Bed levelling

This is an excerpt from the Mendel90 build instructions, which are work in progress, but it can be applied to other machines.

The best way I have found to level the bed relative to the nozzle is to use a dial gauge mounted in place of the extruder using this clamp. If you don't have a dial gauge you can roll a rod or slide some film under the nozzle and feel when it is just touching.



The two pillars at the back of the bed have a washer under them to ensure the front can be made both higher or lower than the back. Those pillars are tightened and not adjusted. Front - back adjustment is achieved by adjusting the two pillars at the front. Left - right adjustment is done by turning the Z lead screws. Ideally there would be only one mounting point at the front as only three points are needed to mount a stiff sheet like glass. Having four makes the adjustment more tedious as they tend to bend the sheet and interact with each other.

Start by sliding a washer under the front pillars to set them to the same height as the back. Move the gauge or nozzle to the middle of the back of the bed. Note that level on the gauge, or nudge the Z axis to just touch your feeler. This is the level that we want the whole bed to be at.

Move to the back left corner and adjust the left lead screw to get the same level as the middle. Move to back right and adjust the back right lead screw. Moving the gauge all the way across the back should now read the same height.

Now move to each of the front corners in turn and turn the pillar until the height is correct. Lock them in place by tightening the top screws through the bed.

The whole bed should now be level but usually you need to repeat the procedure a few times due to the interaction of the four points.

Ooze free unattended start

Normally plastic oozes from the nozzle during warm up due to thermal expansion and gravity. It is then necessary to prime the extruder by running it for a few seconds to fill up the now empty barrel. Any oozed or extruded plastic then needs to be removed, typically with tweezers, before the build can start.

This procedure is inconvenient because it means you have to stay with the machine during the warm up sequence rather than simply starting a build and letting it get on with it. I discovered a simple solution which I now use on my Mendel and Mendel90.

I remove any filament hanging from the nozzle while it is cold and then start the machine and leave it. My software moves the nozzle to the front edge of the bed and parks it 0.05mm above the surface. It then warms up the extruder and the bed. As soon as the plastic starts to ooze from the nozzle it meets the relatively cold bed and sets. That seals the nozzle and prevents and more ooze. I leave the small gap to ensure the bed does not take heat away from the nozzle.

When the bed and extruder reach their operating temperatures the software waits for two minutes to allow the nozzle to expand to its full length, otherwise I find the first layer height is inconsistent. The extruder is then run for a couple of seconds to prime it before doing a rapid move 50mm along the edge of the bed to wipe it. It then lifts to 1mm and moves to the start of the build. I always start that with a blob and an outline.

Here is a video of the sequence on my Mendel90:



So now I can start my machines and leave them to do their own thing. I use Python scripts but it should be easy to do the same thing in G code. The technique works with PLA as well as ABS shown above.

ABS Fudge

Many months ago I put some HIPS, ABS and PLA in a jar of limonene. The HIPS dissolved completely fairly quickly and the ABS and PLA were seeming unaffected. I then forgot about it until yesterday.

The PLA is still completely unaffected but the ABS has become soft like fudge.

I assume that given long enough the limonene removes the styrene content from the ABS.

It looks like it is feasible to use HIPS as a support material for PLA and then remove it with limonene. Limonene isn't cheap though and it remains to be seen how much HIPS it can dissolve before it becomes too dilute.

More trifurcated PLA

I repeated the PLA in acetone experiment with red PLA and pure acetone. Same result, trifurcation after a few minutes:

Here is what happens to an object:

These were identical PLA clothes-pegs, one was dipped in acetone for a few minutes.  It fell apart when I tried to pick it out with tongs.

A bit of Googling reveals acetone causes PLA (which is normally amorphous) to become crystalline. That explains why it loses its transparency I think. It also becomes rubbery and crumbly.

Not a very useful result, but it does show that acetone would not be any good for cleaning out a hot end filled with PLA. Also I think people have suggested you could use ABS as support for PLA and dissolve it out with acetone but that plainly will not work either. The opposite works, dissolving the PLA with an alkali.

