Building the Darwin Cartesian bot

A couple of weeks ago I started building the Cartesian bot. Now I've basically got it as finished as its going to be until my belting arrives.

I started by spreading everything out all over the lounge. I decided to have one machine booted to the Reprap LiveCD so I could go into AoI to have a look at any of the pieces I couldn't figure out from the description. The other was to be the one with the instructions on it, but normally it was showing a movie from my collection.


2 hours later I had had enough and stopped for the day. Although it doesn't look like I achieved much I had sorted things into piles and figured out what went with what and actually put together a couple of small pieces.

By Tuesday night, just in time for my LUG meeting, I had something to show off, the x axis.

I shot my mouth off and said I'd have an almost ready machine by the next LUG so I had a bit of work ahead of me.

About that time I realised I had mixed up the threaded and non-threaded rods and did some shopping around. Once I got a few rods together things starting shaping up.

Then I started drilling holes in the MDF and fitting it and it really started to look like something.


Once I got the diagonal brackets in place I added the electronics and found that most of my wires are too long, but, where it matters they are too short. And thats how it stands, in time for the next LUG.


Now, I just have to redo all my wires and wait on the belting, and find some feedstock, then I'll have a real live Reprap!

Nice. Did you get the plastic parts from Ian?

Yes. There are some differences between what he sent me and the standard parts though.

I'll go through and highlight the differences in the next few days.