3D Printing Review

This section is a review of our 3D printer construction project.

We bought the Rostock Max V2 printer from SeeMeCNC and added some of our own modifications. The mods to the Rostock design will be uploaded to Github (robotmaker/rostock)

This section contains some details of the our construction experience and the changes we have made including some also general useful information and links for DELTA printers which we hope you'll also find useful too.

Rostock Assembly

The assembly is not as painful as many of the time-lapse video on YouTube lead you to believe. The assembly of the Rostock took just a full weekend. That is - starting late Friday afternoon and actually managing doing a first print on Sunday evening (the air ducts).We spent about 5 hours on Friday, 8 hours on Saturday and 12 hours on Sunday. We are generally very satisfied with the kit construction and all parts were included.

Some suggestions (to SeeMeCNC) and lessons learned would be:

  • If you are based in Europe then buy some Kapton tape and the gasket compound at the same time as ordering the kit. If you live in Germany then the "Holts Firegum Auspuffmontagepaste (try saying that after a few beers)" seems to work really well. This is was just by luck as we didn't have access to the paste recommend by SeeMeCNC.

  • Apart from the cables for the hot-end, use connectors for everything rather than solder components together (Fan, Servos)

  • Don't strip the wires from the supplied cables as these do fit in the extrusions centres (you need to solder a cable to pull and push then through). This just seems much neater - even though a bit more stiffer but keeps the wires together without using tie-wraps.

  • Rather than Kapton tape we used shrink sleeving on all soldered joints.- which actually looks quite neat too.

Suggestion to SeeMeCNC:

  • For the European who use Metric screws consider including spanners / sockets for the Imperial screws provided or offer a metric kit for sales to Europe.

  • Include a small roll of Kapton tape and tube of gasket gunge, As mentioned above, I could not get this in local hardware stores and used local equivalent. The local equivalent seems to working so far...but I spent a lot of time trying searching and explaining what I need - which took up some valuable hours during the construction weekend.

  • Make the hole in the centre of the extruded aluminium section a little bigger in diameter so the cables fit easier.

  • Implement the magnet ball-joints for the hot-end as suggested by many other users.

  • Provide an exploded view of the final product with pictures and more videos of actual construction (rather then just the heck points). Much more fun just watching the videos rather then reading all that text..:-)

Why buy a Delta Printer rather than a Cartesian printer? - and why a Kit?

We decided to build a kit so we get hands on training and more familiar with the construction. We decided to by a delta printer, as this seemed more novel and we though we could adapt the printer for other uses too.

Generally after a few hours of 3D printing we think "3D printing Rocks!!"