The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

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The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by PartDaddy »

The "PartDaddy" is a large format delta 3D printer. The manikin in the picture is 5'-9" tall.

The build table is 1.2m (about 48") in diameter and build height 3 meters (or almost 10 feet)! The printer will use plastic pellets instead of filament. Plastic pellets will be transferred to the extruder using compressed air or vacuum. The extruder mounts directly to the platform and will be a custom designed. The general construction is similar to the standard size t-slot design I created for the Rostock MAX. However, many parts for this beast will be CNC machined aluminum.
The "PartDaddy" 3D Printer
The "PartDaddy" 3D Printer

The 5 meter tall linear t-slot rails have my Cheapskate design. The bearings will have plastic sleeves, and on one side ride on the eccentric cams. The carriage roller bearings have a spring tensioners that will allow for an even force to be applied between the bearing (with sleeve) and t-slot rail. The reason I use a standard size t-slot aluminum extrusion is to allow lower cost and world wide availability. This makes it easier for someone wanting to source and build their own machine no matter where they are in the world.

While the larger vertical three inch square aluminum t-slot rails are for rigidity and the linear motion, the one inch square t-slot rails make the structure of the six arms. The t-slot for arms provide a very good weight and rigidity combination.

I look forward to comments and suggestions about this super-sized 3D printer! I look forward to making one in the near future...
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by geneb »

*grabs popcorn*

g.
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by Eric »

A reliable, controllable, pellet-fed extruder sounds like the biggest technical challenge in your grand plan. And the most interesting to the hobbyist, since that could hopefully be adapted to smaller printers.
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by Flateric »

Oh man, if the head crashes intot the bed, you better be nowhere near it. And the Rambo board must also be HUGE!

Does it run on Regular or super Premium, what octane fuel. Emissions concerns?
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by Nylocke »

As is the MAX wasn't big enough..... Steve, John, you guys are crazy, and I like it :)
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by Jimustanguitar »

We should start rating printers in "hours to print the full build volume"... This one might be rated in weeks :)
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by Flateric »

Print time would be very sinilar to it's smaller size. Say two hours for a normal small one or 2 hours for a gigantic model.

You see, this redonkulously large format version would obviously make use of 1.75M filament and have an appropriately sized nozzle for such filament. The real design problems will come when they try to find that NEMA1117 sized stepped motor for the direct drive extruder!

And eye protection will do you no good if you are manhandling the filament around and it snaps back and hits you.....you be dead!
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by barnett »

My initial thoughts:
- the huge bed reminds me of the speed issue at the edges pointed out by Bill Havins here.
- replacing the belts or even fussing with the tension/leveling upper idlers (would you lay it down to do that?)
- I thought huge ABS prints suffered from cracking. Would this be PLA or some other material?
- You'll have to rename the rostockMax to rostockAverage
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by Eaglezsoar »

Part Daddy, I think you should take two aspirin and lie down for a few hours.
You appear to be suffering from Gigantus Maximus and the only known cure is bed rest.
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by PartDaddy »

You guys crack me up.

Some more details (for any of you already started on one of these in your really tall 'man cave') I plan to take the step direction from the RAMBo and route it to an amp for NEMA 23 or 34 size stepper motors. I'm fairly certain I'll use timing belt, but you get backlash in belts this long. Maybe chain, steel counter balance inside of 3 inch t-slot.

The universal joints need to be a bit more heavy duty for something like this, so ball bearings here. There will be a quite a few machined parts on this thing.
The "PartDaddy" pic2
The "PartDaddy" pic2
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by geneb »

I just happen to have a 14' clear interior.... :D

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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by Durandal »

Why not use ball screws on something that big, then you could get pretty good speed without backlash or skipping teeth.
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by Flateric »

PartDaddy wrote:You guys crack me up.

Some more details (for any of you already started on one of these in your really tall 'man cave') I plan to take the step direction from the RAMBo and route it to an amp for NEMA 23 or 34 size stepper motors. I'm fairly certain I'll use timing belt, but you get backlash in belts this long. Maybe chain, steel counter balance inside of 3 inch t-slot.

The universal joints need to be a bit more heavy duty for something like this, so ball bearings here. There will be a quite a few machined parts on this thing.
ThePartDaddy_pic2.jpg
An automotive timing belt has zero stretch of give. you can get them stupidly long as well and like the one in my car it is a stainless and kevlar backed belt. If it can handle up to 14,000RPM in my motor I think moving a carriage around should be no problems.

