I have NO idea what I’m doing!
If you’ve got a Batch IX MakerBot all the surface mount boards should have arrived pre-soldered. This means the first actual material step to building the robot is to solder the opto-endstops. These are little circuit boards that contain optical switches that will prevent the machine from moving the build platform (and print head?) too far in a particular direction. You can find the kits for the opto-endstops in the MakerBot store. According to the page for these kits:
An optical switch usually used to detect when your robot has reached the minimum or maximum position of travel.
An optical endstop AKA opto endstop is a switch made out of light. When something interrupts the light-beam, then it signals the motherboard. Useful for detecting if your robot is attempting to self-destruct. ;)
Also, there are no moving parts to wear out, so they will last pretty much forever.
So, when all is said and done, hopefully I will have taken this:
OptoEndstops Parts
To this:
OptoEndstops v2.1
[...] so I’m not that concerned. Frankly, it’s a little bit of a relief that I can skip the soldering stuff for now and move on to some of the pulley making [...]