{"id":116,"date":"2013-06-05T00:10:36","date_gmt":"2013-06-05T04:10:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coro.etsmtl.ca\/blog\/?p=116"},"modified":"2013-06-25T15:23:57","modified_gmt":"2013-06-25T19:23:57","slug":"homemade-3d-printers-parallel-robots-catch-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coroblog.etsmtl.ca\/?p=116","title":{"rendered":"Affordable 3D printers \u2014 Parallel robots catch on"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 2001, when I wrote my feature article Delta Parallel Robot \u2014 the Story of Success<\/a>, Delta robots were already very popular and I knew at least a couple of non-engineers who liked building them from LEGO Mindstorms. A few years later, I helped Jamison Bruch, a young engineer from California eventually design a\u00a0low-cost Delta robot<\/a>. In June 2006, Novint launched their revolutionary\u00a0Falcon haptic device<\/a> based on the Delta robot. The device costs only $250 and I was certain that it would be a huge success, but I was wrong…<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the original Delta robot\u00a0patents<\/a>\u00a0expired in Europe in December 2006 and in North America in December 2007. Dozens of companies now manufacture Delta robots for pick-and-place applications, as I recently wrote on this blog<\/a>. However, Delta robots, and parallel robots in general, are still expensive, except probably the ones from TOSY Robotics<\/a>, which seem unfortunately impossible to purchase in Canada.<\/p>\n

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Luckily, someone finally found a very popular application for parallel robots. A year ago,\u00a0Johann Rocholl, a German software engineer working for Google in Seattle, shared the design<\/a> of his innovative linear-actuator Delta robot 3D printer, called the Rostock:<\/p>\n