Peeled PLA

I have read conflicting forum posts as to whether acetone dissolves PLA or not, so I dropped a piece into a jar of acetone for an hour or so. The effect was truly bizarre:

It split into three strands a bit like peeling a banana. It was clear PLA but the acetone was polluted with ABS, which is why it turned white I think. Whereas it is normally transparent and brittle, it has become translucent soft and flexible. When I opened the jar it was under pressure so I think it evolved some gas.

So acetone doesn't dissolve PLA, but it appears to trifurcate it!

Not a very scientific experiment as I should have done it with pure acetone, but interesting never the less.

StepStuck

When I built my Mendel I used A3977 stepper drivers. Before that I did some maths to show that the component values need to be carefully selected to match the motor in order to achieve 8× microstepping. Makerbot produced a board with four potentiometers and I published settings for motors popular at the time.

Since then Pololu stepper drivers have become popular (and the StepStick clone), but they only have one thing that you can adjust: the current. They also have 16× microstepping, which makes the range of component values that work even smaller. I was always pretty sure the off-time would be wrong for the motors we use and while commissioning my second Mendel90 I could hear that it was wrong, so I decided to look into it.

When stepping one motor at a constant speed you should hear a single pitch at the step rate. If the off-time is too short then the lowest current microsteps cannot be achieved, the motor pauses twice every 16 microsteps so you hear a lower pitch sound as well.

If you step the motor very slowly (G1X10F1) you can hear a sequence of steps with a pause.

The reason for this is that the lowest current step when ×16 microstepping is 9.8%. If the current is set to 1A then that is only 98mA. The minimum on-time for the chip is fixed at 1μs and my formula predicts the off-time needs to be at least 54μs with 1.65Ω motors. That would require a 47k resistor but the value fitted is only 10K. That gives an off time of 12μs which isn't even long enough for 8× microstepping. The situation is even worse on the Z axis with two motors in parallel.

The problem with increasing the resistor to 47k is that the switching frequency drops to 14kHz, which is audible. So my conclusion is that the A4983 is not really suitable for driving such low resistance motors. The A3977 allows you to control the minimum on-time so you can avoid the switching frequency becoming too low.

Later Pololus and some StepSticks use the A4988 chip. That has an interesting section in the datasheet: -

Low Current Microstepping. Intended for applications where the minimum on-time prevents the output current from regulating to the programmed current level at low current steps. To prevent this, the device can be set to operate in Mixed decay mode on both rising and falling portions of the current waveform. This feature is implemented by shorting the ROSC pin to ground. In this state, the off-time is internally set to 30 μs. 

Conceptually an easy mod to do, simply short out R4, but due to the size and location of the resistor and the age of my eyes it was not at all easy. I applied the mod to a StepStick and it worked, the steps are now regular, no missing beats. Running is a bit quieter but I think the motors are more noisy when stationary. More investigation is needed.

What to do with my A4983 Pololus? Well if I increase the current to 1.3A and change the resistor to 36K then the minimum frequency is 17kHz, which is ultrasonic to me nowadays due to the age of my ears. Alternatively switching to 8× microstepping and using a 22K resistor keeps it above 30kHz and the current can be 1A.

I don't think constant off-time choppers are the best idea. The current range is too limited and the switching frequency varies wildly. As the two halves of the chip run at different frequencies they can generate beat frequencies in the audio band.

The other thing I don't like is that they regulate the peak current so there is an offset of half the ripple current which can make the first step inaccurate.

Mendel90 files

I have put the Mendel90 files on GitHub. There is the OpenScad source code plus some Python scripts that, given a machine configuration, will generate all the STL files for the printed parts,  DXF files for the sheets, SVG drill templates, a master BOM with a matrix showing where the parts are used and sub-assembly BOMs for each of the sub-assemblies.

Two standard configurations are included: Sturdy90 is the MDF version with 10mm rods that I have had running for three months. Mendel90 is an acrylic version with 8mm rods and the same build area as a Mendel that I have assembled but not run yet. The generated files for these two configurations are also on GitHub.

