Newbie - Think of Rostock Max

[longshot]

So I've a 3d printer on my wishlist for some time now. I'm a huge fan of the delta printer. Seem like its got a huge print volume compared to other printers. So I have a few questions:

(this is a more general question about delta printers)

Print volume . . . lets say I want to adapt the Rostock Max with longer arms, taller pylons, more space between pylons, and thus a larger print surface. How hard would that be? Can the firmware allow me to make these changes? What limitations am I to expect. I couldn't have been the only person to think, hey all the hardware is here, why not adjust a few things and get a larger print area?

Thinking 1' diameter with a 2' height in the future.

Electronics . . . The RAMbo sounds like a great deal but lets say I burn it out for whatever reason. Is it still possible to use an Arduino with a Ramps 1.3 like a traditional RepRap printer?

Heater Plate . . . I recognize that the heater plate is there to make sure there isn't any crazy warping, but some of these builds take hours even days to complete, what danger is there to have a heater plate on for that long while the rostock is active? This might sound dumb but is it possible to stop a print midway and continue later?

How difficult is it to get the printer to use PLA instead of ABS?

I heard that the standard nozzle (brass) isn't great. Some say that thermal expansion of dissimilar metals in the construction tend to loosen the pieces and can make a real mess of things. Is this still happening? Are there upgrades available to fix this?

Any help would be great.

Regards,
Longshot

[magicmushroom666]

If you want to modifiy it that much, it might make more sense to make your own rostock from thingiverse parts etc... Making the build volume wider would mean replacing a significant part of the parts you'd be paying for with a rostock max kit.

Also i doubt it'll be that usefull having anything even bigger, as prints get big, they really take a long time to come out, and things like shrinkage become more of a problem. I've completed a few 12 hour prints (unsucessfully), which still dont use even half the available volume.

There's nothing special about the electronics here, so you could replace that as needed.

I run my heated bed at 100 Deg C and have not noticed any burning or heat damage to any of the components. The only trouble it caused was to crack my glass bed, probably from the bending Onyx overcomming the strength of the flat glass.