Fabrication start

Been a little while since I have updated but the project has leapt forward.

The previous post promised pictures of my frame so here you go:

This picture does not include details such as the motors or the lead-crews.

With this design I have tried to make it as easy as possible to construct, the frame is entirely made from aluminium extrusions which are easy to work with and are fairly cheap.

I tired to find multiple suppliers of the various extrusions that I need but seems like very few want to deal with the public so I ended up buying the aluminium that I needed from Bunnings I didn't think it was too expenisve but I have little to compare it against.

All the parts for the prototyper have been ordered from all over the planet, shipping is painful. I managed to order the linear bearings and rods from a Melbourne supplier, the lead-screws are coming from the UK, electronics from the US and nuts and bolts from China. Yes that's right I had to order fasteners from outside the country via ebay as so many places are just blatantly ripping people off.

I received the extruder from makergear yesterday and spent yesterday and this morning building it from the kit, everything went fairly painlessly though my soldering skills still need a bit of work. I was really impressed with the spare parts provided with the kit and assembling it myself gave me a better idea of how the whole thing goes together and works which will make it easier to fix when something goes wrong.

Here is some pics of the Plastruder going together:

This is the hot end it contains the heating element, the nozzle and tube for the filament to travel down as well as the therm-resistor for the electronics to maintain the temperature.

This is the complete assembly, hot end inserted into the filament drive which is driven by the stepper motor. The filament drive consists of a ball-bearing held against a gear by the 4 springs you can see below.

I have also started working on the frame, lots of holes to drill it doesn't make good pictures until I start assembling it.

I have yet to receive to the lead-screws or the control electronics yet, I'm really keen to get the lead-screws as I want to know that they will fit the lead-nuts I have ordered (and received) from the US I am also a little worried about the linear speed the lead-screws can produce, I may need to use beefier motors.