I have finished putting my machine together, and trying to print with it the X Axis is fine but the Y Axis is not straight. Trying to print a square and it turns in to a parallelogram.
I printed the Rigid Middle Z’s and reprinted some other bits of the carriage in the hope that was the fix but unfortunately not the case. The problem still exists.
I have checked to make sure everything is square, the only thing I have found that isn’t square is the pipes that cross over to form the carriage. They aren’t square even if I take the carriage off all together…
Apologies for bringing up an old thread, but I haven’t been able to use the machine since I made this post due to moving house twice!
I have it all back together and have been tinkering around with it trying to get it to etch PCB’s and I have had limited success there, thats another story though.
The problem I described above is still present and I am pretty confident the issue is in the middle carriage somewhere.
I don’t have the machine set up for printing so I have attached an image of a milling attempt on a PCB. Hopefully you can see the shorter section is straight compared to the outside edge however the longer sections are on an angle.
If I check the squareness of the pipes that go through the middle carriage they are not square, so I am confident the issue is in there somewhere however even after reprinting every piece it has made no effect. Any suggestions you could make to either determine the cause or to rectify the issue?
Apart from that I love the design, it’s brilliant and simple. I am curious how you managed to make yours rigid enough to mill Aluminium though, mine struggled to mill the PCB material (although I didn’t have the right bit so that may be a contributing factor)
The bits do make a huge difference but if you can see your rails not being perpendicular the bit probably isn’t the issue.
There is another thread on here, he is having the same problem. I am beginning to think maybe you guys have slightly larger conduit, what is your conduit OD?
Also the middle joiner and end pieces have tension controlling bolts, those could have an effect on square. If one side is super tight and the other isn’t it could make it tweaked. Try rotating the bearings 1 at a time and see if some have much more drag on the rails than others.
Not to many people seem to have this problems but when I try and replicate it it is because something isn’t “balanced” I guess is a good way to word it. I would say loosen up all the tension bolts including the 4 long ones and as you start to snug things up check the rails with a carpenters square, if don’t have one they are about $5 at the hardware store. This is how I have been checking on the new middle assemblies I have been making. If they aren’t square when it is completely loose something else is wrong, either with the rails being bent or your roller f’s are tweaked. The roller f are very strong and should hold it very square by themselves.
Thanks for those suggestions I will give them a try, and I will post my findings in the other thread. Save having two threads going at the same time.
I am using 25mm aluminium conduit but I am thinking aluminium is too soft for this purpose so may have to switch to galvanised or zinc coated steel. Also the conduit from our hardware store is apparently 25.4mm or 1" rather than 25mm. I haven’t measured it but it was hard to push in and wouldn’t fit in any of the international edition parts without some tweaking and drilling. I guess the aluminium would have just been squashed under the pressure.
I am printing the new corner pieces too (with my dedicated 3D printer that has no out of square issues lol) so will let you know how everything comes together in a couple of days
It turns out ‘25mm’ conduit in Australia is 25.4mm outer diameter. I can’t find anything that is closer to 25mm. What ramifications will that have on the machine if I use 25.4mm instead of 25mm?
Just got everything back together with the 25.4mm chrome pipe and also the new corner pieces. It is so much more solid now and so far everything appears to be square! Fingers crossed it stays that way.
