Welcome to the SeeMeCNC Community

I am loving building my max2! I put the top section base plate on upside down! The extruder and filament mounts are backwards. Will this work, or do I need to flip it over?

It'll work, just tell people you thought outside+outside the box when building it

Well, my ocd brain made me flip it over!! I never could have slept knowing it was upside down! How tight must the belts be? I see no mention in the instructions. I guess you would pull them tight, then use the upper bearings to make tighter?

A bit late for your needs, but I believe the only problem you'd have if you'd left the top plate upside down is you'd have to mount the EZStruder on the opposite side of its mounting plate, so that the filament guide hole in the top plate matched the filament inlet on the EZStruder.


I think.


Dan

Kevinvandeusen wrote:Well, my ocd brain made me flip it over!! I never could have slept knowing it was upside down! How tight must the belts be? I see no mention in the instructions. I guess you would pull them tight, then use the upper bearings to make tighter?

There are no specific instructions but you have the right idea, pull the belts tight and then use the upper bearings to make them SLIGHTLY tighter. To tight is not as bad as to loose
but will cause premature wear on the belts and the steppers. It is a best called a gut feeling that you just sense when you have then tight enough. Perhaps one day they will create
something that will measure the correct tightness but as far as I know, that day is not yet here.

I took apart a bunch of old flatbed scanners a few weeks ago to scavenge parts before tossing. I noticed they all use a spring to tension the belts.

I think that if it is good enough for them maybe it would work well on our printers too (after initial tension is set). They are similar to the spring in a clothes pin. Maybe we should try those if we can get a size match.

Basically you'd just open the spring past 180 degrees and put the bent parts on the opposite side of the belt than the sporting coil. When you let go, the coil will pull the bent arms and create belt tension.

If this doesn't make sense I can take a picture.

After I typed this I googled and found exactly what I was taking about in this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgOsRUsS4VI

The springs used in a scanner are a little nicer but either would work I think as long as there a suitable location for it with no interference with the stock parts.
I don't have my printer yet so I can't try.