The Kossel Mini is an old RepRap 3D printer design for a delta 3D printer.  The philosophy behind RepRap printers was to reduce the amount of non-printable parts needed to produce their printers- essentially a printer able to recreate itself.

​

The basic design consists of a rigid triangular chassis, which uses Nema 17 stepper motors to run belts running along separate axis.  The belts in tandem move an extruder, which melts plastic to create its parts.

​

I wanted to tweak the design a bit to reduce the cost needed to make one of these to be about $500 USD, which is roughly the cost of a decent quality 3D printer in 2020. To do so I used an Arduino Mega and a stepper motor ramp, which reduced the cost that would've otherwise been spent on a more specialized board.  I also printed parts using the cheapest yet best quality PLA filament I could get my hands on- 3D Solutech sells theirs for $16.

​

I was able to construct the printer using a Github repository of its base parts from jcrocholl.  I tinkered with Marlin (RepRap software for 3D printers) to tune the settings for print speed and pulley adjustments.  For slicing .STL and .OBJ files, I wanted to keep things old-school and used Slic3r.