Instructions (bit of a rant!)

Okay guys...

Started the REPRAP experience last year while sitting bored on the beach in France and with WiFi was soon buying away on eBay etc. Life then got in the way as it does, but the plan was to do this with my son, both of us learning and him being almost 13 a good age to try to steer him away from a career in IT

Coming back a week ago the goal posts have shifted, I'd already ordered some LM8UU as they looked like a good idea, but now there was the printed parts to go with them

This week I have ordered:

RAMPS 1.4
Arduino Mega
Pololu A4988
A hot end kit
Printed parts for the LM88UU
A heated bed

Now I know we have a wiki, but it is a bit fragmented.

The RAMPS had no information.

The Pololu's arrived with heat sinks and headers but no information on how best to attach either (I know thermal paste for the sink, but which way to solder the headers, there is nothing on the wiki.

The hot end was bits with no information or a picture of it assembled.

The printed parts, did not mention that the smooth rods need to be shortened or open out the top mounts.

How hard is it to make an A4 sheet with some handy information?

Most of it I sorted out, but it's a mine field. If your going to sell something, it's a little unfair to dump all support onto pretty much this forum.

Better now...........NURSE!

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Andrew

Based in Slough, United Kingdom

Depends where you ordered your parts from as to how much information comes with it. This is still very much a nascent, hobbyist 'industry', and you need to use a bit of common sense and lateral thinking at times. If you buy from separate sources, there is no guarantee parts will be compatible.

I agree with you that information is widely distributed and sketchy in places. Part of this is the difficulty of have a lot of separate development, and a lack of standards, over which there is a debate going on at the moment. To some extent, that's why we started the TVRRUG, to have standard design that could be properly documented, and people local to support builds. We are happy to support other people who are building. The problem is that a lot of people in the community use the information, but don't contribute back, and/or moan about the documentation without doing anything about it! However, by the time you know what you're doing, you don't bother much with the documentation! It's a bit of a weird circle. People who are selling stuff should be compelled to be clear about what they are selling, and giving you the instructions you need.

Not sure if you need this help now, but these should address some of your problems:

RAMPS 1.4 - did you get a kit that you need to solder? See [reprap.org] for the majority of details.

Pololu stepper drivers - the reason they don't solder on the pin legs of the pololus is that a particular application may need different pins, or no pins. You need to solder them on. The easiest way to do this is to place the pins partially in the socket on your RAMPS 1.4 board, place the pololu board chip-side up, then solder the pololu board from above. That way the spacing is correct. You can get double sided heatsink sticky tape from places like Maplin.

Firmware for you Mega - See my replies in this thread - [forums.reprap.org]

Hot end - which did you buy, and where from?

Printed parts - what did you buy, and where from? If it's a basic Prusa kit, these visual instructions are about the best available for building. But, if it varies from the standard design, you may run into problems. [garyhodgson.com]

Heated bed - pretty straight forward: mount a thermistor, wire it up to the electronics, cross fingers!

Hope that helps.

Went to the TVRRUG last night in Reading, I've got a CNC mill to get going (fighting with Mach3) and having talked to Hannah etc it's tipped me over the brink of buying a small lathe. I'm hoping that for 'Phase 2' (and in general) we could produce our own hot ends. With printing parts, designing electronics & specifiying power supplies having a hot end 'in house' would make us free from the supply issues and quicker to try other things like 1.75 filament cutting down the amount of 'vitamins' we order in.

Many thanks, I did have most of these sorted but it's just not getting a clue (the heated bed did have lots of links on the web page though).

The hot end I got was Parcan's, looked pretty good but proof is in the pudding!

The Ramps has just arrived with SDramps......HOWEVER

Again zero instructions, not even a page with some links, I would be in the same boat as Julien had he not published his blog.

So, I've ordered RAMPS 1.4 and SDramps, not rocket science to think that..........

A. I might want to use the printer without the PC attached, so why not have some with the Diode installed!?

B. There is a fighting chance that I might actualy want to plug the SDramps in but there is no socket soldered to the RAMPS 1.4 or supplied with the SDramps!?

So needing just 1 diode, I've ordered that from Maplins for 29p and about £5 of fuel to pick it up, the headers they don't seem to have so I'll have to buy a pack of 10 from ebay, once I've spent an hour finding the little feckers and making sure they are correct, by cross checking the..........nope the is no mention of the header socket in either the BOM for the RAMPS 1.4 or the SDramps......so it's a guess and another £5 to have 9 spares I'll never use!

This is not a 'help I can't do this' post, it's a rant. Why is it SOOOO hard to chuck a piece of A4 in the jiffy bag or even have a web page for the product, that goes for all products. In the case of the SDramps, it's more than doubled the cost and delayed putting it together, not to mention the frustration factor!

I'm sounding like Victor Meldrew, so I'll hide on IRC and have a beer!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/21/2012 03:45PM by AndrewD.

I wouldn't expect instructions to be included with parts, and indeed I never put any in the sets I sell and I bought a Sanguinololu and it it didn't come with instructions. All the documentation for these things is in the wiki and I assume people find out what they are before they buy them. I don't see why anybody manufacturing them should document them unless they are different in some way from the open source design.

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[www.hydraraptor.blogspot.com]

No problem with printed parts, as either you have read about it on thingyverse etc or it's part of a know configuration. I had a set of your parts and did not expect a set of instructions (thanks for the new gear BTW, just opened the envelope and fitted it, all sorted).

The SDramps is a pretty good example of being left pretty high and dry and to a lesser extent the hot end, I've done a search and read the problem with running too hot causing leaking. That's information I'd put on my blog/web page etc.

I guess I'm not used to a wiki system yet, I'll stop whinging and add the required information!