After not quite meeting his goal for his RappiDelta project on Kickstarter, David Ackers returned to the crowdfunding site with a new project: the RappiDelta Jr. The Sr. was a deltabot, in many ways similar to other delta 3D printers, but uniquely mounts the arms directly to the output shaft of the gearbox and forgoes the typical tower construction. The Jr. is still in the prototype stages, but even the prototype demonstrates some interesting features.
At the moment, the RappiDelta Jr. is almost completely 3D printed. Thanks to the lack of pulleys, bearings, and belts, Dave was able to print most of the parts on his RappiDelta Sr. Still, the Jr. has remarkable stability and speed. As Ari pointed out in his post on the original RappiDelta, one of the biggest challenges with deltabots is the ability to unite all three arms to move together. To accomplish this, Dave uses slotted optical sensors for easier homing capability.
Unlike it’s predecessor, the Jr. does have a tower, but you can see in one video on his Kickstarter, just how easy it is to snap the pieces of the printer together. So, not only will the kits be easy to build, but they’ll be affordable, as well. Dave plans to eventually mould some of his parts when he goes into production, meaning that the almost fully-3D-printed aspect of the RappiDelta Jr. might disappear. The base and top of the machine had to be printed on his much larger Sr., so it might be more feasible for him to have them mass-produced. This also means that those parts might not print on most standard desktop 3D printers, but Dave will be offering a redesigned version for backers of £30 or more so that they can print the RappiDelta Jr. on their own printers.
For £275, about $450, you can purchase a RappiDelta Jr. kit that will print objects of 17 x 17 x 17 cm (about 6.7 inches) in size with 200 micron resolution using PLA. By contributing a few more pounds, you can upgrade your kit to include such niceties as a heated bed for ABS and an LCD screen with SD card reader. Dave also hopes to include automatic bed levelling, if he exceeds his Kickstarter goal.
Overall, the RappiDelta Jr. looks like an affordable and easy-to-build machine. With a little luck, and £40,000, Dave could be well on his way to starting a successful printer line.
