I havent had much issue with the wires, to be honest. You just have to wire it once.
But the idea of using hitting bed to calibrate it does sound like a good idea. But getting the same distance is easier said than done..
People have done calibration where it measures the orientation of the bed. Frankly though, bed leveling doesnt seem to be so much of an issue in the first place) 'reprap industrial' has a nice leveling feature, that could be easily be applied to other repraps, though i think most of them have a bit tricky access to those screws..
Slightly tangient I do have an endstop holder for which the idea is to have two endstops at differing height, say one fore drawing and one for FDM. Then you want the higher one to go away easily, in this case it just rotates out of the way. (It rotates on the rod that connects the two Z smooth rods of a reprappro) (Of course the second endstop would go in series with the other z endstop)
I'll probably try it with pen plotting at some point. However, the endstop holder is too wobbly imo. If i 'release' it i kindah want it to be better than this.
My main 'beef' with current designs is that i feel the machines might be more valuable as 'general' x-y-z-e machines, where things can be exchanged for other things. For instance I also have a design for making the E-motor easily removable.(which i havent printed yet, some slic3r problems and there is a thing now i think i want to change) For instance so you can take it off the filament drive and put it on the carriage to move a syringe or pump for instance.
As for what to use, i like openscad and implicitscad. Neither is perfect but i tend in the direction of implicitscad.
But the idea of using hitting bed to calibrate it does sound like a good idea. But getting the same distance is easier said than done..
People have done calibration where it measures the orientation of the bed. Frankly though, bed leveling doesnt seem to be so much of an issue in the first place) 'reprap industrial' has a nice leveling feature, that could be easily be applied to other repraps, though i think most of them have a bit tricky access to those screws..
Slightly tangient I do have an endstop holder for which the idea is to have two endstops at differing height, say one fore drawing and one for FDM. Then you want the higher one to go away easily, in this case it just rotates out of the way. (It rotates on the rod that connects the two Z smooth rods of a reprappro) (Of course the second endstop would go in series with the other z endstop)
I'll probably try it with pen plotting at some point. However, the endstop holder is too wobbly imo. If i 'release' it i kindah want it to be better than this.
My main 'beef' with current designs is that i feel the machines might be more valuable as 'general' x-y-z-e machines, where things can be exchanged for other things. For instance I also have a design for making the E-motor easily removable.(which i havent printed yet, some slic3r problems and there is a thing now i think i want to change) For instance so you can take it off the filament drive and put it on the carriage to move a syringe or pump for instance.
As for what to use, i like openscad and implicitscad. Neither is perfect but i tend in the direction of implicitscad.