Mechanical Build, Part 1
After telling you a bit about my idea, my first experiments with stepper motors and the Arduino Motor Shield from Adafruit Industries in Part I, this part is about the mechanical build of the router.
Here is a short list of the parts for the following steps:
- a whole bunch of wooden strips from the hardware store in various sizes
- a few round aluminium rods from the hardware store, as a substitute for shafts
- 4 steel shafts from printers rescued from the bulky waste
- 2 timing belts and 4 drive pulleys from printers rescued from the bulky waste
- 6 linear carriages and shaft supports from an online shop
The idea for the first build was simple at first. One guide for the Y axis on the right and one on the left. Then attach a beam to them that moves the print head along the X axis, much like a gantry crane.
The drive belt was supposed to sit on one side and pull one of the linear carriages. The pulleys from the gutted printers also found their place here, for tensioning the timing belt. I simply reused the metal parts the pulleys were mounted on as brackets for the wooden strips. Later on, however, this design turned out to be not all that practical. The following video shows one of the two Y guides. The linear carriage is still provisionally attached to the drive belt with electrical tape (I had nothing else within reach at the time).
More on that in the next part.
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