The directory structure is as follows: -

├───imported_stls       The pulleys and gears that I use but don't have OpenScad source for.
├───mendel                 Generated files for the Mendel90 variant.
│   ├───bom
│   ├───sheets
│   └───stls
├───Prusa_retrofit       A Z motor bracket that allows the Mendel90 x-axis to be fitted to a Prusa.
├───scad                    The OpenScad source.
│   ├───conf               OpenScad configuration files.
│   ├───utils                Utility modules for making objects, such as polyholes.
│   └───vitamins          Models of the non-printed parts.
└───sturdy                  Generated files for the Sturdy90 variant
    ├───bom
    ├───sheets
    └───stls

The top level directory contains the build scripts. To make all the files for a machine run: -
    make_machine.py machine_name

To make just the bom, sheets or stls run bom.py, sheets.py or stls.py machine_name.

machine_name can be mendel or sturdy. To make your own variant copy scad\conf\mendel_config.scad or scad\conf\sturdy_config to yourname_config.scad and edit it. Then run make_machine yourname.

To view the model of the whole machine open scad\main.scad. It will take about 8 miniutes to render but after that you can pan and zoom it at reasonable speed and changes takes less time to render.

To view a sub-assembly open the individual scad files. Set the exploded flag in config.scad to make exploded views.

scad\conf\config.scad contains constants that should be independent of machine variant, for example screw clearance hole sizes. It includes machine.scad that is generated by the build scripts to include the configuration for the specified machine variant.


Thanks to sevikkk (Vsevolod Lobko) for making the scripts work on Linux as well as Windows.


I will put the build instructions in the RepRap wiki soon. These will mainly consist of the exploded views of each of the sub-assemblies with the list of parts in it. Unfortunately OpenScad can't export images from the command line at the moment so they have to be made manually in the GUI.

On my todo list is to add scripts to make images of all the STL files, PDFs from the SVG files using inkscape and produce the BOMs in spread sheet format using OpenOffice. I also need to write a script to tile the SVG files to allow them to be printed on A4 sheets and taped together like the Darwin bed template.

Mendel90 finishing touches

I have tweaked a lot of things since building the prototype. The design is fully parametric meaning each part works out how big it should be from basic parameters like the desired build volume, rod diameter, the motor sizes and the layer height used to print it. That means any little modification can change everything slightly, which is why I won't release the files until it is finished. For example, if I increase a screw hole clearance then the brackets might get a bit bigger and that will knock on to moving the holes in the sheets and may increase the sheet size slightly. I also want the drill templates to be accurate so every part that needs a mounting hole had to be modelled, even the cable clips and wire holes.

The cable clips are designed to keep the limit switch wires away from the motor wires to prevent crosstalk. The hole sizes are calculated from the wire size and the number of wires using circle packing rules and so are the holes through the frame for the wires.

The printed holes that need to be accurate sizes are polyholes if they are vertical, truncated teardrops if they are horizontal. I added on half the layer height to all the horizontal teardrops and nut traps to allow for the staircase effect of the layer sampling.

Another change that had a lot of little knock on effects was to allow thin sheets to be used for the vertical parts of the frame, requiring nuts on the back. That necessitated moving the buttresses and fixing blocks to avoid clashes. The net result is that you can specify the thicknesses of the sheets and whether to use nuts. If using nuts it will calculate the the screw length just long enough to work with a Nyloc nut and generates a clearance hole in the sheet. When not using nuts it calculates a screw short enough to not go right through, generates a pilot hole and adds a star washer under the screw. If the sheet is hard it generates machine screws and a hole to be tapped, otherwise it generates a wood screw.

In order to standardise the screw lengths I made all the parts of the brackets that take a screw the same thickness.

I want the BOM to be accurate and remain that way, so the model includes everything apart from the hot end and the electronics. I haven't used any libraries so there are no dependencies apart from OpenScad itself.

