Bed slinger, core XY or other. What should I build?
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Hello,
To some this may come across as a no-brainer but I am kind of lost. To be honest I suck at making such decisions and your help is much appreciated.
I have 3 printers. I want to upgrade / convert them and 2 good ones.
I had one Duet board and got another one.
2 Beds I have are 1 prusa mini bed + 1 regular prusa 3 magnetic bed and 1 low quality aluminium heat bed.Also have enough stepper motors. And got some additional Stepper Online ones (the "good stuff", apparently).
If I were to get some additional parts, such as 2020 / 2040 extrusions, I could build 2 Core XY style machines.
But is it really worth it, compared to bed slingers?
That's what I'd like to know.
I'd seriously appreciate your thoughts and input.
Many thanks -
It really depends where you're starting from, how the existing printers are constructed, how much money you want to spend, and what your actual goals are.
A well constructed bedslinger is going to be fine for what most users want, especially in those small sizes.
Corexy is great if you were starting fresh, but if you were looking for faster/better, I'd just focus on improving the existing printers with a few upgrades like better linear motion (improving rigidity, or use of linear rails) than completely tearing it down and starting over again.
Corexy/raised gantry isn't the end-all be-all, and depending on your goals, might not be worth the time+money spent.
just my $0.02
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I'm partial to CoreXY. I think it solves a lot of problems inherent in other designs. The XY plane can be kept rigid. The belt paths are inherently anti racking and give a mechanical advantage. Print head moving mass isn't too bad. The bed can be very stable and properly constrained and still allow for proper plane tilt correction to match the XY motion. Bed size in the 300x300 range is easily doable. Even more Z height is easy to add.
With a bed slinger you have to keep two sliding planes tram with each other. The bed is heavy and increases in weight during the print. The constant movement back and forth can lead to cable fatigue for the bed heater if not taken care of. The Z motion of the gantry has to be corrected if using 2 motors, or use 1 motor and a belt, or 1 motor and cantilever. Build volume beyond 200x200x200 gets harder still.
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I have 6 FDM printers now and the only ones that give me no issues are the CoreXY printers. (Railcore and 2 Tronxy X5SA Pro).
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I enjoy trying different types of printers.
I started with three different deltas - they were frustrating.
I then tried a classic Cartesian kit - a Folger Tech FT5 - the kind with a fixed bed and the Y axis gantry carrying the X axis stepper and the X axis gantry carrying the Extruder stepper.
That worked really well and is still used most every day, although it has been upgraded a few times.
My next printer build was from a BOM for a poorly designed CoreXY that I soon converted into my own take on a "Mark Forged" design - which is sort of a precursor to CoreXY designs.
The kit after that was a really nice, compact take on the cross gantry design as used by some Utilmaker printers.
The most recent kit is a pretty nice, compact take on a CoreXY design, although they did make a mistake in the belt layout.
I never actually tried building the printers with all of the parts they came with. I always end up with Duet electronics, a new hotend, Zesty Nimble extruder, etc.
The inexpensive Chinese kits now print very well, better than I thought they could.
Have fun but be prepared for some hard work.
Frederick
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@philn
We had this discussion a short while ago and the answers are probably the same.
If you have several printers at hand, why not build the next one with features the others don't have? (toolchanger, heated chamber, special extruder for high temp filament a.s.o.)
Setting the goals to achieve makes it easier to pick the right kinematics.
Eg. Bed slinger = big footprint => not the best choice for heated chamber
Delta printer => not easy to aim for tool changing -
Thanks so much everyone for your valuable input.
Following your advice, I decided to upgrade the bed slinger I'd built with somewhat better components for a relatively low cost, and build a CoreXY machine using the rest, which is going to be my 1st.
Cheers
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@philn Late to the party as usual!
I have a Railcore ZLT which is CoreXY, a Voron V0.1 - CoreXY and when the Railcore team release the BOM for the Mini, another CoreXY.As @Phaedrux mentioned iirc, static XY and a separate moving Z.
Personally gone off of the Voron2.4 and have stripped it down to either rebuild as something else or sell. Personally do not like XY&Z on 4 rubberbands!
