Thanks. I used plywood because in my experience it is more durable than acrylic, and I liked the burnished look of the laser cutting, so I decided to highlight it with varnish rather than hide it under paint or leave it natural.by Martin_H - Tantillus
Thanks for the suggestion. The light in my work room isn't great, but here are some pictures. From the front showing some parts unused up to now: A side shot showing the extruder: An above shot showing the drive rods and X, Y carriage:by Martin_H - Tantillus
I purchased a Sanguinololu PCB because I know I can source genuine components from Digikey to avoid ersatz capacitors and IC's. Since I don't plan to use the USB feature, or the heated bed MOSFET, I will omit those components. I plan to use 0.1" pitch screw terminals rather than headers for the stepper connectors. I also have a ton of headers, shunts, 1k, 4.7k, 10k, and 0.1 uF components in invenby Martin_H - Tantillus
This morning I mounted the extruder, Z axis, Z axis stepper, and shaft coupler. It all went smoothly and this completed mounting all mechanical parts and the printer is deceptively heavy for its size. Next I need to string and tension the drive cables and align the drive gears. That seems like a small but tedious task, and might have been easier before mounting everything else. But if I have theby Martin_H - Tantillus
My local hardware store didn't have 4-40 grub screws long enough, so I cut a slot in the top of some 4-40 threaded rod, cut it to length, and ground the end flat. Repeat to make a second grub screw. I then ground a small flat spot on opposite sides of one stepper shaft, put the nuts in the gear, grub screws in the nuts, and tightened the gear on the shaft with a screwdriver. The stepper mounted oby Martin_H - Tantillus
I sent E3D a picture of the heater block and glass sleeving. It turns out that I have some of the old stock white glass sleeving and E3D has switched to a more rigid blue sleeving. They're mailing me a new thermistor and sleeving which should be easier to install. That was really good service, so I thanked them for it, and figured I should give them kudos here. I completed my hand built lower caby Martin_H - Tantillus
After sleeping on things I realized that the only problematic part is the bottom of the X, Y carriage, specifically the lump near the screw. It's job is to hold the linear bearings perpendicular to the top pair, as the spacing between the bearings is achieved by the plywood retainer. Such a piece seems fairly easy to hand fabricate, so I am using brass tubing and JB weld to make a part, and see wby Martin_H - Tantillus
It also looks like the e3d's heat sink won't fit into the carriage bottom. So it looks like the hot end and X, Y carriage are incompatible. I emailed Colin at Maker Farm, and although his policy is that you can only return unassembled items, but cutting the sleeving was small enough that he might make an exception. But he suggested using this X, Y carriage instead: Here's one that looks even bby Martin_H - Tantillus
Thanks for the suggestion. Yesterday I put the anti-backlash spring into the into the Z axis. Minor difficulty in that the spring I bought was too long, so I cut it in half. Even though its ID was 7.1 mm it still was binding against the threaded rod. So I opened the coils up a bit and everything seems to work smoothly now. Today the hot end came and I've hit the first step that frankly seems imby Martin_H - Tantillus
This came up on my eBay feed and I figure someone on this forum might be interested:by Martin_H - Tantillus
I decided to do two simple tasks to warm up. First, I cut the 1/4" threaded rod to the 170 mm length using my Dremel with a cutoff wheel, and sanded the end flat using a belt sander. Second, I cut the extruder bolt to length as well, and sanded its end flat also. While I've gotten pretty good at aiming the shower of sparks away from me, I noticed that I still had a fine layer of grit on my face fby Martin_H - Tantillus
I took a day off for Thanksgiving, but today the fishing line arrived, so I decided to drill the drive rods holes. To do it I measured and marked with a sharpie at 22 mm from one end and 42 mm from the other. I then clamped the rod to the workbench, put my center punch on top of the sharpie mark, and punched the rod in both locations. The drilling was straightforward and fast because the 1/16thby Martin_H - Tantillus
Even though I don't have the fishing line, I decided to test fit all the X, Y axis parts, and couldn't get them to fit together. I noticed that the centers of the X and Y bearings on the carriage were a few millimeters father apart than the rod centers. I re-read the instructions and saw that the carriage middle is supposed to be 3mm thick (equal to two #8 washers). But my plywood carriage middleby Martin_H - Tantillus
Thanks. I'm at a bit of a stopping point because I need the braided line and an extruder to complete the X, Y axis. So I did a few minor tasks like installing nuts and set screws in the pullies, test fit them, and cleaning out the support material from the extruder. The last task was a bit unnerving, but I watched the animation of the extruder assembly on the web archive and it made sense as Iby Martin_H - Tantillus
Yesterday I cut all the rods to length using a Dremel with a cut off wheel, and ground the end flat against a belt sander. It was fairly easy to get a clean cut once I got the technique mastered. For the X, Y, and Z rods I used 8 mm smooth rod from an old scanner. It's straight, finely honed, and should work well. For the drive rods I used 5/16 drill rod from the hardware store. It's not quite asby Martin_H - Tantillus
I know I am late to the party, but for the past week I've started collecting parts for a Tantillus build. Two trips to the hardware store and scavenging parts from old scanners has yielded most of the mechanical parts. The printed parts and laser cut plywood were also pretty easy to find. Here's a video from my YouTube channel: I still need to purchase the electronics, hot end, fishing line, aby Martin_H - Tantillus
OK, I'll look at the website after I get the email.by Martin_H - Tantillus
Thanks for posting those guide pages. Most of it looks fairly straightforward except for the extruder assembly because of all the missing pictures. I'm thinking of building one because I like the smaller size and high accuracy. This would be my first 3D printer build and a Cartesian machine seems a little simpler to calibrate. @Tony, did you have a chance to build on of these? Was the informatioby Martin_H - Tantillus