On the road again...

Once again I didn't quite make my deliverable (A completed 3-D printer). However I am closing in on that goal. Right now I am about 75

Printer so far, notice the motors.

% done with the mechanical construction of the frame. I have added the motors and the end-stops, as well as all the X,Y, and Z axis.

I still have to put the belt on the pulleys attached to the motors, make sure everything is properly aligned, a herculean task in itself, assemble the extruder, wire everything together, upload some code and get printing! That may seem like a lot, which it is, but most of it is what you may call "busy work", it just takes time. I have already set apart Sunday as a build day to hopefully finish things up.

That leads me to the past weeks progress. I received my electronics package on Tuesday with the parts to get me going again. This package contained the end-stops, heated bed, Arduino, Ramps 1.4, and belts as well as a few other wires and things. I immediately ran into a problem. The endstops I received had the mounting

The whit part in the picture was the issue.

holes under the wiring harness. Turns out it is impossible to plug something in when there is two giant bolts sticking out of the top. Luckily after some internet searching I found a solution. I had to precariously bend the contacts enough to get the bolt through the opposite way, without breaking anything. (See Picture). This proved to be taxing as I didn't want to break anything and have to buy more parts.

My next issue was with the bearings. They were supposed to fit nicely in the holder and slide freely. They instead decided to bind against the steel so much that you couldn't pull on them without the whole printer moving (at least 15 Lbs). I shaved some of the plastic and the problem was solved.

Final note: I bought my hot hot end end today, the last needed part!

The LCD controller