I modelled the belt twists and the tension loop to get an accurate assembly diagram and length on the BOM (hopefully I haven't tested that yet). I also modelled the cable strips to get their lengths. The one to the extruder was tricky as it is completely free-form and the ends differ in X, Y and Z. I modelled it as half an ellipse with a shear transform to gets the ends in the right place. It is probably not mathematically accurate but looks about right. Interestingly there isn't a simple formula for the circumference of an ellipse as there is for a circle, only numerical approximations.

I redesigned my fixing blocks to have slotted holes to allow a bit of adjustment. I also changed the hole depth to allow the same screws to be used as elsewhere and cut away some plastic that wasn't adding much to the strength.

RepRap firmware uses a bottom limit switch that needs a fine adjustment. It also needs a coarse adjustment to allow for different nozzle lengths. I found this difficult to accommodate because of limited space at the bottom of the z-axis. This is the design I arrived at after much deliberation: -

The switch is mounted on a lever that is hinged at the bottom by a thin section of plastic and sprung against a screw adjustment by two rubber washers. An extra type of vitamin but I am not impressed by printed springs.

I developed exploded diagrams to make the build instructions. A picture like this with its bill of materials should be self explanatory.

The z-couplings don't need as much clamping strength as the ones I designed for the Prusa (they only need to rotate the screw and not hold the weight of the x-axis) so I was able the make them slimmer, which was necessary to avoid a clash with the z-motor bracket when using NEMA14 motors on the Huxley sized machine.

As you can see two pictures above I also added some pointers on the lead screws. These can be set to face the rods when Z is homed and can then be used to observe if the two motors have got out of step and whether the z-limit switch is repeatable.

This is what the Mendel size machine with 8mm rods looks like with a 6mm acrylic frame and a 10mm base (without the bed).

Note that to make transparency work in OpenScad you have to draw the transparent objects after all the things you might be able see through them.

The hole cut through the gantry is just big enough to make the Y-carriage. I prefer to make my Y carriages from DiBond as I think they are a bit lighter and handle heat better, but acrylic should be OK and it seems a shame to waste such a big bit. I wouldn't recommend it on the MDF version as that is thicker and so even heavier. I have seen people mount PCB beds directly on MDF but I found that even when spaced off and insulated it warps enough to keep throwing the bed out of level.

I offset the Y-axis to allow the ribbon cable for the bed power to be central. That makes it easier to attach the wires to the PCB. I don't think there is any problem with the belt being nearer to the two bearing side, in fact it is probably better.

I had to slim down the back of the Y-idler bracket to prevent a clash with the bar clamp on the Huxley90. The overly long bolt is simply to reduce the number of unique fasteners. Similarly the cable clips could use smaller screws but I kept them the same as the other base screws. On the Mendel90 the base screws are M4 or No6, on Huxley90 they are M3 or No4.

I used a hacked up D connector shell on the prototype with hexagonal posts for locking. To remove those as vitamins and I designed a printed version that uses normal M3 nuts and screws for the locking. It also has a cable clamp optimised for the ribbon cable and its supporting plastic strip.

Again an exploded view makes it clear how the captive parts fit.

I also crudely modelled the tie-wraps because the 10mm bearings require longer ones to be on the BOM.

Modelling the wing nuts showed that one can clash with the X-end if it is oriented in some directions. Fortunately the bolts are captive hex heads so you can rotate the head and try again if the nut happens to stop where you don't want it. I am currently using M4 extruder mounting screws but I see the Prusa2 has moved to M3. I think that would solve the clash with smaller wing nuts but there are a lot of extruders and hot end designs using M4 I think, so I am not sure if I will follow. In any case it is simply a configuration parameter if you are printing your own.

You can see that I added a small part to the belt tensioner. It works a lot better than the Nyloc I had in the design before.

I also added some more nut traps to make assembly easier. Even a pair of "flying" ones inside the X-motor bracket. You can just see one here:

I have done a lot of changes the make things scale correctly for a Huxley sized version. This uses 6mm rods and NEMA14 motors.

I need to make a smaller extruder though as a Wade's is way too big. I plan to do a mini Wade's with a NEMA11 motor for 1.75mm filament. That will make the carriage smaller and reduce the width of the machine.

I also want to make a parametric PCB heater design to allow arbitrary machine sizes.

