The Never Ending Story

Well, not quite never ending but it sometimes feels that way.  

I adjusted the pots on the stepper controllers last night.  It fixed all my problems with the steppers except for the Y-axis which just sat still and jerked a bit no matter what I tried.  I eventually moved the motor over to one of the other controllers and found that it worked fine so I guess I have one bad controller.  I actually thought about ordering a couple of spare Stepsticks when I ordered the Sanguinololu but decided against it so now I have to wait again for a delivery.  The genetic predisposition to being a cheap bastard which I inherited from my Scottish ancestors has undone me again.

The good news is that everything else seems to be working finally.  Extruder, steppers and hot end are functioning as they should so I am able to do a few things while I wait.  The opto-endstops are not working yet but that is because I have not yet soldered the bridge for the 5v power to them.  I also need to clean up all of my wiring but I was waiting to do that until I got everything working.  After I do that I am going to switch the controller for the Z-axis to the Y and then I can do a couple of tests while I wait:

• Lay down a line in a single layer so I can confirm that it is extruding the correct length of filament.
• Lay down a square in a single layer to confirm that everything is square.  Should get right angles at the corners and sides of the same length in both the X and Y directions.
• Lay down some complex curves in a single layer just to confirm that ethe X and Y axis are moving as they should and are coordinated properly with the extruder.

Since the Stepsticks are coming from the Netherlands I expect it to be a couple of weeks yet before I will be able to build anything but success is definitely in sight at last.