Brief update of motors, belts, threaded rods and end stops mounted:

X Axis

I switched from slider based carriage to the nylon wheel (23.0mm OD, 7.3mm width) based carriage (X and Z axis), apprx. 120cm belt length.

 

Y Axis Belt

Apprx. 90cm belt length – with some considered cutting X + Y ~ 2m belt length.

This part was tricky – the parts are glued to bottom of the wooden carriage:

1. mark the positions of the sliders (left: 65mm distance from top and bottom, left: center of top/bottom)
2. glue 2x sliders on the left (where the Y motor is mounted)
3. glue 1 slider on the right side
4. put carriage on the rails, avoid any horizontal movement, push it slightly down (a slight snapping you sense from the sliders)
5. let it rest (don’t touch or move it) for 30min – glue must dry
6. move Y carriage gently forward & backward; if there is slight resistance then
   1. loosen all screws of the right 2020 beam so you can move it sideways
   2. then move carriage forward and backward and let the beam slightly find its new position
   3. when the carriage moves gently without resistance
   4. fasten the screws gently
   5. retest and if it’s still resitance, repeat procedure
   6. this is a bit tedious work, but worth it

This part is to do next (once I concluded those PTFE pipe chunk based sliders do their job well):

1. drill holes and use Zip ties to fasten sliders
2. glue Y carriage belt mount, let it dry
3. mount GT2 belt to carriage belt mount
4. fasten Y carriage belt mount with screws: drill holes from the bottom side

 

I will make some short videos of putting the carriage together and mounting it – it’s quite fast to attach and detach with those sliders (no screws to unfasten).

Z Axis

I extended the corner brackets so the Z stepper motors can be inserted, this weakens the part but saves quite a lot of space and hides the threaded rods nicely behind the 2020 Z beams. I might work on those brackets later to increase rigidity again.

Currently I use M6 threaded rods for the Z axis, one cycle gives 1mm height change.

X, Y, Z Motion & Homing

Flashing the Anet 1.0 board (which I currently use) with latest Marlin, this was required:

• using Arduino Uno R3 (clone), installing Arduino ISP on it
• cabling Uno R3 with Anet board (Uno powers Anet board with 5V, all stepper motors or power detached)
• installing Bootloader (“Burning Bootloader”) with “Arduino as ISP” as writer
• downloading latest Marlin, copying Anet Configuration.h and starting to change it

Finally, after hours fiddling around (bad install of Arduino failed to compile and/or upload anything to my Uno R3) the LCD display greeted with “Marlin 1.1.8” 🙂

Moving X, Y and Z axis briefly, 380 x 300 x 320 build volume with the current V carriage with 23mm OD, 7.3mm width nylon wheels – no extruder and no bed heating and leveling yet.