Chain is bad, higher friction than belt, shorter life due to wear and slop etc. Noisey. Need oiling, something we don't need near a printer.
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by 626Pilot »

Don't use timing belts until you've tried fishing line. Belts introduce more parasitic inertia and they cost EXPONENTIALLY more. 100 yards of fishing line is $16 on Amazon, and it will hold 200 pounds. 100 yards of GT2 is... yikes. Don't even want to think about it. Four figures?

If you build it with fishing line, you can leverage the increased strength and lower inertia to run at higher print speeds. I'm assuming someone doesn't want to wait a day and a half for their chair to print! There's also the small furnace you will have to build into the print head. That will add inertia, maybe a lot of it, so the easiest solution is to take inertia out of the system any way you can. I would brace up the structure as well as possible to let it run at Ludicrous Speed. Put in provisions so it can be bolted down very securely.

It will need a minimum of two extruders so that it can print water-soluble support material. I don't think someone who needs a printer this big is interested in spending an hour and a half ripping off a bunch of sprues and deburring and all that stuff. Likewise, some complex objects are not practical to print without dedicated support material.

Since you have to design a small furnace into the print head for melting the pellets, I would engineer the system to allow addition of an ink/dye injection system later on. Some of your potential customers will have a strong business interest in being able to color print large objects. Aside from Shapeways I don't know that there is much competition in this area, and I don't know that they even have large format sandstone printing. The closest I've seen is a hot end that takes multiple filament inputs and stirs them inside the extruder, but that was a few years ago.

Also, have you thought about doing a regular Cartesian robot to mimic Shapeways' sandstone printers? I'm assuming they are just bins with XY carriages and sand spreaders. They're probably using something similar to inkjet print heads to do the color. It's tricky enough to get a regular Rostock aligned, and I don't know how well it would scale to that kind of build envelope, but factoring out the Z axis into a separate problem could make things easier to keep in spec. It would also mean the printer doesn't have to be twice as tall as its envelope. (For a desktop version there's little reason to care, but at 6 meters overall height, all the creative departments who might otherwise be interested will be unable to find a place to put it. Unless their office is in a hangar.)

The printer should ship with pieces designed to make alignment and calibration easy. I spent many hours trying to align my printer just so. Then I figured out that if I designed some tower clamps and braced them together with threaded rod and wing nuts, it got a lot easier! Whatever stuff you figure out ahead of time is work your customers don't have to duplicate, and that converts directly into word-of-mouth and more sales. Make them say, "Wow, this is clever! They did this for me so that I could get up and running faster, even though they didn't have to." Years ago when I was a phone jockey they told us that people will tell 20 others about a bad experience with a company, but only 3 about a good one. Whatever you can do to push that into a 4 or a 5 is money in the bank. (For the record, I don't mind figuring this stuff out myself because it's an open source project, but most of your target demographic is not shade tree mechanics like here on the forum.)

Include Astrosyn or similar stepper dampers, and an enclosure should be an option. The dampers are probably the best single mod you can do on a Rostock, especially if you sit near it and want to be able to hear in your old age.
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by rkjohn »

Where do we put in our order?
I suppose you are going to say its 5 years out for delivery.

LOL
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by bvandiepenbos »

now that's just silly.
did you forget your meds?
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by Eaglezsoar »

bvandiepenbos wrote:now that's just silly.
did you forget your meds?
I think the meds need adjustments, the old ones do not seem to be working.
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by PartDaddy »

Anyone taking meds wouldn't do this, they'd be marching in line with the rest of our children.
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by ccavanaugh »

Hmmm... me thinks life size poseable army men for the kido's would be a good test run for the machine..

Better yet, a life size poseable PartDaddy!
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by CJGerard »

That is cool, I have been debating on building an all metal max 2x the size of the original RS-Max. This is just insane though.

One of my thoughts would be to mount the tip of a mig welder for the hotend and actually make large metal parts with this beast.
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by PartDaddy »

XXL Size Cheapskate exactly like my original design, just BIG.
Super Size Cheapskate
Super Size Cheapskate
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by DavidF »

so where can you order a 500 lb spool of filament???? :D
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by PartDaddy »

The tricky part of this will be making an extruder to extrude pellets.
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by DavidF »

PartDaddy wrote:The tricky part of this will be making an extruder to extrude pellets.

My other extruder handles 3/8" filament. :D
But its hdpe...... :?
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Re: The "PartDaddy" Large Format 3D Printer

Post by bubbasnow »

PartDaddy wrote:XXL Size Cheapskate exactly like my original design, just BIG.
Mega Cheapskate.png
is there an advantage to using regular t slot? or would it benefit more by using a v slot or openrail?

http://openbuildspartstore.com/openrail/
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