The Jager is Born!!

So in effort to separate my son from the xbox,playstation,ipod…… I decided to ask him if he wanted to build a 3D printer. I have been playing around with 3d printers for the last few years and found it to be a hobby that interests me. My son enjoys playing with robots and is constantly asking to “tinker” in the garage, so instead of building one of many on the open market, I chose to design one from scratch. 

Why from scratch? Well building a printer someone has already designed answers all of the “why” or “how” questions for an 11 year old boy. My thought is that if I start the build process from design, he will have a greater learning experience that would help foster his creativity.

So the question becomes, what kind of printer do we build?  After reviewing all of the possible designs we came across the Rostock and Kossel delta designs. Delta Printers seem to have that cool factor that just make you forget about all of the other designs. Even in my professional life i’d rather work on a job using a delta robot over a SCARA or tradition arm type.

Now that we decided on a type of design the fun begins of actually designing the printer. When it came to the design of the printer I had a few preconceived design parameters I wanted to follow.

1. No Printed parts for the structure!  The whole design had to be manufactured from machined components. Why? Well I just don’t like the idea of building something you want to last and be accurate, to  be built from plastic. Printed parts have their place and uses jut not on this build.
2. Large print envelope. There is nothing worse than trying to make something on a machine that is too small. When it comes to size, I subscribe to the mantra of “Better looking at it than for it”
3. Control software had to be based on LinuxCNC. Fundamentally  this is just a 3DOF machine and LinuxCNC is a machine controller. I could just use Reprap electronics package but then it’s much less useful without needing to modify firmware to get it to do anything else other than operate as a 3D printer. LinuxCNC allows me to build in extra functionality without the need of understanding Reprap firmware. For example I could add a CMM probe to the end effector and run some gcode to digitize a part, or slap on a micro engraving tool and route PCB’s. All of witch are simple changes in LinuxCNC
4. Design had to be easily scale-able.  If I wanted to increase the work envelope I should be able to do so with minimal component changes.

So This is what we came up with.  A Delta Robot 3 Feet  High with a 16″ Round work envelope.  We call it the Jager.