After replacing the 1/8″ plywood temporary base and top frame plates with the final 1/4″ acrylic , my rostock-mini is working very well! The extra rigidity in the frame has greatly improved it’s positioning accuracy and it’s making prints that rival my Prussa Mendel for quality. The video above shows my round print bed and spring loaded adjustable levelers in action, as well as a close up of the delta bot motion.
This is a picture of the clear acrylic base plate before I added the print bed holder to it.
Here is the complete printer with the adjustable print bed.
I mounted the airtripper v3 bowden extruder cold end on the rear of the top plate. As it turns out, the M6 screw holes on the extruder are close enough to the right distance apart to match up with the idler top end printed bracket, so I can use the same M4 screws (with fender washers) to hold the extruder cold end as well as hold the top plate to the idler bracket! Once I saw that bit of luck I gave up all thoughts of mounting the extruder under the bottom frame plate.
I’m glad to see someone finally finished this (I saw one working on ebay too).
I’ve got mine half built but have been stymied by the lack of a finished extruder design. I printed out the parts for a v3 Airtripper Bowden, like yours, so it seems to be what the cool kids are doing.
http://makehacklearn.org/2012/12/31/building-a-rostock-mini/
Your build looks nice, I especially like the smoked acrylic. I am mounting my extruder (and a spool roller, watch this blog for an update about that) on the top of the rostock-mini, so I didn’t do the cutout from the top of the frame. I figure by going vertical I can make it a true “desktop” printer fitting in a 1 sq.ft. footprint. I used a MakerGear hot end paired with the v3 Airtripper Bowden extruder and it’s working well so far with PLA (I haven’t printed in ABS yet with the rostock-mini…I am thinking of making it my dedicated PLA printer as the glass print bed works well with PLA).
OK, so who or where can I find one as a kit?
I don’t know of anybody who sells full kits for the Rostock Mini, although I expect you can find a collection of the printed parts on ebay.
If you want a larger delta bot kit, you can get a Rostock Max from SeeMeCNC.com.