Here is a view of the assembled x-y carriage. This assembly provided no (new) particular difficulties but did introduce a new aspect of assembly; building the wiring.

The principle of Fab@Home is build it yourself and the wiring is no exception. The x-y carriage includes two more limit switches (in the central structure that moves along the main thread), but I have left the wiring of these until later. It also includes the stepper motor that will move the platform in the x-direction.

There are four stepper motors altogether in the final build (x, y, z, and the syringe driver). Each comes from the manufacturer pre-wired, but these need extending - by different lengths. Clear labelling of the extension wires is important, both to ensure that each motor gets the correct extension and also so that each motor’s wires are easily identifiable when wiring to the control board since at this stage the wiring will be threaded carefully through the structure and encased in braiding to keep it safe and tidy - so tracking back along the wires will be tricky.

The connections to the extension cables are sheathed in heat-shrink tube (see image).

Torben

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 20th, 2007 at 12:54 pm and is filed under Fabber build notes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.