I'm not Dead!

I'm back!

I never expected when I paused for my vacation back in July that I would still be paused at the end of December. Some health problems combined with an extremely busy fall/winter have kept me away from the workshop for far too long. I notice that I am not the only one as the frequency of posts from all the blogs that I follow has fallen off considerably over the last 6 months.

I went downstairs yesterday and tidied up the workbench so I can start working on the Mendel again. Just to recap - I have finished the basic mechanical structure and I am working on the z axis mechanism. I had to get a new set of extruder parts since I clumsily broke the ones that Nophead made for me by overtightening the bolts. The new parts arrived long ago and need to be assembled. This will be the third time since I had to toss the first set of cast parts that I bought due to their poor quality.

My current problem is that the washers that sandwich the bearings for the Z-axis rods are not the right size. They are too large and interfere with the operation of the bearings. I haven't been able to find the correct washers anywhere here so I have used my bench grinder to modify the ones that I have. Hopefully that will take care of things and I can get moving again.

Also, the z-axis rods extend too far below the chassis. I think this is due to the 1/4" nuts being too large. I will have to put some rubber feet on the Mendel to prevent the rods from contacting the bench.

Hopefully, I will have more progress to report later this week.