mxDelta

Just cleaning house. I did end up "finishing" this printer, but in my haste I built a beautifully useless machine. It's all looks and no function. Nothing's square, nothings straight, it can't print worth a damn.

However, I don't want this to sound depressing. I learned things on this project that helped me in infinite ways on future projects, and even at jobs, to a degree. All projects are successes if you learn something, even if they can't print anything.

Goodnight, my sweet delta. May your soul be at rest.

I am about a week away from printing. I know, I started this log awfully late. Sorry, in between crimping every cable by hand and fussing over poorly designed motor mounts, I kinda forgot to take any photos. However, the actual assembly of a delta printer is relatively straightforward. I plan to do a sort of "prototype" log where I go through everything that sucks about the design and how I'm improving it going forward. In fact, lets start now!

I decided early on I wanted a single connector going from the effector to the motherboard (Duet 2 Wifi). Not knowing much about these things, I went with the first thing I found that I recognized, Molex Micro-fit 3.0.

Now, I went for this because I'm paranoid about electrical fires, and so I tend to go a little overboard on current capacity whenever possible. Even though only two of these pins are even carrying significant currents (about 2 amps...) I decided more was better than less, especially without the proper crimping tool.

Speaking of which...

I crimped every pin incorrectly. I smashed the part that was supposed to interlock with the housing. After wondering for an hour why none of them would stay in the housing, I realized my mistake. Molex is really not very forthcoming about the proper crimping of their pins.

Anyway, I guess there's a lesson to be learned there. Somewhere. I'm waiting on new connectors to complete the electrical side of things, then I'm on to calibration! I promise I'll take pictures from now on.