Letting the cat out of the bag (3d Printer)

OK, so I’m letting the cat out of the bag. Back in August I decided that I really wanted to try the new delta printers. They come primarily as kits, though you can buy one already  built if you are made of money. I’m not; besides I like building kits.

After much research including print and video reviews as well as many build videos, I chose the FLSUN Kossel Delta printer. There were several delta printers of almost identical value, but I chose this printer for the primary reason that it is “fulfilled by Amazon”, meaning that it comes from a N. American warehouse, not from China. That in turn means that it will arrive quickly. The price was also an incredible deal compared to many others.

It arrived in quick order, and everything was there. It was very well packed, and relatively easy to assemble. I did not make an “assembling of” video because those are pretty similar and all pretty boring, even at high speed. For the most part I followed the instructions to the letter, though I did deviate a few times when I could clearly see a better path. I only had to undo/redo one step, and that only because I wasn’t paying attention to the orientation of the extruder during assembly.

Some of the final steps were less than optimum, in my opinion. Mostly these involved routing and bundling of wires, and location of the main board and power supply. In the end I designed and printed some brackets to hold the power supply securely in a very nice location. I printed these on my other printer. I also designed and printed a spool holder to sit on top. There were available designs on Thingverse, but I really didn’t like them. I do like mine.

I will post photos of the spool holder and the power supply brackets later this week, as well as photos of the printer.

Once together, I did all the set-up, prep and calibration steps.

I still didn’t like the way I’d wired the power supply. I also didn’t like the fact that the power supply did not have an on/off switch, so I bought a switch/cord/fuse receptacle from Amazon (very inexpensive) and then printed a housing for it that sits off the end of t he power supply. It looks great and secures the cord (and all connections) inside the housing. Plus, now there’s an on/off switch for the printer.

I’ll post photos of the switch and housing later this week.

I have yet to make my first print with the printer, but it should happen quite soon.

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