3D Printing

Okay, so after just having uploaded my first video to Dtube (Yes I already prefer it to Youtube) I thought I would go into a little more detail about the printer I used in that video. (Click the shark image to watch the vid!)

This printer is a delta tower, with a print area of approximately 180mm in diameter by roughly 300mm in height. What this printer loses in its X and Y axis, it most certainly makes up for in the Z (height). The name of this particular model is called a Micromake which I ordered off ebay a few years ago now.

This machine is absolutely solid when assembled. The triangular shape seems to add great rigidity to the frame, resulting in better quality prints.

This machine arrived with a broken glass bed and no instructions. What was worse is all of the instructions I could find online were in Chinese and me having no experience with it had to rely purely on my mechanical mind superpowers. To be fair, having watched endless youtube videos of these things in action before I purchased, I already had a pretty good idea where everything went, it was more the circuitry that was a bit complicated.

The kind gentleman who supplied the printer was as helpful as he could be though, speaking only a little English (it was better than my Chinese!). He pointed me to some videos (which were also in Chinese) that demonstrated which wires go where and sent me the links to the custom firmware for Cura (slicer) to upload the 3d shapes into language the printer could understand and print off.

Another problem I discovered was sometimes prints would start peeling away from the bed. Having done some investigation, it turned out had I not been such a cheapskate and shelled out for the heated bed model, it would have solved this problem for me, but I did manage to work around it and get some successful prints with it by printing a brim around the model to help it stick etc. I just probably had more unsuccessful prints than I would have otherwise.

Having bought another different style printer since, I still love this little delta. The whirring noises it makes sound like something off Star Trek.

The combination of the rigid frame, and they way all three motors work together to control the XYZ make it possible for these style printers to reach some very impressive speeds. In fact there are some videos on Youtube where people are printing up to 500%+ normal speed with them, but I haven't quite pushed mine this hard.

Speedy Printer Link

The lack of heated bed and smaller size bed made it difficult to print bigger objects. It is still a great little printer nonetheless, but I think I wouldn't recommend a newbie go the route I went. Although, with that said, I feel everything I went through to get it to print, stood me in good stead when problems cropped up.

Newer larger versions of this style printer are now on the market to allow the bigger print areas with the same solid structure and speeds I guess, but they appear to be very heavy.

I will get to my other printer in future, after I have dug out a few more of my delta vids. Hopefully I can find some where my camera steadiness is a little better and I have had my breakfast cornflakes and whiskey 😜 .

Anyway, thanks for reading about my first 3d printer. That's all for now folks.

Until next time, keep on keeping on!

Burty 😊