The photos are atrocious, especially in the "wiring" section. No zooms available, and so many color definition issues picking out the wires that I eventually had to dig up the Sanguinololu schematics in order to figure out WTF the instructions were talking about. And I still managed to completely miss that the heated bed and the main board need to be powered in parallel straight from the brick.Not to mention that there's apparently not a schematic for the heated bed itself anywhere on teh internetz. Writing tech docs is part of what I do for a living, and these are just shameful. And it's a Wiki, fercryinoutloud! Nobody's even introduced an erratta page?
The extruder: W!T!F! You have to adjust the position of the motor in order to make the gears mesh properly... but with the big gear in place, 2/3 of the mounting screws for the motor are utterly inaccessible. And those &*^&(^(*^!!! nylock nuts on the hobbed bolt -- I've never seen something so well-designed to make it impossible to hold the depth of the bolt -- it was impossible to control which nut was getting tightened. I eventually had to resort to an improv jam nut and some Loctite.
And whomever designed the heated bed such that the control cable connector interferes squarely with the levelling bolt needs to be beaten with a nerf bat until they learn to CHECK INTERFERENCES ON THEIR BLOODY DESIGNS! Having to bend the PCB pins by 30deg just to get the plug on is ridiculous.
Now, to be fair, my screwups: The Y-axis endstop carrier is on the wrong side of the frame (left/right, not back/front). I'm not taking this bloody thing apart again, so I'll have to improv something. And somehow I soldered the main power socket incorrectly (caught that doing circuit checks before I plugged anything in, thank God, so I didn't fry anything). And those little crimp-together PCB connectors for the motors... well, let's just say that I'm ordering a bunch more from Pololu.
Advice to anyone building one of these, or anything using these connectors: buy one of these and for your own sake, read the instructions. Also buy extra packs of the housings, and the pins. And make sure you leave enough slack wire to snip and re-make the crimped ends several times, unless you've already had lots of practice. Trust me.
Status: Complete except for re-terminating the motor cables, mounting/wiring the endstops, and getting the main power wiring straightened out. I may actually achieve "smoke test" status by the end of today.
The extruder: W!T!F! You have to adjust the position of the motor in order to make the gears mesh properly... but with the big gear in place, 2/3 of the mounting screws for the motor are utterly inaccessible. And those &*^&(^(*^!!! nylock nuts on the hobbed bolt -- I've never seen something so well-designed to make it impossible to hold the depth of the bolt -- it was impossible to control which nut was getting tightened. I eventually had to resort to an improv jam nut and some Loctite.
And whomever designed the heated bed such that the control cable connector interferes squarely with the levelling bolt needs to be beaten with a nerf bat until they learn to CHECK INTERFERENCES ON THEIR BLOODY DESIGNS! Having to bend the PCB pins by 30deg just to get the plug on is ridiculous.
Now, to be fair, my screwups: The Y-axis endstop carrier is on the wrong side of the frame (left/right, not back/front). I'm not taking this bloody thing apart again, so I'll have to improv something. And somehow I soldered the main power socket incorrectly (caught that doing circuit checks before I plugged anything in, thank God, so I didn't fry anything). And those little crimp-together PCB connectors for the motors... well, let's just say that I'm ordering a bunch more from Pololu.
Advice to anyone building one of these, or anything using these connectors: buy one of these and for your own sake, read the instructions. Also buy extra packs of the housings, and the pins. And make sure you leave enough slack wire to snip and re-make the crimped ends several times, unless you've already had lots of practice. Trust me.
Status: Complete except for re-terminating the motor cables, mounting/wiring the endstops, and getting the main power wiring straightened out. I may actually achieve "smoke test" status by the end of today.