Kossel Mini: Build update #1

As I mentioned in my previous post about Seattle Mini Maker Faire, one of the things that impressed me was the Kossel Mini deltabot 3d printer.

At the 3D604 Build Day held last Sunday at the Vancouver Hackspace, Colin & I were able to make some serious progress on our builds:

Effector assembly complete

We’re using black OpenBeam extrusions and linear rails (which you can only seem to get from this Kickstarter – it’s the $120 level pledge and only ships to the US) which were picked up in Seattle directly from Terence Tam. I’m also using stepper motors, GT2 belts and pulleys from Tinkerines and rods, screws and various other parts from Tri D Printing (who was also at Seattle Maker Faire).

I printed my own parts (for the green Kossel Mini in the photos) on my Replicator 2 and Colin went with a blue theme. I’ve been jokingly calling them the Hot Wheels edition Kossel Mini’s since the colors are pretty vibrant. Colin & I assembled the rods and connectors during the build day. All that is left is to install the belts and start running wires.

We’ve both opted to go the Brainwave route along with a Raspberry Pi running Octoprint to enable wireless control (and viewing via webcam) from any web browser (including mobile devices).

We’re still debating on where to put the electronics. Having decided on making the power supply external frees up the bottom area for the electronics although Johann has his on the top of the machine:

We’re wanting to make a clean looking printer with well placed switches and inputs along the bottom rail…ultimately it should look like a professionally made printer. That’s our goal anyways.

We’re also still deciding on how to do the extruder with the current thinking being a direct drive bowden tube extruder. We’ll focus on getting the motors moving before worrying about pushing plastic.

More updates to follow!