Prusa i3 Physical Build (part 3)

Progress on the build has been somewhat slow recently (almost non-existant for a couple of months).

I eventually caved in and bought a J-Head MK IV hot end from ebay for £21.99.

and an Airtripper extruder for £15.95.

I have made some progress however with the wiring and neatening up some of the cables.

 Here you can see the reworked end of the Xbox power cable and a few other wires that have been routed and had connectors applied.

I also decided that my “free” belts were too narrow (2mm), and did not really stay put when tensioned. So I bought a 10m reel of GT2 belt for £17.61 from ebay and used about 1m each for the X and Y axes (they actually fit the pulleys that came with my steppers better than the T2 belts did, so they were probably GT2 pulleys after all) the rest will be used on future 3D printers or other CNC machines – I see a DIY laser cutter in the future at some point.

I have finally wired up the PCB heated plate using some surface mount components – 2 x LEDs and a 1K resistor.

I have also started on wiring up my hall effect sensors (10 for £2.43 from ebay) for the homing switches. I drilled an extra hole in the bracket to allow for some strain relief.

Here is a shot of the hot end and a home made mount made from some aluminium angle and a small chunk of hdpe (cut from a £3.00 chopping board).

I added a fan that happened to be the right size that was lying around from some scrapped piece of kit and ran this wire to one of the 12v output connectors on the sanguinololu. As you can see I have connected the J-Head via a bowden tube using a pneumatic fitting.

Here is the other end of the ptfe bowden tube connected to the Airtripper extruder, now attached to a stepper motor and mounted on top of the frame.

 Current progress shot from the front of the unit.