I would like to first start off with the good…it appears nothing was damaged in shipping, and the organization of parts was overall good. I was happy with the electrical setup and overall I’m glad that i did this build.
With that said, i was surprised at how involved the build was, and it took much longer than i had expected. The overall construction took about 15 hours for me and that was probably due to a number of reasons. It is still not complete, but just about.
Step one of part one took me about an hour. If that’s not discouraging, i don’t know what is. I think the instructions should read, “Step one, acquire the force of God. Step two, apply the force acquired in step one to rod and bearing.” The fact that it says this may require force is a drastic understatement. I later had the advice to heat the bearing, but that was after i had jammed them together with everything i could think of.
This isn’t the only place that had ridiculously tight fitting parts. I feel like the holes for the metal rods should be a millimeter larger. I spent a good amount of time trying to jam these rods in the holes (I’m not bad at sticking rods in holes too). After i was done with a couple rods i learned that the inset nuts for the set screws had extra plastic around the inside of the hole which needed to be cleaned out better. This would be worth mentioning in the instructions. Additionally, one of the set screw nuts was protruding into the hole, making it impossible to insert the rod.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByXYnGowdxQuVGNlc3NhVkF5eEU&authuser=0
I ended up putting in an m3x12 into the set screw nut and pulled it up with pliers…as a result it broke free of the plastic and became worthless…however i am not worried considering how hard i had to force the rod in, i don’t think it is moving.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByXYnGowdxQueUpZT2pPSzhOOGc&authuser=0
One area that concerns me is the double bearing holder below.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByXYnGowdxQuQW9iMUZIM1ZPQ2s&authuser=0
If you can see, the top hole barely aligns with the hole it needs to go into…as a result, there is no play at all…it looks like this part was not printed at the right temperature since it warped at the base.
This causes more friction than necessary and ultimately might be the reason my z access skips steps.
Another area where the plastic parts weren’t quite right was in the alignment of the inset nuts:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByXYnGowdxQuakg3YVVGZ0JEOGM&authuser=0
So as I’m sure you guys are aware, nothing is more frustrating than when you are at the final steps and you find you are missing pieces. This happened to me twice…when mounting the electrical box, i find that i don’t have enough m5x14 bolts…so i thought eh, maybe they changed their design and want too use the m5x10 bolts without the spacers…so that’s what i do. Then when i gettin the stage when we attach the y axis, i don’t have enough m5x14 thumb screws. So i find my packing list and compare it to my bags only to discover that despite a checkbox on those screws the quantities don’t align…see image below.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByXYnGowdxQuTGdsUGNWRUVrZm8&authuser=0
So i took off the thumb screw on the spool holder(put there initially since I didn’t have any m5x14 bolts), and put the two i had in diagonally just to move forward. Still need to fix this issue.
Another quality control issue was the labeling of the switches. It was a minor issue, but should be noted so that it can be fixed:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByXYnGowdxQuOGZ2OXZOTzZoVWM&authuser=0
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByXYnGowdxQuZERGalRVM2doUlk&authuser=0
As you can see, I have two E2 bags, and they have different contents…it’s easy to figure out which is correct but when I was getting my parts for the Y axis build, I did spend some time trying to figure out how to use the power switch as a limit switch…
After everything was tightened up and squared away, i started my testing…low and behold my z axis is just too hard to move…it works near the top of the frame more so than the bottom, but even at the top there are issues. After taking off the couplers moving the axis to the stage, adjusting the lead screws and trying everything i could think of, the motors would still skip. This is super frustrating. I feel like maybe that double bearing could be the issue, or it could be the rods have a slight bend or something due to the tightness of the fit in the plastic, or the alignment of the motors with the lead rod isn’t perfect, it is hard to say. I can tell you that with measuring with calipers, the difference between the distance of the lead screw and the smooth rod at the top and bottom is around .5mm. Is that enough to cause a problem? If it is, how should i fix it?