DHL just dropped off two boxes

[billdempsey 0]

Clearing a workspace for assembly tomorrow. Thank you Anita for your help!

Anyone have any assembly tips?

[snowygrouch 1]

I would say the following:

1) Dont rush it, I took about double the standard time to do it, and Im glad I did

2) I ditched the black fabric cable tidies, if you never ever want to modify the thing again they are ok.

but as soon as you want to swap around some cables.....hmmm

So I used things like this instead

http://solutions.3m.co.uk/wps/portal/3M ... 8PZZ0J6Bbe

3) Using the edge of a stanley knife blade or similar, deburr the edges of all the belt sprocket wheels. The washers

on the side of the sprockets have pretty sharp edges which are bad for the belts. If you have any misalignment it will fray the belt edges.

4) Buy some M3 nylock nuts, for certain critical areas its nice to not have stuff vibrating loose

5) Dont carefully cover the entire bedplate with blue tape all trimmed back to the ruler lines (like it

says in the assy insructions). Its a waste of

time and blue tape. Just figure out from the slicer build screen how big the parts are you want to build

and cover the relevant area of the table. This will dramatically limit your tape usage.

6) Buy some light machine oil for the XY rods, the thick blue grease supplied is only for the Z rod. So bicycle

chain oil or sewing machine oil (dont get it on the belts when you are applying it, oil rots rubber).

7) The stepper motors are mounted with bolts that are too short and only engage by about two threads.

It might "work" but its not a great idea. So buy some longer M3 bolts, or cut down some spares.

8) I oiled all the wooden parts the day before I assembled them (Linseed oil or similar). This has the benefit

of drying and making the wood harder and more durable, and also proofing it against moisture, oil and water spills.

On the negative side it means delaying your build by a day, and also it will "raise the grain" of the panels so you need

to give a very quick sand down after its dry.

[billdempsey 0]

Wow, thanks for all of the tips!! Some of these, I've figured out the hard way already. LOL Others were surprisingly not a problem. My kit came with a nicely labeled spacer kit for the motors which worked perfectly so that I got maybe 5 or so threads into the motors. Should be good.

I'm partway through assembly now. I have found that a huge number of the wooden parts don't quite fit together (probably swelling?), so I've spent literally hours having to carefully widen openings with a file. For a couple, I had to pull out my Dremel with a small circumference sanding tip to widen openings. Right now, I'm having to widen all of the openings for the stacks of pieces which surround the large Z axis linear bearings while assembling the print bed.

I also accidentally broke a wire off of one of the leaf switches and ruined the switch while trying to solder it back on. Had to make a run to Radio Shack to buy another leaf switch, then bore out the mounting holes for M3. That added a little delay. I'm about 16 actual work hours into assembly now and hoping to finish up today.

I'm sure anyone new to this can relate to the fact that my biggest fear right now is that I'll turn it on after all this and nothing will work. LOL

The worst thing is, they just announced that they are selling assembled and tested units now. Doh!! I would definitely have bought one of those, if it had been available a week ago when I ordered. *sigh* Timing is everything.

Thanks again snowy.

[IRobertI 520]

Actually I think it is better to put it together yourself. You gain a whole other level of understanding for the mechanics of the thing when you do. If you run into a problem later and have to take anything apart you'll know exactly how to do it without having to try and backtrace the build instructions.

As for it not working on the first go. I think that's highly unlikely if you've been careful and followed the instructions. And IF something isn't working right it can be fixed. There's a very high probability that someone has already had that problem and knows how to fix it.

[Daid 306]

7) The stepper motors are mounted with bolts that are too short and only engage by about two threads.

It might "work" but its not a great idea. So buy some longer M3 bolts, or cut down some spares.

8) I oiled all the wooden parts the day before I assembled them (Linseed oil or similar). This has the benefit

of drying and making the wood harder and more durable, and also proofing it against moisture, oil and water spills.

Maybe 8) caused 7) ?

[snowygrouch 1]

The frame all slotted together perfectly with no "fitting" required whatsoever. So obviously

the wood had not swelled at all.

There are numerous posts on the assembly wiki of people stating the bolts were too short. So its nothing

unique to my situation. It seems to be fixed now from some comments I have seen recently, I guess

they are shipping longer motor mount bolts.

[billdempsey 0]

Having another issue at the moment. The Z axel rods are not lining up at all after going through the platform. It's off by a lot so torquing on the bar would likely damage wood somewhere. Here is a photo:

Any ideas?

[snowygrouch 1]

This is unfortuately "normal"

Its designed that way, I think to put some pre stress into the Z axis stage to put some load onto the

bearings so it doesnt rattle.

Just pull the rod across and push it in, it will bend the Z stage, this is normal. I dont really like it

either, but it does work ok.

[billdempsey 0]

Thanks again SG. I did what you said and got it in. Crazy, but seems ok for now.

[billdempsey 0]

Finished assembly. Unit powered up fine. Windows 7 found and installed Arduino mega256 drivers when I plugged it into USB. Installed Cura. Upgraded Marlin. Passed all the tests. Now, wondering how I get Cura to read my STL files in inches instead of mm. When I load my files which are dimensioned accurately in Sketchup, they load as tiny miniature versions of themselves. I'm assuming it's an Inch vs MM thing. What can I do to tell Cura to use inches?

[joergen 2]

I'm assuming it's an Inch vs MM thing. What can I do to tell Cura to use inches?

I would suggest to simply forget about inches, and start designing everything in metric.

otherwise, scale your objects up by 25.4x in cura, or 2540%

[Daid 306]

Use metric ;-) or use the scaling textbox to scale up with 25.4 (it's the first text box below the 3D window)

Sketchup can also export as DAE (COLLADA), which Cura can read, however, the scaling in these import is still wrong and will be fixed in the next release. (Sketchup always exports as inch in this case)

[billdempsey 0]

Yeah, I figured the scale number would have to be the conversion rate from inches to mm, but once I started trying to print, I'm having other much worse issues. After hours of trying, I still don't have a single print. My Bowden tube just won't stay seated in the print head. Instead of the filament feeding through the head, the feed is just pushing the tube up. Only a tiny trickle of plastic comes out while tube just pushes itself right out of the head.

Help!! I've obviously done something terribly wrong. Any ideas?

[Daid 306]

Did you install the blue clip on the printer head? And did you add the horse clamp to the blue clip?

[billdempsey 0]

Blue clip is on. What's the horse clamp? I don't think I have one of those.

EDIT: Tried putting some nylon wire ties around the clamp and blue horseshoe clip, but it didn't help. The tube still pulls out of the print head. Looking through forum for other things to try, atm.

[snowygrouch 1]

close up photo of printhead please, showing this area.

C.

[someguy 0]

Hi BillDempsey, how did you solve that problem? I haven't even got a horseshoe (it was missing in my kit). I need a good solution for this problem as well!