I’m about 95%. My boss is doing my 3D printing for me and forgot the Z coupler, so I’m on hold until he prints that for me. also the bottom feet.
Going to work on the belts and wiring tonight as well as getting the arduino set up. Pretty stoked to get this beast up and running!
Also, I think I’m going to hijack the working clamps from the rbot CNC to incorporate into this design.
Very nice, James! Love the banana yellow. You’re going to have a blast (I know I am)!
That’s almost fluorescent:) Where’d you get the filament? Brand? Nice build.
James,
Looks good, I also like the yellow. What size is our outside frame?
Dave
Hatchbox is the brand of the filament. Matches the Dewalt quite well! Perimeter is 30x30 inches
I’m worried about the movement. I’ve got all of my bolts fairly loose, too loose for my liking really, and it’s still pretty stiff. Could it be the quality of the prints?
The conduit is galvanized. That zinc coating will come off with a little bit of use and things will loosen up. Stiff is way better than loose. The bolts don’t do very much, other than hold the bearings. You can have them loose enough to have the nuts not touching the plastic and it would still work great.
That makes me feel a lot better. I was worried the belt would jump as tight as it is. I expected the linear motion would be as smooth as the vertical
Nice work. How do you like the Hatchbox filament? I found it to be very brittle and had a tendency to break a lot ahead of the extruder.
The guy that printed my parts for me recommended I buy this stuff for him. He likes it. The parts that needed to be pretty accurate that he printed in a higher resolution, look and feel great. The corner blocks, he printed pretty low res and they seem pretty brittle. I don’t know if I contribute that to the filament or the resolution.
I don’t think I’m going to be able to continue with the crap quality plastics I’ve got. He had several misprints that he told me would be ok, and a couple of the gantry parts are pretty severely warped. If I get the middle assembly parts tight enough to hold the Z rails at all, then they’re too tight to move the rollers without jumping teeth. If I loosen it up so the rollers don’t jump teeth, the Z rails have about 2mm of play between the bearings.
I have used probably 80 rolls or so thus far. It is actually the most consistent I have used lately. I do use it about 5 degrees hotter than the robo filament I used to use. I think hatchbox is pretty good. Esun is great but I get crappy rolls once and a while so I stopped buying it, and there actual spool size is a bit funky. Aspekt (or however it is spelled) is another cheap favorite, but getting harder to find, they have a pattern on the side of there spools. This seems to be re-branded all the time so just look for the patterned spools.
Interesting. I like the way the Hatchbox looks but it seems to be very brittle coming off the spool and post print. I have been using Maker Geeks PLA for the last 6 months and I doubt I will switch away from it. They claim to be making a lot of filamant under different names. It is made in the USA (in Missouri) and he does not charge for shipping. I am real happy with Joshua’s product and it is nice supporting a small made in the USA company.
Hey Curt, thanks for the heads up about Maker Geek PLA. I just took a look and between the decent price and your recommendation, I’m going to order a roll.
I want to try his filament again, I had some issues with a 3mm order for my old work. I’ll definitely try him again with your endorsement.
