Building a RichRap 3dr - Part 2 - Swirling metal and sore fingers

And much more fiddly than I first thought

As I write this I have spent around 5 hours I think building the printer - and I have completed the frame and the actuator - and my fingers don't want to see another hex key again for a few weeks. If I ever make another one of these I think I need to invest in a set of ball hex wrenches instead - as tightening the screws with the supplied keys and spanners was really fiddly.

After the fun with the spools I also had fun drilling out the end of the metal frame components to allow for the cable management. The cable has to run through the centre of the aluminium extrusion so you need to remove a bit of it to let the cable out in a neat way as you can see above. It's interesting that RichRap doesn't like this bit of the design, neither do I. It may be possible to build this without drilling this out - but I decided to build it as designed.

I first of all tried to drill into the extrusion with a 10mm bit and a hand held drill. This was dangerous! The larger drill bound in the extrusion gap thus nearly rending me on the floor in an un-gentlemanly fashion.

So I turned my attention to my pillar drill and tried there. The pillar drill allowed me to have the work clamped down at all places - so meant a safer operation, but still a bit violent.

In the end I think it might have been safer to just saw part of the extrusion away with a small hacksaw and metal file. In thee photo above you can see the output from the dril. I think a hacksaw and file would have neater end results would have looked less botched.

Back to Part 1

Next part: Assembling the frame

14-Apr-2015 Add comment