut acrylic. No bed heat. You will need some blue painter's tape, and you will only be printing PLA.

Assembly
The printer ships in a single flat pack that doesn't weigh too much. The part count is low, and the assembly is fairly easy. It took me about 8 hours in total. (This is about 1/2 as long as it would take me to build a Rostock MAX kit today.) The towers are fully constrained on the top and bottom plates, better than they are on the Rostock MAX - way less fiddly. You don't have to go around and ensure the tower heights are all equal - the towers sit on the bottom plate, and the top plate sits on them. I would still like to see something constraining the outside of each tower, something that would wrap around and reduce the possibility of tower lean. Oh well. The printer is assembled according to a YouTube video, which was shot in HD and makes it pretty easy to see everything you have to do. Well... almost everything...

Finishing assembly & calibration
The assembly video stops short of explaining how to mount the print surface and spool holder, although they're pretty easy to figure out. It also fails to explain how to connect the printer to a computer, and how to do the all-important bed leveling calibration. This is not explained anywhere on their site, or in their still-incomplete assembly manual. I had to go digging through their forums for awhile to figure everything out. If you're using Repetier Host on Linux with Mono 2.x, you have to recompile Marlin to use a 115,200BPS port speed because they have it shipping with the stock 250,000 setting. They give you a place to download the firmware and there's a thread explaining everything, so that's not too bad, but the people behind DeltaPrintr are not the ones telling you how to do anything. You have to rely on their other customers to figure out the hard stuff.

The printer is calibrated by sending G28 and then G29, which taps the print surface in a grid to figure out how to level it. It seems this is necessary every single time you turn on the printer, which is annoying because it takes awhile.

First Print
I haven't made it this far. The hot end heats up and runs filament just fine, and even without a PEEK fan, seems to recover from sitting still while heated up pretty well - no jams thus far. The G29 calibration runs, but apparently it produces bad results because the hot end digs into the painter's tape in several locations. (This is a common problem reported on the forums.) Also, the protective tape on one of the FSRs fell off, exposing the sticky top of the sensor. This adhered to the print surface, and when I lifted it off, it destroyed the FSR, so now I have to order a new FSR harness. I don't actually know how to do that - their web store has only a few parts, none of them FSRs - so I wrote to them through Kickstarter and am waiting to hear back.

Impressions
I count seven "yes, really"s. These are areas where the printer needs serious attention.

I can pick up the printer by one tower and lift it very easily because it weighs very little, perhaps 6-8 pounds. It's a lot easier to build than a Rostock MAX because there are far fewer parts. The way they constrain the towers is much more logical than how it's done on the MAX. The fishing line drive is a little tricky - it has to be tightened down a few times, and I haven't yet figured out a good way to hook the fishing line to the carriages without tying a knot that can never be untied. I snapped the fishing line they shipped with it the day I finished assembling the printer, and it doesn't splice too easy, so I had to order another reel from Amazon - probably a good idea to keep that stuff around.

If the printer tries to move the carriages up past the endstops, or down to the point where the hot end digs into the build platform, the fishing line will become improperly spooled at the steppers. You have to remove the build surface, and usually, you have to also unhook the line from the carriage in order to have enough slack to fix it. Once calibrated and running properly, this probably won't be a big issue. It's just time-consuming to have to do it over and over.

This printer is cute, and I think it has a lot of potential. However, I do not recommend that anyone buys this printer until the following problems are solved:

• Incomplete instructions.
• Laser-cut parts are supposed to be open-sourced, but they aren't yet. They say they'll do it once all the Kickstarter kits have shipped, but that process started about a month ago. I can't imagine they haven't finished shipping them yet, or why it matters.
• No ticket system or e-mail for for support on the website - you have to use the forums.
• Web store should carry every individual component you need to repair things that break, but it has almost none, including the FSR harness I can't proceed further without.
• Cable management is straight up janky. At a bare, bare minimum, they need to figure out something better than just having the hot end wires hanging slack off the edge of the effector. That seems like fire hazard territory, to be honest.
• No PEEK fan, a Cardinal sin on a PLA-only printer.
• No heated bed.
• Reliance on Marlin firmware, annoying because you have to recompile it for almost every last little thing.
• Protective tape easily comes off FSRs, and if that happens, they will stick to the build surface and be destroyed the next time you have to remove it. (Which you will, a number of times, before the printer is running properly.)

