Thank-you Mark and Trish! My Phlatprinter 3 is alive and cutting foam in the UK! It's been an easy and very educational build with only a few moments of disassembly and re-assembly required and about 8 hours of debugging my Y-axis stepper so I thought that I'd pass on a few comments (which may have already been covered in other posts) which are mainly for UK customers.

The power supply will work happily placed in the PP but I was cautious that it may move or fall over and risk a short circuit so I have screwed it to the outside panel with some spacers. The screw holes in the PSU are tapped for metric 3mm bolts. Attached files

 

The multiway mains plug is neat but rated at 115V 60Hz 16A. I was tempted to change the plug on the flying lead to a UK plug and use it but I was cautious if the rating would be OK at 230V even though the current would be low. As I don't have any other appliances with US plugs, this was replaced by a UK multi-way socket with switches for each outlet so the driver board, spindle and vacuum can be controlled independently.

I think the build DVD (but not the start here DVD) mentions the red switch on the inside of the PSU. This needs switching over to 230V for the UK mains supply and is easily done with a screwdriver blade pushed through the holes in the metal case.

I changed the mains plug on the PSU to UK standard. Be careful to observe the colour coding from the terminals on the PSU as it is different to the UK live - brown, neutral - blue and earth - green/yellow. The photo shows that my unit has black - live, white - neutral and green - earth. Attached files

 

The spindle motor is rated for 110V 60Hz operation and this caused an issue with a 230V 50Hz supply in the UK.

I figured that the options were to either replace the tool for a 230V version (if available but I haven't found one yet), use an alternative such as a Dremel attachment or power the spindle from a transformer.

I have chosen to order the Dremel attachment from the PhlatBoyz and also use a transformer for the original spindle. I have gone a bit over the top with using an isolation transformer as used by tradesmen to step the 230V supply down to 110V 50Hz and change the US plug to the appropriate style needed. I sourced this from Screwfix.com in the UK for less that £60 (about 100$) and it lets me run the same parameters as everyone else. When you wire the plug, the smaller pin of the US plug is the live and connected to the black wire, the slightly broader pin is the neutral and is the white wire. These connect to the appropriately labelled pins in the large plug.

Various search engine results say that running a 60Hz motor at 50Hz may generate heat or lead to reduced motor life. Only time will tell on the lifespan, but cutting the 2D snowflake pattern shown takes 20 minutes and by the end of the cut the motor was hardly any warmer than at the start. Attached files

 

I had a drama debugging why my Y-axis stepper would jog with the initial settings in the CNC software but just judder on the spot when using the PhlatBoyz settings from either build DVD or the latest website settings. Even the initial settings seemed to produce a rather random movement to the left or right and the carriage would even bounce off either end and keep going in the return direction while holding the same arrow key down!

To cut a long story short I found that if the steps/unit parameter in the cnc setup was kept above 800 then it seemed to behave but this was way too high to achieve a calibration. The solution was the wires at the screw terminals to the relay driver board. Despite being firmly tightened, I must have got some of the insulation in the contact area causing a higher resistance joint. You are working partly blind when you attach the wires to the terminals and so this is easy to do. Initially I swapped the wires for the X and Y axis over and proved that the driver board and motors ran perfectly and then on switching the connections back I found that all was well. I hope that this may help someone who gets stuck.

 

One last thing before I forget, the table you cut for the back of the Phlatprinter doesn't fit on a sheet of depron because the sheets are 39" long with about 35" of safe area. Guess how I found out! No worries, the sketchup files are are on the build CD and its very easy to split it into two separate G Code files.

 

Looks good. Glad to read that the y axis problem was so easy to solve

I may have bought a router instead of the isolating transformer. I don't know how much they cost on your side of the pond but here they cost half of what you've paid for the transformer.

 

I checked the supplied Chicago Town router on the net and found that at $50, the $100 transformer was an expensive way to crack the problem. My job involves developing the software and electronics for transformer test equipment would you believe and so I'm sure that there would be a simple less expensive solution however I did want something which was safe, totally reliable and let me progress with cnc modelling. Its bad enough having a box full of lipos sitting around the house without anything else waiting to blow up, LOL!

Should anyone else follow this route, check the duty cycle on the transformer as the rated capacity is often for 25% duty cycle. This is presumably because handheld power tools are only used intermittently and this allows transformer cooling. The rating for continous use is often half the rated capacity.