Hooray for Ian!

Just got my Silver kit delivered yesterday!

Just wanted to say thanks to Ian and let everyone know it was worth the waiting time (which I presume is gone by now )

Hooray indeed.

I got mine Monday and have been covering my front room with parts ever since

I think it's probably worth also mentioning some of the other stuff Ian's been up to:

There are now video tutorials on the bitsFromBytes site for building The Heater Barrel and The Extruder Drive Assembly.
[bitsfrombytes.com]

He has also put cad files for the laser cut parts and their layout up in the reprap sourceforge repository:
[blog.reprap.org]

and, of cause, answering my hundreds of emails

Main problem for me atm is how to convince my GF that building a cartesian robot really is the best thing to do in this weather

Build it in the garden?

peteredworthy

How are you going with building Ians reprap from bits from bytes?
I have had a number of problems. Such as working out which part goes where.
and I wondered how you were fareing.

regards

Stephen George

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/14/2008 10:35PM by stephen george.

I've been posting about what I got wrong in both of scpmicro's threads
[forums.reprap.org]
[builders.reprap.org]

Despite myself, my choice of electronics and my cat it is going well.

- Test assembly - complete
(based on the picture on the front of the bitsfrombytes site, so it could have had a few parts wrong/different);

- Final assembly
(carefully measured, built following the instructions)
Extruder complete
Complete up to step 4 of the Darwin Bot.pdf

- Testing
Motors driven via Host program, although only at 5v with resistors owing to using PIC electronics.
Extruder, heating and wiring tested. Needs testing via the host software. Needs testing with filament.

Stephen: are there any specific pieces you are having problems with?
If you can find the part in the LC Layout image [www.bitsfrombytes.com] I should be able to identify it.

The ones that took me some head scratching and haven't yet been used in the build instructions are:
76 & 77: 76 goes in the slot at the side of the Z table and 77 clamps it via two captive nuts.
85: a pair of these are clamped over the corner post and the short post via an M8 bolt through them. The remainder of the bolt then contains 2 large washers and a bearing to form the Y axis idler. If my description doesn't help don't worry the instructions haven't got to the Y axis yet.
96: The figure 8 parts are cable guides, one side goes on the rod and cable goes through the other. I'm planning to use cable ties mostly though as they can be added and removed without disassembly/reassembly.

I'm also building one of Ians repraps from bitsfrombytes, again up to end of step four (or I would be if one of the metal rods and the springs wasn't missing, but we're getting them early next week so hopefully by the end of monday I'll be at the end of step four).

Have you been having a problem with some of the captive nuts not fitting properly? On part 58 I've had to file the gaps for them wider to get them to fit without forcing them in and snapping the plastic (if it's a common problem and mine wasn't just a fluke then it would be worth telling Ian that they need to be cut slightly wider in the first place on that particular piece)

Yep I also found 58 too snug and in fact did break a corner off when I tightened it up the first time. I've also found that ensuring that the nuts can sit with the entirety of their sides within the plastic helps with getting everything to line up.

Other parts I filed were:

01, 15, 38, 41 (corner blocks) - on some of these the nut would fit only if it was inserted before the rod; if the rod was already in place I had to file the back corners of the slot to get it in.

04 (z motor mount) - Either the nut or the grub screw from part 03 was projecting too far and stopping parts 03 and 04 siting flat.


I've now completed the steps in 'Darwin Bot.pdf', from that I would recommend:

Creating a story stick for setting the cross braces, it saves a lot of time when setting 8 of them to the same length.

Find a cheap allan key (from an ikea kit or similar) and saw it down to fit into the spaces behind the grub screws. I started off using a longer key inserted at an angle and it made the whole process much harder than it needed to be.