My aluminum rails haven't arrived yet from Speedy Metals, but I still wanted to move ahead working on the cartesian bot, so I started assembling bearings assemblies. Everything went smoothly except that I haven't been able to get enough 1" machine screws. The local hardware store was out, so I ended up buying 1 1/4", assuming that I'd either be able to replace them later or that I could find a place where ther extra size didn't matter quite so much. I ended up using 4 of them to attached the bearings to the bearing assemblies for the z-stage. It seems like the extra size will be fine there.
I was trying to be very careful with the laser cut parts as I assembled the bearings assemblies, but I got a little distracted and went to tighten one. It was already pretty tight but I gave it one last little push and set it down. A few seconds later, after I'd already picked up the next one, I heard a small CRACKing noise. I'd over tightened the machine screw and the acrylic broke! Thoughts about humble requests for extra parts filled my mind and I finally decided that between glue, tape and the good will of others, I would end up just fine. Then a few minutes later as I was moving some bags of parts around, I noticed it! There are extra bearings in the package of parts from rrrf.org. At least one of each kind of bearing arm. AWESOME! thank you rrrf.org you made my day!
A couple more build notes:
Springs: Don't just buy all 4" springs. In one case they were too long. I think one would be better off waiting to purchase springs until one knew how large they should be.
washers: When putting the bearings assemblies on the stages, howmany washers should you use? Should you use any? I used one between the two peices of plastic and another between the bearing and the bearing assembly, but that seems to make it pretty high off the stage. I will ask this question on the forums, of course. Also, how tight are they supposed to be?
Machine Screws: This is one of those things that is goign to keep bugging me until I figure it out. In all the pictures, it seems like the screws they are using are different. At first the parts list said 3/4" screws. Then I noticed that they were too short and so I bought 1" screws (which is what the instructions actually call for). But even still, in the pics, the sizes just look different. Is it possible that the screws he was using are actually 7/8" long? It's certainly possible.
Took some photos last night. Will post them soon.
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