Cable-driven printer

A cable-driven printer is a construction 3D printer in which the print head is suspended by several cables wound on winches anchored around the working volume, and is positioned by coordinating the length of each cable. The machine is a cable-driven parallel robot: the moving parts are light because the drives stay on the ground or on the anchor masts, and the working volume is bounded by the anchor points rather than by a frame.

In practice

The attraction is a very large working volume for comparatively little hardware, and packaging that can be transported and rigged without heavy lifting equipment. The cost is stiffness. Cable sag, elastic stretch under the weight of the head and hose, and the tendency to swing after an acceleration all reduce positional accuracy, particularly near the edges of the envelope and at the lowest layers. Designs address this with cable pretension, additional redundant cables, damping and slower feed rates. Cable-driven systems remain mostly a research and demonstration format in construction, and published work should be read as prototype results rather than established site practice.

Related terms

• Gantry printer — a printer whose head runs on a rigid frame, giving higher positional stiffness.
• Robotic arm printing — printing with a multi-axis arm on a fixed, rail-mounted or mobile base.
• In-situ printing — printing directly in the final position on site.