Time for a full teardown...

[cope413]

I just hit 500 hours on my MAX, and I'm feeling the urge to break the whole thing down and rebuild it.

I was going through it the other day and noticed a lot of the nuts in the base had loosened significantly, and since I first assembled it, I've added the TL arms, an E3D hot end, the Astrosyn dampers, RAMBo fans, and an LED ring. Along the way I also changed my thermistor, hotend, and cooling fan connectors/wiring - so not everything is the way I would have done it had I known then what I know now.

I was also pretty shocked by the amount of dust that got into the base/Rambo area.

Couple of things I'm considering doing...

1) Conformal coating the RAMBo. I've used http://www.techspray.com/p-59-sr-silico ... tings.aspx on other hobby project PCBs with excellent results. Anyone have any reason why that may be a bad idea? I will, of course, be masking off all connection points...

2) Changing all flat head machine screws to panheads and using 12mm washers prevent hardware from settling into melamine. (I know there are some I will not be able to change...). Any reasons not to do this?

3) Drilling/Dremeling out "access holes" in some of the panels in order to be able to access the stepper motor mount screws more easily when fully assembled.

4) Making/installing an accessible and aesthetically pleasing conduit for the hotend, fan, and thermistor wiring from the base to the top. I want to use two of the slots that were cut into the top of the base but aren't used. Anyone have good ideas for this? I'm currently running my wiring through some 20mm ID black nylon tubing - to say it looks jury rigged is an understatement.

5) Installing beefier power supply. Anyone swapped the stock one out with good results both in performance (particularly heated bed speed) and fit?

6) Replacing endstops with hall sensors. Anyone had good success with this?

7) Painting. Not gonna paint all of it, but definitely want to paint some of the exposed surfaces for some nice contrast. Gene, you've painted a few machines, what have you found works best?


If anyone has other suggestions, I'm all ears. The fun will likely go down this or next weekend...

[wildideas1]

Hey cope check out the post on my son and I's rostock we just finished build week ago , is labled gone and done it again you will see how we ran the wiring up from base to top for the 3 spool set up used 1'' wire molding track and dremald a notch into the baSe and top by 1/4" for good tight fit . This allows us to snap cover off and rewire if needed.

[gestalt73]

Hey Cope413,

fwiw, a few weeks after I finished my build, I upgraded the power supply from the included 450w to whatever 750w they had on sale at Fry's that weekend. It was a no brainer for $35 or whatever it was.

Take physical measurements of the original power supply, as it's a bit on the short side. There are definitely others out there that will fit, for varying definitions of fit.

I didn't really take before or after measurements, but it seems to me like it brought my build plate warm time from 20 minutes to around 10 (round numbers).

There seemed to be a similar decrease in heating time for the hot end.

That being said, I'm not sure how beefy a supply you can hook up to the rambo before bad things happen(tm), but I've been running for over a month now without issue.

[Eaglezsoar]

For the heated bed, I went the way Cambo3D did his and used a 24V power supply to supply power to the Onyx.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Power-Supply-24 ... 46142497ca
or
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Power-Supply-24 ... 3f276abe13

These supplies can handle over 30 amps and the voltage can be turned down to approximately 19 volts. They will not fit inside the Rostock Max so we use
them exterior to the case. The bed output goes to a DC-DC SSR input and the SSR controls the 24vdc to the bed. It approximately halves the bed heat up
time or better without any detriments to the Onyx as of yet. Cambo wrote it up in his build log - http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php ... 8&start=60

You asked for solutions, this one is the only one I know of that uses the Onyx to speed up dramatically the bed warmup time.
Other options are to use a self stick silicone 110V heating pad attached to thick aluminum and controlled via and external pid or a DC-AC SSR. Lots of choices.
The AC route is what Berry used on his Berrybot. Or is it Barry? Happy 2nd building!

[Jimustanguitar]

Don't worry about the endstops, use the Z-probe auto-leveling!

[Eaglezsoar]

Don't worry about the endstops, use the Z-probe auto-leveling!

Is the Z-probe auto-leveling ready and if so where is it documented? I have seen pieces of this and that but have not seen
a complete solution that works.

[geneb]

Nice and simple wire guide: http://www.repables.com/r/131/

g.

[lordbinky]

I had a beefier computer power supply in my parts closet with a nice efficiency I tried initially with all around better specs (even a 0A 5v minimum). It would work fine until I tried to print at which point ~5 minutes in it would trigger a protection circuit. I wanted my printer working sooner than later so I pulled it out and while I intended to I never modded it to selectively defeat the protections to identify what was triggering.

[dpmacri]

When I did my build, I added a tube for running the wiring from the bottom up to the top. You can see it in the last picture on the second page of my build log here: http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php ... 9&start=10

All that is is a piece of Charlotte pipe from Lowes that I had laying around. I used some fine sand paper to sand off the red lettering and drilled a through hole at the top and a shallow countersunk hole at the bottom. The tube isn't even attached, but makes the wiring bundle hidden.

[cope413]

When I did my build, I added a tube for running the wiring from the bottom up to the top. You can see it in the last picture on the second page of my build log here: http://forum.seemecnc.com/viewtopic.php ... 9&start=10

All that is is a piece of Charlotte pipe from Lowes that I had laying around. I used some fine sand paper to sand off the red lettering and drilled a through hole at the top and a shallow countersunk hole at the bottom. The tube isn't even attached, but makes the wiring bundle hidden.

Nice, couldn't see it at first - exactly the type of thing I'm thinking of. I'm now thinking of some sort of mount like Geneb's mixed with a pipe so that I can unmount/access it easily if needed.

Gene, got any tips on paint for me? Acylic? Latex? Waterbased? Epoxy? Enamel? Sanding and priming recommended? There are just so many options...

[geneb]

If you're going to paint, I suggest that you paint the exposed edges with oil based Killz and then coat with your color of choice. If you do the edges first, it will make your life a lot easier - you'll only have to mask the edges when applying the main color to the flat surfaces.

I used Rustoleum Ultracover 2X (http://www.rustoleum.com/product-catalo ... a-cover-2x). Your local BORG should have it.

I like the idea of modding my clip to use a hollow tube instead of a dowel. Just make sure you don't accidentally try to lift the machine by the tube. A 1/2" PVC pipe would work really well I think.

g.

[Jimustanguitar]

I found an 8 conductor wire that fits through the hole in the aluminum extrusion, so I'm going to run that through all 3 of my verticals to have enough wires for fans and lights and active endstops and all that fun stuff.

[cope413]

I found an 8 conductor wire that fits through the hole in the aluminum extrusion, so I'm going to run that through all 3 of my verticals to have enough wires for fans and lights and active endstops and all that fun stuff.

Yeah, that would definitely look great... but be a huge pain if anything needed to be changed or adjusted.

[626Pilot]

Put a Hobbs meter on it. Wire it to run whenever the cooling fan is on.

[cope413]

Oooh, I like that idea. Except I don't run a cooling fan often since I don't print in PLA often.

I think I'll have it run whenever the hot end is on.

That's a great idea.

[626Pilot]

I wouldn't hook it up to the hot end. It will either get fried or not work right. You know why

[cope413]

I was thinking about connecting it to the cooling fan hookup, and setting my default slicer settings to have the fan on 100% all the time. That would avoid the PID issues, and still give me just the hours spent printing.