Building the Thingotron Part Two: Z Axis is go!

The X axis carriage is carried on the two vertical smooth Z axis rods, and raised and lowered by the turning of two lengths of threaded rod fed through captive nuts on the X axis endpieces.

Fitting the carriage onto all these rods and getting them all square is somewhat fiddly, and somewhere along the way there was a slight accident and one of the lengths of threaded rod got dropped and bent. Oops.




Fortunately, after a quick google, it turns out that B&Q sells 1 metre lengths of the appropriate rod for £1.66. Fortunately also, it was listed as in stock at our local branch. And as I only needed 220mm of straight rod, it was easy to find a piece there that wasn't too pre-bent to use.

New threaded rod cut and fitted, and another round of checking that everything is square and level.

Now comes the fitting of the drive belt that pulls the extruder head mountpoint along the X axis. The only fiddly bit here is getting the end of the belt to go round the idler bearing and not straight out of the hole at the back of the idler endpiece. A bit of judicious poking with a small flat-headed screwdriver eventually persuaded the end to go in the right direction. The ends of the threaded belt then push into place.

The next job is the heated bed, which needs some light soldering.