Building without instructions

While slowly building the McWire RepStrap I started to name different parts of it so I could discuss it with others. It has two legs, right and left looking from the front, with end caps, a back leg, a Mast, a flange pipe, and a flange. Then there are the x and y rails, tables, motors, and screws. (As in the X screw mounts to the x motor and moves the X table back and forth.)
Last night I built the x motor mount that connects to the x rails and also a piece of aluminum angle at far end of the x rails to hold the x screw. (x screw support.) I can see now that I will want some sort of bearing to hold the far end of the x screw but for now a hole cut in the x screw support works just fine. Also I noticed on the motors from the RRRF store there is a raised area on the face of the motor around the shaft. This causes the screw holes to sit slightly off the x motor bracket. In fear of some offset of the shaft angle I just added some washers to the assembly and the entire face of the motor now sits flat.
Next, I mounted two bearings with bearing arms and a piece of aluminum angle to the x table that is made from common 3/8

Hmmm, Having the same problem with the motor mounts myself. I fixed the whole raised edge thing with the approriatly sized hole saw. I'm mounting them to plexiglass plates. Had a crappy hole saw so I ended up using a dremel tool to clear things a bit. Not a nice looking mount but very solid.

The clearance on the y axis I am going to fix by just mounting the motor on the front of the machine. I've been naming my components the same way you have. X-stage this and that. Works very nicely.

How are you doing your z-stage? I'm very curious to see how others are going about that.

Demented

I spent last Saturday morning working on my RepStrap. I bolted some of the other extruder parts in such a way to keep the drive screw level and steady so I could work on it.



That will be the last Saturday I will use the table in the house to work on it. All of my pipes, motors, and wires have been exiled to my garage. That will be my new RepRap Research Lab HQ.



Here is a picture of the simple mounting of the motor. I added some washers and you have to plan for the height of the X-screw to fit under the X-table. At first I thought it would be too high but I will add some plastic slides to the bottom of the X-table so it can more easily slide on the X-rails. Luckily everything will fit just right that way. The motor mounting screws thread right into the aluminum angle so the nuts are just there to lock them in place.



Starting on the Y-axis you can see that if I mount the motor on top of the X-table the Y-screw will end up too high and it would be over the height of the Y-rails. To fix this, I am going to move the back X-rail closer to the front rail so that I can drop the motor lower and the Y-screw will line up to the height it should be.

lookin good =)

one of the advantages of the lasercut/measured design is that only one person has to deal with figuring out where to place things and figure out sizes so that everything moves properly and such.

keep posting!

Zach, get those instructions out there - the demand is boiling over

sorry!!! i'll get them up by the end of the week... guaranteed!!!

Yeah. I'm definitely ordering your laser cuts Zach. While I plan on making 'mods' to other parts of the frame, the stage needs to be common amongst the platforms or there will be chaos.

Keep up the awesome work.

thanks. since you guys pay such close attention, here's a treat: the files for v1.2 of the mcwire bot (including stickers!!)

[downloads.sourceforge.net]

i'll have more info up on the wiki this week. i got about 50% done with documenting the Mcwire v1.2 bot.

Yahhhh--- I have downloaded the files and started printing them out on standard paper 8.5 x 11 (letter size). It is nice that Zach put at least one measurement on each page. BECAUSE like most people I forgot that my printer was setup to make the stuff fit on the page and when measuring got the wrong size.

REMEMBER - Don't have the printer do any scaling of the printed page or it will be WRONG.......

Great stuff though Gota love it.

---

Bob Teeter
"What Box?"

yay! thats what the measurement is there for... double check your calibration =)

Curious about something: Would it help any to use adhesive paper templates? Office supply stores sell packs of the stuff, usually under the name "full-sheet labels". I've used them for various things in the past (e.g. [www.instructables.com] ). I can see them being handy for something like this but they could also be a potential pain in the butt. They're hard to move once they've stuck to something.

yes, that is actually the intent of the stickers. thats how i do it. its actually okay (and sort of cool looking) to have stickers in various places on the machine.