[Glacian22]

Good lord, I can't believe they actually shipped it in that state. I get that it's supposed to be a super low cost delta, so you're not expecting a heated bed or all metal hotend or fancy electronics, but wow. That hotend wiring combined with the friction fit...that's a straight up recipe for burning down someone's house. They couldn't add $.50 to each machine and put in some little wire guides, or something? Oy.

[BenTheRighteous]

Very entertaining review. I'm sorry that's what you got for your money though...

[Nylocke]

From what I understand about the J-Head it doesn't often require a PEEK fan like the SeeMe one does. Most people that I see running it (even Johann) don't have a PEEK fan. Now the lack of a part cooling fan on a PLA specific printer is disappointing. In the past when I've looked I think I found the U-Joints to be more expensive than aluminum or CF tubes, interesting that they couldn't spare enough for decent arms but they could do decent joints..

[Polygonhell]

To be fair the early RostockMax V1 printers shipped with no peek fan and no layer fan. When I spoke to John, I was as far as he knew the first person to ever print PLA on the printer. I used a large fan to the side of the printer for cooling and to move air over the peek section.

My biggest criticism of almost all kits is lack of attention to detail with things like cable management, you often see good physical design and then some assumption you some how wire it together with no clear instructions of how to run wires or where to place electronics. It's why NopHeads mendel 90 impresses me far more than the Prusa I3. Unfortunately you can't really source a mendel 90 outside the UK.

I've invested a lot of time in fishing line drives, they'd are attractive in some ways, but without a good way to adjust tension they are a pain in the ass.

How is the stiffness of the frame? My experience with 15mm extrusions is they tend to be very torsion ally weak, I have them on a couple of printers here, but they are on the smaller side, and thee delta printer looks taller than my kossel.

At $500 I'm surprised it's as complete as it is

[bubbasnow]

Dont you think that huge spool in the center of a single layer board on top pulls the 3 towers together over time?

[Jimustanguitar]

Lots of people that jumped on the 3D printing bandwagon have no prior mechanical or design experience at all. They can have good ideas, but assembling machines, or designing them to be assembled is not in their wheelhouse.

That's one of the main things I love about the SeeMeCNC stuff, those guys are tool and die machinists, mold makers, and tradesmen that have an awesome idea of what they're doing.

[precisionpete]

Nice review of that printer. Seems like you better be able to fix things before buying one of those!

My pet peeve is why do companies HIDE? No phone number, No address to even know where they are located?
My best guess is New York after bouncing around on their site.

I could have bought my Orion from a company that was closer to me but they hid their physical address so SeeMeCNC got my order directly.

Rant off

[626Pilot]

Good lord, I can't believe they actually shipped it in that state. I get that it's supposed to be a super low cost delta, so you're not expecting a heated bed or all metal hotend or fancy electronics, but wow. That hotend wiring combined with the friction fit...that's a straight up recipe for burning down someone's house. They couldn't add $.50 to each machine and put in some little wire guides, or something? Oy.

In a way, I understand. They launched a hugely successful Kickstarter straight out of college, before they could build up a lot of experience. They went waaaaay long on production, and people have probably been screaming at them about it. I expected there to be some rough edges. My theory is that they shipped when they did because of pressure from backers, and we might have received something better if they'd taken more time. (Somewhat tough to do when the Kickstarter campaign already ended over a year ago.)

From what I understand about the J-Head it doesn't often require a PEEK fan like the SeeMe one does. Most people that I see running it (even Johann) don't have a PEEK fan. Now the lack of a part cooling fan on a PLA specific printer is disappointing. In the past when I've looked I think I found the U-Joints to be more expensive than aluminum or CF tubes, interesting that they couldn't spare enough for decent arms but they could do decent joints..

