Brian,

Thanks! I tossed some pics in a gallery real quick. https://goo.gl/photos/vQzHpMG1wdQYkDLd6

 

Those prints are great! Have you looked at magnetic universals? When I built my delta I used them and they were amazing for ease of use (removing rods or the end effector is a job measured in single digit seconds) and no backlash. If you're not familiar with them there are two ways to make them. The first is a counter sunk magnet mounted on your end effector and carriages with steel balls on the end of your rods ( I used this method) or magnetic spheres on your rods with steel bits on your carriages and end effectors

 

I haven't had the experience that magnetic joints do any better than rod ends. Most people make the mistake of not having a preload on their joints. In the end they're both ball joints, and the magnets have a pretty weak force and aren't non trivial to get perfectly lined up. I've only taken my rods off of my effector once in the last year. I do have magnets and tapped ball bearings, but so far have chosen not to use them. I run 8000mm/s^2 accel and 300mm/s travels which is quite a bit above average, but get pretty good prints even with simple rod ends.

 

I ran similar speeds. That said if you have a direct drive extruder and not a bowden then yes the magnets can struggle with the weight.

 

GREAT going @Brian - happy to see you're still fighting the good fight! I believe it will be worth it when Ultimo comes together!

@Justin Edwards WOW - those are the nicest prints!! I never thought we'd see things that nice from filament printers! Is this more your build/tweak or is it typical for deltas?

 

@john, Mine is a combination of trial and error and a high steps/mm extruder. There have been a few people that have built my printer now and replicated the success. I started updating my BOM and parts. https://github.com/justinledwards/BigDelta It definitely prints better than most printers, but you have to use pretty consistent filament too otherwise things don't turn out quite as good.

 

have you had any recent successes with getting your rig up and running Brian?

 

Hi Sorkyah,
I haven't made any more progress on Ultimo but I have been in the shop recently setting up some experiments for a caterpillar drive and have added some new tools to the toolbox this month for processing concrete in anticipation of the next attempt.

 

caterpillar drive? as in a geared drive system?
any spoilers or sneak peeks? perhaps a new pic of boo?
i'm not completely sold on the delta design, but i do love me some out of the box thinking and engineering.
also a heated concrete print bed would be quite a nice feature on my future 1m³ core-xy project.

 

Yes, I am wanting to make a mold and use a belt to create a track using epoxy. Here is a rendering from my CAD file

Boo was gracious and only charged me a dollar to take a pic of him snuggled in his spot.

 

What happened to this project?

 

Looking good! Keep at it!

 

Some of us are still watching!

 

My beard's at least three feet longer!