Rostock Twin...

[Jas]

Hi All,
I'm thinking about buying a Rostock kit as I'm interested in getting a delta 3D printer, as a mechanical engineer I'm always thinking of ways to modify things, and are wondering why no one has made a machine with two delta heads producing one piece? Mechanically it is possible as you can see from my attched sketch. Is it an issue having two heads align and lay filament onto the one model or it it something that just hasn't been thought of before?
Cheers
Jason

[Captain Starfish]

You probably could.

You'd have to re-write the slicer to avoid head collisions, you'd have twice the number of failure points, alignment would be interesting - very interesting - and all in all you've just squared the complexity of the thing.

So: why? What problem is this solving?

[McSlappy]

I feel like I just saw a blackhole

[Jas]

I was thinking it may be a cost effective way to build tall narrow items, and ultimately if the carriages in the centre could come off the opposite sides of a single larger post, the build area of each head would overlap much more you could build larger items without a significantly larger printer......

[Captain Starfish]

If it won't fit on the Max build plate, then build a bigger delta printer. KISS principle and all that. Just too much complexity in a double tower.

[edge922]

If you could have both heads printing part of the model at the same time (while avoiding collisions) wouldn't this cut your print time nearly in half for a given print volume? (Assuming an evenly distributed model.)

[Elysio]

Hi

Good idea. There`s not only the collision thing, there`s also the need of overlapping, to give the whole object more stability.
Imagin if you stop always on the location where the previous head stopped, you will have natural breakage. So you need overlapping.

Anyway if this will come, I will buy this Twin Delta, because I have to print hugh things.

[Jas]

Think large gents, this technology has only just begun, I think the delta concept has a huge untapped future and I'm just putting out there something to work to, in reality I want a twin head delta, each with triple heads, (one fine, one coarse for filling, and a third for a soluble support structures), I see the Rostock as the start but want to build something much bigger, I'm thinking 2.4m high posts, but as I mentioned earlier as a mech eng the physical structure is not the problem . It's the interface and alignment of filament or the split of a model or the lay down of layers via the software that I don't have a feel for, so if anyone is up for a challenge I reckon this one is a beauty, but if you reckon I'm a crazy Aussie engineer and it's impossible please let me know....otherwise get cracking and let's build this beast..

[Holy1]

You could get a wider build volume by having the bed move and still keep one head. The support colums for the delta configuration would have to be changed. I was watching my embroidering machine which has a fixed head and a moving bed and the delta beside it printing with a moving head and fixed bed. My mind merged the two and I saw a delta with a moving bed.

[Jimustanguitar]

You would print two mirrored parts.

The right carriage of one machine is coupled to the left carriage of the other, so this wouldn't produce identical parts. Not that it's a problem, it just depends on what application you had in mind.


*edit* I misread this at first. You could lift the head that was not being used while making a single large piece. It could also be used to make two parts though...

With this in mind, you'd just need to use longer arms to print one part with both heads. The length of the arms is the maximum reach from any tower, and in the configuration in your picture, you'd have a printable area shaped like a number 8.

[Elysio]

Hi

You could get a wider build volume by having the bed move and still keep one head. The support colums for the delta configuration would have to be changed. I was watching my embroidering machine which has a fixed head and a moving bed and the delta beside it printing with a moving head and fixed bed. My mind merged the two and I saw a delta with a moving bed.

Yes thats the most cost effective version of printing something bigger without having a Twin Max.
Because you "just" need the additional parts for the moving bed, but it causes some modifications of the tower, instead of three stilts you will need four stilts.

But !

I guess, this wont increase the printing speed, maybe even it will recude the printingspeed, because of the moving bed. Imagine that bigger parts have more mass, and that will lead to slower printing speed, because you dont want to loose precision. And the version with two connected Delta printer will indeed reduce the print time near to the half of a print with only one Delta printer.

I think there are cons and pros. Fact is we all want to have bigger print size !

[ddseeker]

Parallel Kinematic Tripod Design

(actually the oldest topic in reprap delta forum)