People on the forums report jamming, sometimes after 20 minutes and sometimes after a few hours. I think some people are just using a single fan on an angle bracket to cool the hot end and the part at the same time.

My biggest criticism of almost all kits is lack of attention to detail with things like cable management, you often see good physical design and then some assumption you some how wire it together with no clear instructions of how to run wires or where to place electronics.

Their instructional video on how to put it together (95% of the way) is pretty good. It's in high def, clear, well-focused, and he goes through how to assemble things with views from multiple angles where needed. He also fast-forwards all the repetitive boring stuff that the audience doesn't need to sit through. In fairness, it's better than the videos that were available when I was assembling my MAX.

I've invested a lot of time in fishing line drives, they'd are attractive in some ways, but without a good way to adjust tension they are a pain in the ass.

I like the constant-tension design, with two opposed spools that send the line back and forth between each other. It seems like the best design. (This printer doesn't have that, but I've been thinking about doing a printable solution that would add that. It would be really easy to fasten to the frame.) For tensioning, this thing's top pulleys are in slots - just like on the MAX. I think that's a decent solution. How do you secure your fishing line to your carriages? These guys just use holes that you have to tie the line to. I've been experimenting with making nooses at the ends of the line and "hanging" them on screws drilled into the carriages.

How is the stiffness of the frame? My experience with 15mm extrusions is they tend to be very torsion ally weak, I have them on a couple of printers here, but they are on the smaller side, and thee delta printer looks taller than my kossel. At $500 I'm surprised it's as complete as it is

I'd say it's a little less torsionally stiff than a MAX, but more due to the plywood holding the extrusions than the extrusions themselves. I would hesitate to run the printer fast enough for it to matter, because the acrylic arms are so thin. I imagine it would be easy to get significant lash at higher accelerations.

And yeah, it's not too bad for $500. Because I'm a hobbyist, I can deal with the stuff I don't like. I just wouldn't recommend it to someone who has no experience building 3D printers from a kit.

[626Pilot]

Dont you think that huge spool in the center of a single layer board on top pulls the 3 towers together over time?

Does plywood do that? Anyway, the printer has to be autoleveled every time you turn it on. So aside from poor XY dimensional accuracy, you wouldn't notice

[DerStig]

I bought my Rostock Max at the 3D printer expo, came home with my printer then fired off a email to the deltatards pleasantly asking for my money to be refunded, after going two emails they agreed to refund the money. First time they refunded it they didn't use paypals refund function so it had the original paypal fee and a second papal fee taken out to it. two more emails and they learned how to use the refund button. I got my $750 back for my "XL" printer. Today I got notice that they were intending to ship all the "XL" Kits on march 30th....

In the meantime I've built my Max, I've been modding my max and printing ABS with my max. I'm glad that I never took delivery of the DeltaPrintr. I'd be pissed off knowing what I know now.

One other thing, I'm not saying that my Max building experience was all peaches and creme, there are some parts of the assembly manual that just plain suck.

[626Pilot]

One other thing, I'm not saying that my Max building experience was all peaches and creme, there are some parts of the assembly manual that just plain suck.

I don't know what videos are available now, but the DeltaPrintr assembly video is far and away better than what was around when I was building my MAX.

I asked them about putting the FSR harness on their web store, but they said that they were out of stock and suggested I order a new FSR from Mouser etc. They didn't say what part number, though. The web store does seem to be stocked with about 3x more stuff than it was when I wrote the review last week.

For an "only printer," I would say the DeltaPrintr would not meet my needs, mainly because it has no heated bed, but also because the way it ships right now isn't satisfactory to me. Especially the hot end wires hanging slack off the effector platform, and the fact that the hot end is just sitting in a notch with a friction fit only. Those things make me think of the word "fire". I can just imagine printing something with projecting spires, and the hot end wire gets snagged on one of them. And maybe the hot end is just loose enough that when the wire inevitably gets yanked by the moving effector, it jerks the hot end out of the notch, and it just... you know... falls. You know... somewhere. 430 degrees Fahrenheit, continuously fed with electricity, landing in some random location, on some random object. Yikes...

