I'm an idiot....
I'd call it a comedy of errors except it wasn't funny.
I sat down on Saturday and read your responses and this is what I wrote
Thanks for the responses folks
John: I wish congrats was not in order. I have a couple of anxious people waiting for parts. After the first part came off the Mendel... (barring the problem) the prints are so nice that I just don't want to print any more on the Cupcake... There are three of us working on this by the way.
Seems like every time we have a problem it's unique. We scour the forums and scour the wiki, Google our brains out and come up blank. Seems to be our lot in life. Murphy's law prevails. Oh! Here we go, just like right now. I want to take some pictures with my camera so I grab a couple of batteries at home and head out the door. Now I'm sitting at my desk at the shop typing and what the heck, my leg is hot, I mean really hot, like my pocket's on fire. I'm scared to reach in. I start quickly but gingerly pulling things out with my finger tips One set of keys, my Bic butane lighter, one battery, a second set of keys.. ouch are they hot. Then the second battery. It burned my fingers. What's the odds of a key chain shorting out a “AA” battery in your pocket. Apparently pretty good today.
Anyway, I'm the wrong person to be asking about programming, Jeremy does most of that. Unfortunately Him and Mike have a show tonight so he's not available right now. “Spam” If you ever find yourself in Niagara Falls Canada. Be sure to catch the
Danny ZZZZ Show , Ask for the Reprap discount.
mccoyn Yes, the prints are well off the end stops.
Nophead: Yes, although it was a while ago I did use the jigs when setting it up, and all three of us sat and watched it zigzag its way up and down and around the grid. All the faces emanating the start point of the print are square.
Then came Sunday...
Growling into my morning coffee: OK... fine... I'll check the frame. Took it to my workshop “10 AM” and plunked it on the table saw “the flattest surface I have”. Grabbed a framing square and stood it up by the left Z bar and took a measurement... OK it's out a tick front to back... 1/8” actually. I checked the spacing between the vertexes and they were all correct. ???? I thought oh great here we go again. And so it went. I sat and scratched my head for a while. What do I adjust? Finally I went to the left front vertex, shortened the upright rod a quarter turn and added a quarter turn to the horizontal and presto, twisted frame. So, I blocked up right corner and applied some pressure on the diagonal to straighten it back out. Took a measurement, 1/16” out. Repeat operation, Perfect.... front to back... Now it was out sideways. And that's how the comedy of errors began to unravel, one thing lead to another, to another, to another. By 8 PM I had adjusted everything thing on the machine that I could possibly adjust. I'm not sure what else was wrong to start with and what came as a result of today's contortions... But finally, it was following the grid perfectly again. I held my breathe and did a partial print in the center of the plate, it looked pretty good. I left it stuck to the plate and did a full print close to home... All square.
So... How many wrongs does it take to create the illusion of right? Not sure, I lost track.
Thanks for posing the question nophead. I wouldn't have even considered it otherwise.
By the way, I saw your Meltdown blog entry. That sucks. I'm using a variation of your steel tube design, but I mounted the heat sink under the carriage and the fan on top so the air blows through the carriage before hitting the heat sink. The carriage stays cool to the touch, and the top of the tube only gets warm to the touch, not too warm to touch... “As long as the fan is running”.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/19/2011 09:29PM by Bruce.