So as you can see I have put a lot of work into this since Christmas. In fact nearly all my spare time, until 2am a lot of evenings. I get really ticked off when people demand that I release the files before it is finished. Unlike a lot of people I don't put half baked things on Thingiverse, only tried and tested designs.

As all the parts have changed a little bit I am in the process of printing all the Mendel sized 8mm ones to check them. I will then release the design on GitHub. I had wanted to release it with make files to generate all the STLs automatically but it seems the command line option of OpenScad is currently broken so people will have to make their own if they change any of the parameters.

Bearings, Bushings and Bars

My last post started a discussion about why I got only a few hundred hours of use from PLA bushings and in particular commercial IGUS bushings. I think I mounted the IGUS bushings well enough. I printed PLA holders and reamed them to a 10mm bore, which gave a nice press fit.

I had intended to use a small self tapping screw to retain the flange but found I didn't need them. That is what the two holes are for. They are triangular because they are polyholes.

The holders have slotted screw holes and were screwed to the underside of my Prusa's Dibond Y carriage. I started with them loose and then tightened the screws as I ran the axis up and down to ensure they were aligned well. I then applied lithium grease.

When first fitted they had no slop and very low friction. After a few days of continuous use the holes in the bushings had elongated and there was noticeable slop. At that point I replaced them with LM8UU bearings in prototype bearing holders I designed for the Mendel90.

These have run for thousands of hours with no noticeable wear. They do have more friction than bushings though. It seems higher to start with but they seem to "wear in" quite quickly and it drops.

My suspicion was that the surface quality of the stainless steel rods that I used was to blame, so I have just had a look with a microscope.  I used a cheap USB "Traveller" microscope from Aldi and a times 4 objective lens. The magnification is much greater than that though when photographed and blown up to screen size. 

Here are a couple of pictures of an off-cut from the stainless steel rods I used on my Mendel: -

Obviously you can only have a small strip in focus due to the curvature of the rod but you can see it looks far from smooth. The difference between the pictures is mainly the lighting angle.

Here is a mild steel rod bought on eBay, sold for Reprap use, so probably typical of what most people use: -



Quite a lot smoother, so hopefully most people get better life from PLA bushings than I did.

Here is a bright steel rod from a 2D printer, or maybe a flat bed scanner, I can't remember which, but it will have used bushings: -



It seems to have a finer grain structure but doesn't look particularly smooth.

And here is a "precision round rail (Induction Hardened)" sold for use with linear bearings that I got from Zapp Automation.



It looks the best out the four, so I guess you get what you pay for.

I think for soft bushings to last you need high quality rods. LMUU bearings seem to be more tolerant.

Mendel90 axes

Bearings

With the stainless steel bars that I use I found that PLA bushings only last a few hundred hours before they wear out. I tried Igus plastic bushings and they only lasted about the same length of time. I think you need ground rods rather than rolled to get a smooth enough surface for bushings. Possibly the lithium grease that I used was not suitable for plastic as I am sure other people must have got better life out of bushings.

The ball bearings on my Mendel have proved very durable but they do wear flats on the rods after about a year of continuous use. This wouldn't be a problem except that the rods wear more in the middle, which leads to inconsistent Z height eventually. You can turn the rods to put the flats underneath and get many more years life.

I have run some LM10UU bearings for over a year non-stop and they have not worn the rods noticeably. I did have an LM8UU bearing suddenly decide it only wanted to go one way on my Prusa's X-axis. It just needed some oil to make it work again. I think the X-axis tends to dry out because it runs over the heated bed.

I made the Mendel90 prototype with 10mm rods because I had noticed the 8mm rods sag a little on my Mendel, that has a heavier bed and extruder though. 10mm rods cost quite a lot more than 8mm and the plastic parts get bigger so I intend to make an 8mm version and see how it compares.

X-Axis
The X axis is similar to the Prusa but I have changed a few things: -

Note the axis is shortened in this picture, the belt has a twist not shown and a loop round the tensioning screw.

