Transparent natural PETG looks ideal for lampshades or globes so I'm thinking of making some new light fittings for my living room - but not with moon features   They take far too long to print!

I have a small change to make on the print bed having tried printing a maximum sized object.  The borosilicate glass plate is 200mm x 213mm and I have it "landscape" orientated with the long side on the X axis which seemed appropriate since the Z probe is offset in the X direction but the probe is catching on the frame on the right hand side.  I have decided to turn the glass plate 90° and hold it on the front and back edge only.  This will enable me to use the full 200mm x 200mm heated area.  Up until now I haven't wanted to print right out to the edges and anything that size I have printed on my Titan printer but there are occasions where I shall want the greater accuracy and finer printing of the Mini and this is an easy modification to give me that extra few millimetres.

Finished the glass plate reorientation and fixings earlier today and been printing parts for my Marble Machine   I find this printer quite fascinating watching the pink cord winding and unwinding on the motor drums   I see I have a filament leak on the hotend to be fixed tomorrow!  Needs re-tightening.

Had a clogged hotend so yesterday I took it all apart and put the parts in a sealed jar with acetone (been printing ABS so this is a solvent) to cover them and left them overnight to soften the gunge.  Today I took the parts and cleaned them (quite a job even though the gunge was softened) then reassembled with thermal grease.  Finally, after heating to 260, I tightened the nozzle again to try to avoid leakage.

I'm fed up with cleaning hotends so I decided to buy this stuff to clean the hotend every so often.

This printer has now been in use for some time and is working well.  There are a few more things I want to do to it though.

1. Make an enclosure so that the fumes from ABS can be contained and vented to outdoors.
2. Change the bed heater pad to mains voltage (more power so faster heating up) - that will save having a 30A 12v supply, the ATX PSU being replaced with a standard 12v 10A PSU.
3. Add parts cooling so that I can print PLA (and without producing whiskers on PETG).

Latest plans with some changes (may call the upgraded Mk.2) :- 

1. I very rarely use ABS these days as I feel it has been superseded by better, more user and environmentally friendly filaments.
2. Probably change bed heater to 240v AC.
3. Parts cooling system almost done, though this might change with changes to X carriage.
4. Change from inductive Z probe to Precision Piezo and nozzle contact probing.
5. I shall be using thick (18mm) plywood for the framework/box for rigidity.
6. May change from cord for XY drives to timing belts and pulleys though this would result in a larger overall size.

Change of plan - no complete rebuild, I'm going to try stiffening the frame and improving the Z carriage/bed arrangement plus a few minor tweaks and see how that works.

For the Z carriage (print bed), instead of having a wheel running on each of the 4 uprights, I'm going to have 2 wheels each running on the front 2 uprights and instead of having the bed supported on each of the 4 corners I plan to use 3 supports, 2 at the front and one at the back in the middle.

Current arrangement.

I added some bracing to the frame and now this printer is working fine so I shan't be messing about with the Z drive.  It ain't broke so I'm not fixing it!  I did have to fix broken piezo Z probe wires though - replaced the devilishly fine wires with a pair from a ribbon cable.  Working again.

This printer is not quite good enough for some precision parts I'm trying to print so I'm looking into possible improvements again.

Improved the Z axis by replacing the gear drive with timing belt and pulleys.

This printer has now printed it's last, having been superseded by a bigger and better printer.  Some time I will get round to dismantling it.  I has served it's purpose pretty well.