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!