whats more important/desirable/

Monster Delta

Hi i am curious to see what people look for when choosing a small desktop printer is it print height or diameter that is more important/desirable ?

DjDemonD

Is your forum name Monster Delta a giveaway as to your intentions?

I'd say generally, as far as it's ever valid to say this without knowing what you intend to print, that width will be more useful than height. Here's my reasoning:

To achieve the best strength we all avoid making parts from big tall towers as the weakest area is the interlayer bond so lying tall things down on the build plate improves strength.
Fewer models are generally tall. Whether this is because they are designed to be 3d printed on machines which traditionally work better in XY than Z is debatable. I'd say a lot of "art" models - Eiffel towers, figurines often require height, whereas in the broadest sense a lot of engineering models need less height.
You can fill your build plate with the (typically) small models we all print frequently (printer parts etc.) in XY but its a lot harder to utilise all that height you designed into the machine. I have only ever printed 1 model using the full 460mm my Kossel XL provides, I'd say my normal fayre is probably 90% less than 150mm in Z.

Now there are exceptions, and if you build a tall printer, you'll occasionally print tall models as you will be able to. But you can always join smaller models together to make larger objects - no one is printing a replica sword or iron man suit in one piece!

Monster Delta

@djdemond firstly yes my user name is an indication of my intentions i aim to bring very accurate and reliable large format delta printers to the market at an affordable price but that's another matter entirely. I have been printing very large parts that i then spray with a high build primer and sand then lacquer them and use them for fibreglass plugs to take mould from my last project being 1.9m tall. i am really asking for a desktop printer because the bigger the build plate the less usable height you get because of the arm length.

DjDemonD

There was a thread on reprap where I posed the question of whether there is an optimum ratio between width and height for a delta. Answers were inconclusive.

https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?178,806859

bot

IMO, having more space in Z is preferable, but having a cube-shaped build volume I've found is best. I orient parts crazy ways -- essentially I print with orientations like SLA. Having more room in Z lets me get the best resolution on the most surfaces. The z axis has the best resolution.

Danal

How big is "monster"?

I'm into large-ish deltas. So far, my largest is 600mm (24 inch) diameter by 630 or so Z. Frame sizing shown here. Without a Volcano, it is somewhat difficult to truly exploit that size. Print times become very long.

IMHO, it would be trivial to build a larger frame, and still have an accurate printer. Maybe go to a little big bigger extrusions, and/or some more diagonal bracing.

What begins to be difficult is a heated bed, and/or a heated enclosure. So, being hands on with a large-ish, I'm not all that motivated to go monster.

YMMV

warbunnies

@djdemond

Its really easy to add more height to a delta. It costs much less than increasing the width. After you get the width to 300-325mm then I'd just focus on getting taller. Any wider and you're gonna have to worry about the length of the arms for the effector and parts get harder to source.

Here's my delta: https://imgur.com/a/zFaEW
335 x 600 something. I've really enjoyed the extra height because I got to print the feet for this in one go: https://imgur.com/a/IYtZjM5

Monster Delta

Monster is currently 550 diameter and just short of 1m print height i have no cross bracing and a very rigid frame. For me i would prefer to go taller and keep the bed the same but that suits my needs. The original question was with regards to desktop deltas whether a 250-300mm bed was preferable to a 350-400mm+ print height

dc42

@monster-delta said in whats more important/desirable/:

The original question was with regards to desktop deltas whether a 250-300mm bed was preferable to a 350-400mm+ print height

If you mean is a 250-300mm bed with modest print height preferable to a 150mm bed with 350-400mm height, IMO yes.