Was thinking if you were in Alaska or Hawaii it may have been more expensive priority. But it shouldn't be any greater cost to Florida.

Give them an email or call. They have been really friendly and helpful for me. When I had my hotend fail on New Year, I drove to the store and picked up the new one and they were great to work with.

 

Still not enough! I WANT EVEN MORE STEPPERS!

I have the current turned down to 1.2A on my Z motors. But even then, that is a total of 2.4A. I might be able to get away with that for a while with plenty of cooling. The extruder motors will require less current, but can't run them together. I picked up some extra drivers for my ramps board so have some spares I can try wiring in.

 

I'm not sure how steppers work but with a brushless motor they pull much more current when under load so by running two stepper motors on Z they might be sharing the load reducing the current draw although it's probably not as efficient as one stepper.

Carl, did you ever try running one stepper on Z? I might try just one at first.

 

They work a lot different than a regular brushless DC motor. But they do draw more current under load. Unlike a brushless motor, which draws no power when stopped, a stepper still does which is how it can hold its position. The more torque it needs to over come the force trying to turn it, the more current is required.

I had thought about the single motor Z axis too. Maybe even something like adam has done but with only 2 screws instead of 3.

 

One driver/motor with 2 lead screws.

 

1 stepper with 1 or even 2 lead screws but really I'm curious about 1 stepper with 1 lead screw. If I end up using belts I would probably take the route that Adam did and use 3 leadscrews with 1 possibly larger stepper. To start with I plan to stay with the stock configuration to give default configuration a try.

 

I've got the "stock" configuration going (2 steppers/2 leadscrews)--though I'm using 20X60mmm extrusions and a 12" X 12" bed. I've very happy with it so far. I did start off of a Ramps 1.4 board but I've now switched over to a Smoothieboard 5x. I've got my Z stepper set to 2A. Other than having to use some active cooling on the board it's allowing working very good!

 

Are you running both motors off one driver for Z or using a slave driver? What motors are you using?

 

Both are running off of one driver. The motors came from flea bay...it's supposed to be a Kysan 1040095.

 

The Kysan 1040095 is rated at 1.5A so that combination could pull up to 3A. If you are using the standard driver chips for Ramps, you could be over loading them unless you are supplying less than 1A to each of them. Even at 2A, you are going to need some real good cooling. Heat sinks and fans.

 

Ruggb, what did you use to design those brackets? I was thinking of trying to mod them a little. I found this...

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:268615

And was thinking it would be nice to merge the two together. I could do something with OpenSCAD to build up the inside area to support the rod for the foot. Maybe reduce it down from the 5/16" threaded rod to an M5 bolt instead.

 

Still waiting on the hot end from matterhackers. The tracking hasn't changed and the email back from them basically said they are updating their shipping methods due to costs of their offering free shipping. Would really have been nice if I could have paid a few extra bucks to ensure it shipped priority with real time tracking.

I also picked up a set of Makerbot style end stops but from what I've read the pull up resistor on the Azteeg X5 and Smoothieboard cause some sort of problem(I have little experience with electrical engineering).

Has anyone found a work around for the Azteeg X5 or Smoothieboard? I found in this thread: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/smoothieware-support/I9_Sl7SaCxg that they were able to use the LED pins for the display to circumvent the resistors on the endstops. My problem is I haven't found the Azteeg X5 equivelent to the Smoothieboard pinout page: http://smoothieware.org/lpc1769-pin-usage

 

I have modified Ruggb's corner bracket combining it with a leveling foot. I used a M5 x 20mm screw and 3 M5 nuts to put it together.



To assemble, insert the screw through the top of the hole in the bracket and thread the nut on it. Tighten the nut until it is aligned with the cutout on the bottom.



Tighten the screw, holding the nut in place so it is pulled into the plastic.



Keep tightening until it is fully set. Then remove the screw.



Repeat this process on the foot. This time, leave the screw in the foot. Install the 3rd M5 nut to the screw (not pictured).



Install the bracket as normal. There is a new wall and 3 screw holes to bolt the bracket to the inside of the extrusion. The bolts are optional, but it should give some extra strength. (With 23 bolts per corner, it should stand up to anything).



Once all the brackets are installed, you can level the printer by turning the foot. Once it is level, tighten the free nut on the screw against the one in the bracket to lock it in position.

Let me know if you have any problems with it. I printed it using eSun's PET-G Blue at 50% infill with 5 shells on top/bottom/sides @ 255c. Yeah. Bit of overkill.

See below for the updated STL file.

 

Hey Carl, thanks I will try removing it. I wonder if I could just bridge over the top of it? seems like it'd be easier as it's extremely small SMT components on the endstops.

Smoothie can be configured via software with debounce but I'm not sure about any electronic debounce designed into the PCB.

endstop_debounce_count100Debounce each endstop pin over this number of values. Set to 100 if your endstops are too noisy and give false readings.

 

Update to the Corner Bracket file. Made the pocket for the screw head in the foot a little deeper.

 

Finally got the E3D Lite6 from MatterHackers after 8 days but the fan was left out for some reason.

http://wiki.e3d-online.com/wiki/E3D-Lite6_Assembly

Definitely not the best experience.

 

Sorry to hear of the troubles you had to go through. That is completely opposite of my past experience. Hopefully it is not the start of a trend for them. Might have to put an order in through them soon and see what service I get this time.

 

Not your fault. I actually ended up getting a $15 credit for the shipping and $20 credit for the missing fan, plus they are sending a fan second day UPS. In the end after not being real happy with their service they did redeem themselves and were very nice about the whole situation so I'll have to give them another shot. From what they said it's growing pains which I can understand.

 

Glad it all worked out. Sounds like they did go above and beyond to make sure you were satisfied. They are a small company. Probably no more than a dozen or so people when I visited them in January.

 

I'm at the point where I am looking at installing the endstops on the printer. There hasn't been a lot of pictures showing how they fit on and where, and I haven't noticedany pictures of how the V2 Z Endstop is suppose to go. If you have your endstops installed, would you be willing to share pictures of them? If you have made new styles, would love to check out the STL files too.

 

I used the forum's search function for the word endstop and didn't come up with much. Thanks for the pictures. Clears up things in my screwy mind a lot.

 

I hate asking, feeling like a pest, but could you post photos of how the X and Y endstops are suppose to attach?

 

Mounted the E3D Lite6 to my Mini Kossel and used a blower fan for now to help with heat creep. Printed a few PLA parts and I'm seriously considering never going back to a J-head . Still figuring out the best settings but even with a 0.4mm nozzle I was able to get some of the best layer alignment I've ever had with a smooth surface texture at 0.08mm. With the 0.25mm nozzle the corners are insanely sharp but still prints well with no clogs yet. I have to do some more testing but for the money the Lite6 cannot be beat.

I'll never mess with the clones again but it does make me wonder about the E3D V6 vs E3D Lite6. I'm almost inclined to think the E3D Lite6 may offer better print quality due to the low friction tube and added heat protection from creep helping create an ideal transition zone at the end of the heat break.




First frog printed with Hatchbox PLA. The white specks all over are dust, this thing is pretty much flawless in person. I'm gonna order a macro lens tonight from Amazon, hopefully my C-Bot will be calibrated with two Lite6's by next week.