Hey guys, I have been thinking about some endstop management.
One thing I never quite understood was why the endstops weren't mounted on the X-carriage? You can easily put the X and Z endstops in an X-carriage.
There are three advantages to this:
- Cable management - The cables can be combined with the cables that are already running from the E-motor and the hotend, this will effectively cause that you have even less separate cables to take care off
- The X-endstop can be mounted in a space that is made in the side of the X-carriage, right now, I am using a clamp on the smooth rod of the X-axis and it takes up more space than I would want it too, I bet there are more people feeling the rod-clamps are a pain in the rear
- The Z-endstop can ben greatly improved - My idea is to mount the Z-endstop on a small arm that has the exact same height as the tip of your hotend nozzle. When you are setting the Z-height you flip down the arm, and when printing starts, you can manually put the arm up, out of the way of the printbed. Since the endstop arm is mounted on the X-carriage itself, and pre-calibrated to the height of the nozzle exit, chances of getting the wrong Z-height are highly reduced since the bed is the part that deforms the most under the influence of heat. Flipping an arm down and up is much easier and more fool-proof than having to turn a screw on the side of the machine (thats what I do now) to calibrate the height.
I also had an idea of making a small adjustment to the clamps that hold the smooth rods of the Y-carriage, and that is to incorporate the endstop holder into the clamp, since the carriage can't move beyond the clamp anyway, why not use it as an endstop holder too?
Are there more people thinking of improvements like this? I am not able to create these things yet, since I only know how to design in Sketchup, I don't own Rhino or any other program, however I do know a bit how to work with Rhino.
Is there software that I can use on the Mac to create STL files, besides Sketchup?
- Marinus
One thing I never quite understood was why the endstops weren't mounted on the X-carriage? You can easily put the X and Z endstops in an X-carriage.
There are three advantages to this:
- Cable management - The cables can be combined with the cables that are already running from the E-motor and the hotend, this will effectively cause that you have even less separate cables to take care off
- The X-endstop can be mounted in a space that is made in the side of the X-carriage, right now, I am using a clamp on the smooth rod of the X-axis and it takes up more space than I would want it too, I bet there are more people feeling the rod-clamps are a pain in the rear
- The Z-endstop can ben greatly improved - My idea is to mount the Z-endstop on a small arm that has the exact same height as the tip of your hotend nozzle. When you are setting the Z-height you flip down the arm, and when printing starts, you can manually put the arm up, out of the way of the printbed. Since the endstop arm is mounted on the X-carriage itself, and pre-calibrated to the height of the nozzle exit, chances of getting the wrong Z-height are highly reduced since the bed is the part that deforms the most under the influence of heat. Flipping an arm down and up is much easier and more fool-proof than having to turn a screw on the side of the machine (thats what I do now) to calibrate the height.
I also had an idea of making a small adjustment to the clamps that hold the smooth rods of the Y-carriage, and that is to incorporate the endstop holder into the clamp, since the carriage can't move beyond the clamp anyway, why not use it as an endstop holder too?
Are there more people thinking of improvements like this? I am not able to create these things yet, since I only know how to design in Sketchup, I don't own Rhino or any other program, however I do know a bit how to work with Rhino.
Is there software that I can use on the Mac to create STL files, besides Sketchup?
- Marinus