14 DAY TRIAL // Richard Tegelbeckers didn't have any experience in building 3D printers, but designing machinery is what he does for a living, so he managed to create the DeltaTrix anyway.
The DeltaTrix 3D printer is an odd piece of work, made from plywood, an LCD screen and some other parts, some of them actually 3D printed themselves.
This is not the first appearance, but it is the first time it reached Kickstarter, the crowd-funding project launching website.
The designer says that the product is easy to use and straightforward, owing to “a mechanically simple motion platform for moving the print head only, not the workpiece.”
He also mentions that there's an SD card slot in there somewhere, along with several different open source software options.
The Kickstarter page lists easy part replacement as an advantage over other 3D printers, thanks to RAMPS electronics (components from RepRap).
Furthermore, the DeltaTrix avoids rail warping or wear by means of strengthening ribs on the sides.
Everything boils down to a theoretical printing area that is 280 mm (11 inch) in diameter. Objects are made from 1.75 mm PLA and ABS plastic so long as it comes in 1kg reels.
You should be able to easily swap between two print head assemblies (one for ABS and one for PLA), but the prototypes use connection blocks only.
Fortunately, the kits you can get for a pledge of £648 / $1,072 / €786 come with proper connectors. In fact, only the first batch of shipments will be as kits. If the project gets off the ground properly (that's what the whole Kickstarter campaign is for), Richard Tegelbeckers will begin sending out fully assembled printers.
There will be normal and black editions of the DeltaTrix, maybe other colors too if the funding goal of £10,000 / $16,400 / €12,065 is surpassed by a good enough margin.