I went to the hardware store after work today to pick up the items on my shopping list. Walking to their register I fell victim to their bargain basement aisle. In the process I dropped the $3 superglue I had found and picked up four times as much for $2. Sure, its a no-name house brand… but as long as its reasonably sticky there shouldn’t be any problems.
I also picked up some 3-in-1 oil for the various rods. I installed the Z-axis rods without cleaning them properly (too enthusiastic to get building). I also bought a large flexible magnet in sheet form (the kind used for fridge magnets – only in an 8.5″ x 11″ size), work gloves, and another utility knife.
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Once I had the opto-endstops all soldered up, I really wanted to keep going. I made the Y-endstop cables, bolted the opto-endstops on, and bolted the motherboard and stepper motor boards to the MakerBot. Clipped in the cables and it looks like a robot after all! I’m going to need to organize those cables, but that will have to wait until all the other parts are in place.
An interesting side note – as I was moving the various axes someone noticed that little lights started flashing on the stepper motor boards! Cool! I presume moving the platform caused the motors to act like generators and pushing power to the boards, lighting up the LED’s.
Once the opto-endstops were done, I couldn’t resist bolting them on. Once I started doing that, I wanted to make the Y-endstop cables, then the ribbon cables, and wire it all up.
If nothing else, it looks like a robot now!
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The opto-endstops marked the very first parts I had to solder for this MakerBot. Not having soldering anything more complicated than two wires together, this was an adventure and learning experience. Here’s what I learned today:
- The 3-pin connectors used for two of the opto-endstops (on the Y-axis stage) are in the Generation 3 MakerBot Electronics Kit (Mostly Assembled) with some of the other connector bits. I was a little confused about this for a while.
- It helps to lay out all the little bits in an organized fashion beforehand.
- Keep a long thin rigid stick handy for bending delicate leads into the circuit board holes.
- Although I read the RepRap electronics fabrication guide and found it helpful, I still felt a little lost. I found the most effective way to solder the parts in was to:
- Get the soldering iron good and hot
- Put the leads through the holes
- Bend the leads a little so that they stayed in place
- Flipped the board over so the leads were sticking up
- Touched the solder to where I wanted the joint
- Gently stroked the solder with the soldering iron tip towards the joint
- This process seemed to create a pretty good joint
- You’re going to burn a finger at some point, accept it.
- This almost goes without saying, but go slowly.
- Check and double check the orientation and placements.
- I found it helpful to take a large sheet of aluminum foil and shape it into a tray. This helped contain the parts I was working on and was a good way to catch the flying leads that I clipped off.
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