Gina

Photo of current build state including XY motors with brackets. (Not the best photo I'm afraid.)

Both Y rails installed, both Y carriages and all the pulleys. XY motor brackets printed and next will be to mount a couple of motors. Then I can work out the Y travel range and position of nozzle in the Y direction and hence the best position for the Z rails front to back.

I wondered that too.

Sounds like it ?

New design for X carriage front with bracket for Z probe and slot for part cooler air duct. Part cooler fan will be behind extruder motor. The ridges match the grooves in the timing belt and provide positive clamping of the timing belt with a clamp plate and two screws.

Designed and printed a basic X carriage front plate to check out where things will go. Below is a photo with the parts roughly laid out on the plate. Still to go in is the air duct for part cooling.

It's actually ordinary float glass - I'm told this is quite adequate but if it breaks I'll have to think again. I shall stay well clear while it's heating up!

Latest Y Carriage CAD design.

In lining up the belts, pulleys and motors, I found a little problem which will entail a redesign of the Y carriages and rear pulley blocks. Nothing serious - just a small delay while I change the designs and print new parts. The problem is that the timing belt must clear the wheel spacers where it runs behind the Y carriages and means the pulley axles must be further from the rail. Wheel spacers are 10mm OD, belt is 6.35mm wide and pulleys are 8mm wide, so the pulleys want spacing more than 5mm clear of the wheel axes.

Aluminium plate and glass plate added to bed frame. (The blue bits are foam protection for the glass during transport and will be removed.) The whole bed will be held together with a 3D printed frame. It will be arranged that the frame can be taken off and glass plate plus print removed from the printer for faster cooling. Also, the glass plate can be exchanged for another so another print can start before the first has cooled and detached from glass plate.

First photo of the build.

Some time ago I decided my Titan printer wasn't working as well as I wanted and at that time planned on replacing it with a new printer. I bought a set of timing belts and pulleys for CoreXY drive plus three single start trapezoidal threaded rods 500mm long. Then I found a way of improving the Titan and I abandoned the rebuild. Now things have come full-circle and I want the threaded rods, they've vanished! OK so they're somewhere on this property but... I have a stop-gap though. At one stage I tried using 4 threaded rods on my Giant printer (one in each corner) with timing belt drive from one stepper motor. It wasn't successful so I tried with two motors but that was no better. In the end I gave up on the 4 threaded rod system for my Giant printer. This means I have 4 x 1m long threaded rods doing nothing ATM. I could take one and cut it in half to provide the two 500mm rods I want for Concorde.

The bed frame is 500mm square on the outside so the slots are 480mm apart (500 - (2 x 10)). Inside of box = 610mm so the frame wants holding at (610-480)/2 = 65mm - Tick...

Printed the new Z carriage then added the V groove wheels with eccentric spacers in the larger holes so that any slack can be taken up. Set it up on a V groove rail and adjusted out the slack then I tested for possible wobble and couldn't find any at all. I think these Z carriages are going to work well but we'll see. Here's a photo of the eccentric spacer used to take the slack out.

Simplified version of Z carriage.

This part of the CAD model shows the LH Y rail and rear support bracket plus Y carriage and X rail. I think the Y rail will want to be shorter to allow for the motor at the front (unless the motor goes outside the box).

Alternative corner bracket.

Mine all take load because there's just the four of them and the roof is not rigid - it flexes - a benefit of timber.

With the ROR rolling off over the warm room it follows that the fixed part is longer. If the roof has the rails there must be more wheels to cover the distance.

I loo0ked at this idea when I was designing my observatory but concluded that everything was easier with the rails on the fixed part.

Bottom box brackets.

Top rear bracket to hold box panels together plus Y rail and the rear pulleys.

That's considerably cheaper!!

This printer will be bigger than I thought and yes, very heavy. I thought I might be able to store it under the table but no, it's far too high. Printers other than my Giant have been assembled on the living room table but Concorde is going to be heavier than the Giant and will also have to be assembled on the floor. I was able to move the Giant out and into another room without wheels but not Concorde!! My original thought was to have something like 50mm square internal corner blocks of wood to stiffen the box but this would add yet more weight so I think it will be 3D printed angle brackets. Top rear brackets will also accommodate the Y rails and rear pulleys. Bottom rear can be simple corner pieces bolted to the plywood panels. Top front will be brackets to hold the XY motors and bottom front can be similar to the bottom rear.

Thanks Dave. Yes, a 12v regulator would eliminate the buck converter - I too have both 24v and 12v devices. I wonder if any of the extra I/O would be useful. I'll see how thing go it's always an option for the future.