I lowered the idler and the motor to be in line with the bars because I noticed on my Prusa that the belt tension tended to bow the bars upwards slightly at the ends. It does mean the belt is a bit closer to the heated bed but I haven't noticed any ill effects.

I swapped the positions of the Z bars and Z leadscrews so that the bearing holders face inwards. That means the belt tension tends to push the bearings into their holders rather than pulling them out. That allowed me to get rid of the cable ties.

There are clamps for the X-bars so they don't have to be exactly the right length. They can be adjusted a few mm lengthwise and then locked in place. The holes are open ended at the idler end to allow the bars to be removed without removing the Z-bars first.

The motor housing is a box shape to keep it rigid while still having only relatively thin walls. The hole in the top is for the wires and lets any heat out.

I didn't use a 608 skate bearing for the idler. They might be cheap and available world wide but I found they didn't work on my Prusa, whereas the 624 bearings used on the Sell's Mendel do work. Ball bearings have a chamfered edge, the bigger the bearing the bigger the chamfer and M8 washers are thicker than M4 washers. With 8mm bearings that leaves a gap big enough for the belt to ride down and bind, whereas with 4mm bearings the gap is much smaller so the belt simply brushes against the penny washer, rather than jamming.

I prefer a bearing to a printed pulley with flanges or a crown pulley because if I am using a metal drive pulley for accuracy it does not make sense to have a printed idler.

I haven't added it to the model yet, but there is a half twist in the long return path of the belt so that the smooth side goes over the idler, not the teeth, to avoid any cogging. The twist in the belt doesn't seem to cause any problems, if it did I could revert to the technique here: hydraraptor.blogspot.com/2011/06/half-belt-hack

The belt tensioning is as Greg Frost's design: The ends of the belt are locked in place by clamps with mating teeth. A screw tightens a Nyloc nut against a loop of the belt.

The carriage is the full size of the extruder with the bearings optimally placed in a triangle and the belt attached at the ends. It does mean the carriage is a bit bigger than most but it makes best use of the space to achieve stability. I.e. the travel is limited by the extruder, so there is no point making the carriage smaller, other than reducing print time.

The carriage follows the rod on the two bearing side and only needs to be prevented from rotating around it by the third bearing. In order not to be over constrained the third bearing is suspended by thin but tall struts. That allows it to float horizontally but it is constrained vertically. This prevents binding in the event of the rods being slightly miss-aligned.

The underside of the carriage is shelled and ribbed to save print time but keep it rigid. That has been my philosophy on the design, strength through complexity of shape rather than chunkiness. Whereas other people have tried to reduce the printed parts to a minimum I have tried to put functionally first.

I found that I could not make bearing clamps in the horizontal direction with enough grip so I use cable ties as well on these. The bearings rest at each, end so a single tie in the middle is sufficient to keep them stable.

Y-Axis
The Y axis sits on a flat sheet ensuring the bars lie in the same plane. Only three bearings are needed so the rod on one side can be shorter as it no longer needs to attach at the very front and back. The X-axis also uses three bearings and Z four, making the total ten, which is convenient as they tend to be sold in packs of ten. The belt is also shorter because the motor and idler can be brought inside the axis travel.

The Y motor bracket is a lot more rigid than the Prusa version due to its boxy shape and being screwed to the base instead of hung from bars. The bar clamps are also hollow boxes.

The bearing holders are the same as the ones on the carriage using tie wraps .

Alignment is easy, all the bar clamps and bearing clamps have slotted screw holes allowing a little side to side movement. Initially all the screws are left loose. The long bar is set at right angles to the gantry using a set square and then the bar clamp screws are tightened. The bearing clamps on that side are then tightened. The y-carriage can then be moved backwards and forwards to pull the second bar into alignment before those are tightened. On my todo list is to float the third bearing like I have done on the carriage.

Again the belt has a half twist in the lower return path, not shown on the model. Belt tensioning is easy because the idler has a slot to allow it to be adjusted. The single mounting hole also allows the angle to be adjusted to centre the belt. I plan to move it to the front and put the motor at the back as it makes the wiring shorter and the idler adjustment more accessible. I used two 624 bearings side by side to allow the belt to wander a bit without binding. I seemed to need that on Y but not X. I may move to two on the X-axis as well to give a completely frictionless arrangement.

