adamcooks published a new build:

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The Zen Toolworks lead screws are turned down to 5mm from the TR8*8 20mm on both ends. Its pretty simple mounting, the leadscrew sits in a flange bearing, gravity and 36T pulley with set screw locks whole thing in place. The shafts are round on the screws and flatted on the stepper so I can sync the screws easier.

That was my first attempt at making a 16mm hole for my bearings, silly me i told the CAD to make a 16mm hole, and not 16.19. I started with your motor mounts, to keep the spacing consistent with the acme nut holder.

 

You could use it to autolevel fairly easily. put the nozzle in a predetermined location, and drive the bed up to it.... would be sync nightmares all day while printing.

The spacing of the crossmembers of my Z stage is based on the Replicator. When Scott releases his brilliant mechanical auto leveling I planned on using it. Read about it here

 

I have been re-modeling Carl's parts in autodesk's Fusion 360. I was introduced to Fusion 360 through 3D hubs, they held a demo, here in NYC, with an autodesk rep. It is a fully parametric, history based cad modeler, free ( for non commercial use), and I found it pretty intuitive once I got into it. There are plenty of youtube videos associated with it. I will add some parts to the files as they finsih. Most of them are just Carl's parts scaled in one way or another. I had to lower the base for my leadscrews and Z motor to get the pulleys to line up better with the idler pulleys on the lower crossmembers, fusion made that much easier then i expected. I am printing the test piece right now, when I know they are right I will upload the stl's.

edit, had to go another 3 mm lower

 

Here are the Leadscrew bases and the motor mount. They had to be lowered a touch for belt alignment. My 8mm leadscrews are turned down to 5mm. Leadscrew base takes F625ZZ bearing, screw sits on that, 36T Gt2 pulley holds it in.

 

Not bad. Looks like I have to model a nut catch. Learn by doing, quite frustratingly fun. All done in Fusion 360, few touch ups here and there. I still have to finish the holes in the back idlers.

 

What temps are you using? Are you cooling your fins, sorry I dont know all the bowden lingo, but I think that active cooling on the cold side is the key to printing with these materials.

I am currently getting some mixed results with the PETG, and I attribute my issues with heat creep. But I believe that its self inflicted. I have removed my left stepper and extruder, for some maintaince, my next experiment is to attach only the fan and heatsink for the left side, so both fans and heatsinks are cooling my cooling bar. I print at 255C, .4 nozzle, 35mm/sec, on glass with aquanet, 70C HBP. I measure my filaments, and adjust extrusion multiplier for each spool that I use. Last part I printed is sitting on my desk,



My setup is probably much different then yours and I am using a MBI stlye clone(ish). My current hot end starts with a E3d nozzle and heaterblock, as it uses themore readily available 6mm heater cartridge instead of the 6.3 and is threaded to accept an eyelet terminated thermocouple. My thermal barrier is a stepped bore design by Carl Raffle, it is a actaul copy of the original MBI thermal barrier, not what was on the drawing. My thermal barrier has a 2.2 diamerter bore 10mm deep starting from the hot end and going to just about the heat break, with a 1.9ish bore through the rest. I only know the 2.2 diameter because its a #42 drill bit, this step can be done at home with a drill and lock collar. The stepped bore essentially helps to shear any molten filament before it gets attached to the cold end wall during a retract. I linked a few points here . After that my thermal barrier is in a larger aluminum cooling bar, again by Carl Raffle. The bar on the left is the cooling bar from QU-BD, the bar in the middle is the newer stlye non threaded thermal barrier design, it uses a set screw to maintain nozzle position. The bar on the left is the one in my bot now, I know that its dual v's single, I am using the middle one on the coreXY, the thermal barrier is going through the mounting screw, I am going to tap the thermal barrier side to M8 and use that to mount to my gantry. Some people using the thinner cooling bars have put a thin m6 brass nut on the bottom side, above the heat break to further pull heat from the cold side. The Carl Raffle bar has an aluminum protrusion that essentially builds in, on a larger scale, the brass nut trick. My extruders, by DHeadrick are all aluminum srping loaded bearing on a grooved drive wheel.

 

It sounds like you are over extruding. you do the 100mm in /100mm out test for ramps?

 

I pulled all the .stl's from the download page. I went through last night and touched up a few spots. Carl put a .2mm layer into his horizontal counterbore holes, WOW what a difference that makes for printing, they were added. I just finished modeling v1 of my nut catch for the ACME nut, going to print it and check for tolerances. I got in some of these , a tiny, tidy package with the switch on the narrow end, made my Z axis endstop easy. I am going to netfabb all the stl's and repost them

 

.STL's reposted, all run through netfabb

 

I printed the new gantry plates for the mini endstop switch and found out that my nut trap was too small at 6.4mm point to point for a M3 nut, increased to 6.8mm. I also added the .2mm layer into the horizontal counterbore holes. The two files are edited and reposted.

 

Mostly the honest answer is " thats how Carl's was". I think that screwing into the plastic is fine for the endstop switches, I would be hesitant to mount my belt clamps and my extruder bracket without a nut and blue locktite ( I have loctite OCD from my paintball years). I have been toying with the idea of increasing the thickness of my gantry plate to use nylon lock nuts.

 

Are you trying to avoid mounting the switch on the gantry plate, for the x axis?

 

Also, are you using my gantry front plates? mine are for a direct drive makerbot style extruder, not a bowden mount.

 

Oh wow, looks like I made a mistake copying the originals. Sorry about that. I will check the models tonight and make adjustments.

 

I have made the changes to the models in the main branch. They are saved as X and Y motor mounts V2. Again, there was some math error there all 5 holes needed to be moved. This is where Fusion really shined, select the wayward hole, which highlights the hole in the timeline. edit the hole and input new numbers for distances.

I will print the new mounts before I post the .stl's

18" square, thats a big bot. What size nozzle are you planning on using? are you going up to a nema23 for your Z?

 

So the motor should fit now, then then I noticed that the spacing for the vrail is not right. the grooves are 5.5mm apart and not 11.

Another rookie mistake. I will apologize again. I fixed the V2 file. Again, it was a simple fix, I found the sketch on the timeline, edited the measurement value and saved. Learning where to constrain what to where was my big epiphany lately. Since most of my holes are measured to the groove it adjusted everything downstream.

I had my big breakthrough while constructing the model for the vrail I started like normal with a 20x40x10 box, then added the profiles for the slots in the rail, cut the rails in then chamfered. When I went to set the length of the overall rail, I wanted to be able to select the top face ( assuming we are building the rail up vertical ) and push pull it to whatever length I wanted, 420mm 710mm etc. When I pulled it up, the grooves stayed only in the initial 10mm. Instead of using dimensions to dictate the groove, I made the top and bottom of the groove rectangle colinear with the original box. I only used dimensions to dictate width of groove, 9mm, and distance from edge 5.5mm.

Looks like the clouds are down with autodesk. You should be able to open it from a360.com . Also on a side note, looks like the original developers from solidworks are starting some cloud CAD. It looks like it is going to be github based, which i am really interesed in. IMO forking is easier then sharing. http://www.onshape.com/ took me 48 hours to get my invite. I have not really had time to play with it too much

 

No worries, I think we are all new to this really. The groove on the back of the slider is for LED clearance. I got some 5050 RGBWW to run all the way around the top of mine. Run it off the HBP PWS.


This is Carls Bot