It’s been a long time… I believe there were not so many visitors here, so even the disappointment of the lack of content was not so big. People whom I told about this page took a look long time ago, and according to google statistics, there are two other kinds of people getting here: ones that looked for a particular odd sentence and others that were seeking porn. Funny enough the second group of “random visitors” is bigger than the first. It seems naked machines are a real treat :)
Let’s get back to the printer. Even though I haven’t written much (or more precisely- nothing), it does not mean the reprap was standing in the corner catching dust. Well, all right, most of the time it was. Still I managed to do some stuff that will most likely fill two or three entries of this blog. I have to also confess that most of the photos will be made quite late post-factum. Deal with it.
The first things I worked on were connected to the printer. In the old post I described the electronics holders- now it was time for the clumsy plastic spool.
I decided it should be mounted onto the printer on some of a frame. I had quite a bit threaded 8mm rods, so they were to become the main construction. I found out that there will be two kinds of things required: several clamps to bind the rods and the "top" frame part with a fork to sustain the spool on a stick.
In order not to develop the wheel again, I chose the same clamps that were used in the printer itself. After setting up the printer and around an hour of printing I had nice 12 clamps ready. I printed first 1, then another, then 2, then 4 and finally 4. All to be sure that if it starts to screw-up, I will not loose too much time. Here are the models and the result:
After that there was the "U" shape to hold the spool. There was some fun with development of the model, with the following result. Also I give a post-factum close-up picture of the part itself.
And finally, here is the "new" printer with an awesome frame to hold the plastic spool. It makes the threading much easier. During later work with the printer I found out that the spool does not unwind itself during process- it is too heavy and the plastic is a bit tangled. This might cause the blockage or problems with feeding. Yet it is much easier just to turn the spool on the frame opposed to playing with it when it is laying around. And the whole thing is much more compact and easier to move.
That is it for the come-back post. There are much more to come, so if you are just tuning in, stay on ;) Till next time!