If you are wondering what the two large holes in the base are, they are there so that dual shaft motors can be used.

Z-Axis
I moved the motors to the bottom to eliminate the possibility of the couplers slipping off. I made the couplers as skinny as possible to get the bar close to the lead screw. That makes the X ends smaller and allows the Z bar to rest on top of the motor giving a metal connection from the base to the top limit switch minimising the effect of the wood shrinking and expanding. For normal Reprap software it probably needs an adjustable bottom limit switch instead.

Note the axis is shortened in this picture.

The Z bars are automatically parallel to the gantry because the distance at the top and the bottom is set by printed parts. The bar clamps at each end of the rods are identical allowing the axis to be made vertical with a set square. This is done at the left hand side and the other side is made parallel by moving the axis up and down before tightening the screws.

I kept the facility for anti-backlash nuts and springs but the only machine I needed to fit them on was my Prusa. I am not sure why, but even the weight of an extra motor was not enough to overcome the backlash with gravity. I think it must have either been due to binding or perhaps the grease I used was thick enough to need some force to squeeze it out of the way. I needed stiff springs and I had to turn up the z-motor current after fitting them. The advantage of not fitting them is it gives some protection against a head crash as the maximum force you can apply downwards is the weight of the X-axis and extruder.

I considered using a single motor and linking the screws with bevel gears and a drive shaft. That would be cheaper than a second motor or a belt but I stuck with two motors for simplicity at the moment.

Bed
I have previously used 6mm aluminium tooling plate with  aluminium clad power resistors for my heated beds. These work well but they are heavy. The Prusa PCB heater with a 2mm glass sheet on the top makes a much lighter solution. The picture above shows it clamped down with penny washers but bulldog paper clips work better.

I use 3mm Dibond for the Y-carriage because it is light, stiff and stable. I tried 6mm MDF on my Prusa but it warped due to the heat and the bed never stayed level for long. I don't know how other people manage to use it.

The best bed mounting solution I have tried so far is 20mm brass hex pillars. I tap the carriage holes M3 and screw the pillars into it. I can then level the bed by adjusting them and use the screw in the top to lock the position. I don't like to use springs because they let the bed wobble.

To level the bed I put M3 washers under the back two pillars and screw them tight and lock them. I then twist the Z motors by hand to make both sides level at the back relative to the nozzle. I then adjust the front two pillars to get the bed level front to back.

The process is easy but tedious because all the adjustments interact to some extent, so you have to keep going round them. It would be better if the bed had a single mounting hole at the front in the middle, as you only need one adjustment to get the bed level from front to back. I need to make a smaller version of my Z-probe so I can auto level the bed.

I like to use an air gap under the bed for insulation so that I can cool it rapidly with a fan at the end of the build to make the parts release easier. The air gap provides enough insulation but the Dibond below still gets to around 50°C. I added a heat shield made from corrugated cardboard covered in aluminium foil tape and the Dibond no longer gets warm at all.

The slots are to clear the screw heads. I stuck it down with double sided tape but that did not hold so I added bulldog clips. If I was making another I would bolt it down.

I haven't made any measurements yet but I think the difference in temperature between the middle and the edges is bigger than my aluminium beds. I Intend to try adding printed baffles at the front and the back to stop the movement of the bed pushing cold air under it.

I think I can improve the temperature distribution by changing the PCB pattern. The problem at the moment is that if the middle runs a bit hotter then the tracks local to it will have a higher resistance than those at the edges, which are connected in series with it. That means the middle will get more voltage and become even hotter relative to the edges, positive feedback. A better arrangement would be to have concentric rings of tracks running through areas that are likely to be the same temperature, wired in parallel. That way if the middle got hotter it would only have tracks near the middle in its circuit, so the increase in resistance would lower the current and give some negative feedback.

Another thing I would change would be to remove the silk screen from the top layer as it has some thickness that will reduce the thermal contact with the glass.