I remember back when I got my MAX, it was still shipping with that ridiculous over-complicated extruder that took an hour to build and adjust. Now, they ship the EZ-Struder instead, and that goes together in five minutes. I think that in a few months, the DeltaPrintr guys will get this stuff ironed out. This is just a bad time for them because at the moment, they've got more hours of work than people to do them.

[geneb]

One other thing, I'm not saying that my Max building experience was all peaches and creme, there are some parts of the assembly manual that just plain suck.

Which parts, *specifically* "just plain suck"?

g.

[Rob-E]

Hello I'm new to the forum, and well the concept of forums in general

Anyways i think i've got an idea (provided you havn't torn the thing apart for spare parts) for a quick release for the carriage line, without having a good view of the carriage i can only make the suggestion, what if you affixed one of these to the line just before where it connects to the carriage? http://www.amazon.com/20PCS-Grey-Fishin ... 160%2C160_

[626Pilot]

It's a cool idea. The ideal solution for me would be something you clamp the two ends of fishing line into, and then you adjust the tension with a screw to tighten it up - like a band clamp. Would have to be careful about how it's mounted so it doesn't wind up trying to go around a pulley and jam.

[Rob-E]

I'm trying to envision in my head -( i couldn't see too well from your pictures or the website)- how the fishing line actually attaches to the carriages, (close up pictures would be appreciated if its not asking too much) but i'm wondering if perhaps some kind of turnbuckle that you could fasten to the carriage might work? although the smallest i could find in my cursory search of amazon was still 2.2" long and seemed way overkill for fishingline

[626Pilot]

The fishing line is tied to holes that have been cut in the carriages.

[Eric]

If it were me, I'd try installing a tuning peg on the carriage. They're designed to tension a string, with far more precision than you need. Any good guitar store would have those parts for sale. Or ebay.

[Nylocke]

Hold on a sec, I gotta tune my printer to a B flat.

[626Pilot]

If it were me, I'd try installing a tuning peg on the carriage. They're designed to tension a string, with far more precision than you need. Any good guitar store would have those parts for sale. Or ebay.

That's a good idea! Looks like you can get a set for under ten bucks.

Hold on a sec, I gotta tune my printer to a B flat.

I think we're all trying to tune our printers to be flat!

[Polygonhell]

I tried tuning pegs, on a line drive, while you can make them work they don't easily hold the line, this isn't overly surprising since most knots won't hold the line because of it's incredibly low friction. What did work was passing the line through the hole knotting it off, and using the peg to wind in the loose line. Locking tuning pegs where the string is clamped like those on a PRS might work better, but they are anything but cheap.

In fact my first line drive experiments used a printed plastic piece to do exactly that, my latter ones all resorted to movable pulleys for tensioning, it proved to be simpler and more reliable.

[Rob-E]

If it were me, I'd try installing a tuning peg on the carriage. They're designed to tension a string, with far more precision than you need. Any good guitar store would have those parts for sale. Or ebay.

I think that's probably the best idea posted yet, as somebody with virtually no familiarity with musical equipment; How small do they make them?

And i'm going to the hardware store tomorrow i'll keep my eyes open when i go through the nuts and bolts section. Never know what inspiration might strike.

Right now i'm wondering if we couldn't come up with a way where you tie the line to a piece of hardware like a metal strip where its tied at one side and has like a wingnut and bolt on the other and you tighten the wingnut to put more tension on the line, but the overall idea i'm getting at is that the metal strip could be removed from the carriage without taking the slack off the line, just unscrew the strip from the carriage and slide it off, the line stays in place.

although i'm starting to realize how flawed that idea is, ( i was thinking it was a one sided carriage like the trick trucks from TL ) the above doesn't do you an good if you have to take the top of the machine off to get the carriages off, still i'll throw it out there, maybe someone can improve on the idea somehow.