On the leadscrew front, the Alibaba vendors I've received contact back from are fairly difficult to get a correct quote from. In the past, I've run into this issue when I wasn't in contact with the original supplier. Many times there are tons of resellers that are sourcing from one or two major suppliers. After purchasing a cheaper printer that I'm fixing up and will use to build this printer, I do think I'd prefer to stick with a larger diameter leadscrew than the 8mm one. It is possible 8mm might not have an issue, but to me it seems a bit more flexy than I'd prefer.

Besides sourcing the original parts directly from thompson, I'm still leaning towards Roton for a US supplier. The price is fairly good, leaving some buffer to get it machined. Again, here is the 7/16" x 1.0" 8 start leadscrew from roton, which has an anti backlash nut on the same page. The total cost is around $140, but this is before machining. If you have access to a lathe, then this is a pretty good option.

Another thing I was considering was, has anyone thought about increasing the height of the base, so that you can fit the power supply and controller board underneath it? I was thinking that you could use the 60mm or 80mm v-slot rail in place of the 40mm to create some more room. It seems that a regular ATX power supply is right over 80mm in height, so that wouldn't work, but there are definitely other options that should.

 

Why does everyone want the end to be machined? Wouldn't it be simpler/cheaper to have a motor coupler/bearing who will fit on the unmachined rod?

 

Yeah, I guess that is an option. How would that work for the bearing side? I've seen it with the motor side mounted directly, as with the robotdigg product, but wasn't sure on the bearing side.Would you use something like a flanged bearing sized to match the od of the leadscrew?

Right after the last post I finally did hear back directly from thompson, so I'll see what they say. I imagine it is request a quote from your local distributor, which isn't an ideal setup.

 

the bearing ID will have to fit the OD of the rod, that's all

 

Then for the motor side, for the larger diameter leadscrew, it would be too large to be directly mounted via the external style. So, it would have to be a regular captive stepper motor. For that, you'd have to adapt between the ~5mm stepper shaft and ~12mm leadscrew. I assume something like this coupler would work?

 

Exactly that yes and you won't have to pay for machining

 

maybe just a washer?

 

Wow, those printed parts look just excellent

Tweakie.

 

@Kyo
Your parts looking very well. At what resolution have you printed them?

 

Be REALLY careful when screwing the rear corners on. Mine are 50% infill and I cracked one. Also, I switched over to the cast 90's for the 20x20 top rail, as I had them crack also. My stuff is ABS and none of the parts on any othe printer had problems, just those.
Really looking forwar to seeing how the prox sensors work for you. I am really not liking my bed on springs that I use on my MendelMax. Wanting to plant them solidly on the support plate and then auti-cal before each print, instead of wasting filament and time.

 

My roommate likes the prox sensor real well. I just don't know if I could make it work on my Mendal Max.

 

Let me know which one he is using, as I have some X-carriage files that have sensor mounts on them. I can print one before I ship to you.

 

The inductive sensor my roommate has is a LJ18A3-8-Z/BX. I found out this morning he has a spare sensor.

 

So it has the 8mm body?

 

The threaded area is about 19 mm diameter, with a 8 mm sensor range. The label has a place that has NPN 8 mm

 

OK. See what I have

 

It works very well on my roommates printer. He is using aluminum foil under the glass so it will have something to sense. On the system I am building, the foil would help spread the heat from the bed to the glass.

 

Aluminum tape could do it too I suppose

 

I have some spare OB leadscrews not really looking into spending more money on other
would anyone be interested lending a hand in getting the X-AXIS parts modified for these lead screws.

 

So you have 8mm screws? I thought someone posted an X-axis file set that used 608's or some other 8mm bearings in the new files to make using stock screws work. I have my 8mm screws turned down on the ends to 5mm so I could use the stock plastic.