Cables
Larger CNC machines use cable chains to enforce a minimum bend radius on moving cables to stop them breaking. There have been several printable versions on Thingiverse but I feel they would give more friction than desirable for a small machine like this. Ribbon cables are very flexible in one direction and are surprisingly rated for 300V, 1.4A and 105°C.

For the heated bed I use ten wires in each direction plus 2 for the thermistor. I clamp it at both ends with a thin strip of polypropylene about 0.5mm thick. That forms the equivalent of a miniature cable chain but with very low friction. Here is the one under the bed: -

This one feeds the X motor and the extruder: -

The rest of the wiring is done on the back of the gantry with printed cable clips : -

The fan on the left is a powerful 80 CFM fan that I use to cool the bed from 110°C to 30°C in about 6 minutes.

The only down side of ribbon cable is that you get some inductive cross talk from the motor signals to the endstops. That doesn't affect my firmware as I only read the endstops during homing and a simple retry loop sorts that out. For firmwares that constantly monitor the endstops a simple RC filter on the inputs should fix it.

This version of the machine I call the Sturdy model. It uses 10mm rods, M4 fasteners and has a build area slightly bigger than a Mendel: 214 x 214 x 150mm. The next version I try will use 8mm rods, M3 fasteners and have an acrylic frame. I will reduce the build area to 200 x 200 x 140mm, same as Mendel so it will be more of an equivalent. I will also make a Huxley equivalent with NEMA14 motors and 6mm rods. The Mendel sized variant will cost a bit less but I doubt the Huxley will be any cheaper.

Mendel90 extruder

The Mendel90 parametric design starts from the extruder dimensions and works outwards. I used a Wade's extruder for the Mendel sized version of the machine (I will need to sort out a smaller extruder for the Huxley sized version). My starting point was the Prusa version of Wade's. I tidied it up a bit aesthetically and made a few tweaks to the design and that had the side effect of making it easier for Skeinforge to slice correctly. The old version caused it to think layers were bridges erroneously. It now looks like this: -

The functional things I tweaked were: -

• I added nut traps for captive hex head bolts. That allows me to fasten it under the carriage with a couple of wing nuts, so I can swap extruders very easily.
• I brought the front of the bearing holder forwards 2mm. That stops the idler closing fully, which  makes it easier to feed in new filament and allows the hobbed bolt to be removed without having to remove the idler. The downside is it would be less tolerant of smaller diameter hobbed bolts.
• I made the idler bolt holes slightly further apart so that I could make them larger without intruding into the bearing holders.
• I added a slot around the top of the hole for the insulator. When it was simply a blind hole it had radiused corners at the end due to the fact that the filament has a minimum bend radius. That meant that, unless the insulator was chamfered, it did not go all the way to the end of the hole.

I use hobbed bolts and 10mm hot ends from  reprap-fab.org. Wolfgang makes the bolts so that the big gear can be spaced off from the bearing with 5 washers. That allows the small gear to be placed the right way round, allowing the big gear to be removed easily. M8 washers can vary in thickness so I made a printed spacer 7.5mm long to replace them.

I don't use Greg's accessible version of the extruder because I never remove the idler. Once I have got the spring tension correct I don't like to change it. If I need to clean the hobbed bolt I simply reverse out the filament, remove the nut and then remove the big gear and hobbed bolt. It only needs cleaning if there has been a malfunction due to a filament tangle or a nozzle blockage. 

To make the nut easy to remove, rather than use lock nuts or a Nyloc, I use a single nut and a weak spring. The spring stops the nut vibrating loose and gives enough pressure to keep the bolt in the correct position but it can be removed without using a spanner.

The extruder is the only part of the machine that wears out, so I have made it easy to swap out by adding a 9 way D type connector. D connectors screw together and have good strain relief for the cable, so they are reliable when subjected to constant movement. They are also rated for 5A per pin and 125°C, which is a good margin for this application.

I attach the connector with a bracket that is screwed to the motor by removing two of the motor's screws and replacing them with screws that are 5mm longer.

I have several extruders with difference nozzle sizes that I can change very quickly.