Thursday, January 27, 2011

A Little Progress

I have spent most of this week working on costuming for my daughter's musical theatre project so I haven't managed to get much done on the Mendel. However, I did manage to make a flowing black robe and a Greek helmet with a silk flame built into the top so she could play Hades in a musical number from Hercules so the week wasn't a total loss. Whenever I am faced with something like this I immediately turn to the Instructables website. I was able to find instructions for a cardboard version of a Roman helmet that worked great. This is one of the best sites on the Net for information on creative projects.

I did manage to find time to add a washer to all of my idler bearings for the belts. This provides just enough extra space so the belts move smoothly. The X and Y carriages both move smoothly now.

I have also roughed out the mounting board for my electronics. I will cut it and drill the holes tomorrow. I am planning on using the printed mountings for the original laser cut mounting boards to mount it so it should be a nice clean job.

A couple of other small jobs that I will get done in the next day or so:
  • make a new set of opto flags. The pop can aluminum I used for the original ones is just too light. They flex in a strong breeze.
  • make a mounting bracket for the 12v power connector. just need to bend and drill a piece of aluminum
  • make some sort of mount for the USB board. No mounting holes in it so I'm not sure what I will do there.
After I wire up the electronics I will finish off the extruder. I started to assemble it a while back but never finished. I stopped at the point where I was going to make the heater coil. When I read the instructions I realized that they wanted me to turn on the heater in order to cure the paste that holds the wire in place so I had to wait until I had the electronics ready.

My new Z-axis belt has been shipped and should be here within the week. Things are looking good!

2 comments:

  1. i am glad to see you are making progress, and that things are coming along well for ya

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  2. oh a good tip if you try using cans for the flags, fold it over so that it is thicker, or try to curl the edges on the long sides in to make them stiffer that way too.

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