Wednesday 29 July 2015

Build the kit

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Today was spent building the kit, pictures taken at various points below:


 Four stepper motors, one has longer wires for filament feed
 First fix stepper motors to bottom brackets
 Two per motor
 Then fit arms - good idea to invest in ball ended Allen keys for assembling many parts
 Assemble top parts into a triangle
 Assemble bottom parts into a triangle (slide together at same time)
 Fit belt pulleys
 Fit hot end contact switch
 Fit arms
 Assemble roller sets
 Fit limit switches to uprights
Fit rollers to arms
  Assemble all the bits into a frame with rollers connected to arms
 Assemble hot end into carrier
Fit and trim drive belts
 Filament feed motor mounting position
 Main board and display mounted and connected up
 Power and USB connections
Glass bed (covered in what looks like masking tape) held in place with six screws and deeper nuts



Thoughts - generally quite fiddly to build and instructions sometimes lacked detail.
Some screws are only threaded into plastic which could become a weakness over time but they currently feel quite secure. One area of particular concern was the hot end hinge was not free floating against the micro switch, I spent a lot of time working the screws in and out to create a running clearance but with no slop. The adjustment of this seems quite vague too.
The nuts inside rails sometimes turn rather than grip, so they need to be held when tightening the screws, I wedged them with a small Allen key.
The main circuit board and display were easy to wire up and mount but there wasn't much wrap for double insulation, so I taped up the wires with black insulation tape. I decided to mount the filament feed motor on the side of the frame rather than the top as this seemed to give a smoother curve across the whole working range. This may change once tested and may depend on spool position.
Tomorrow the software.

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