Hi Guys,
Phlathead #112 here ;-)

Let me tell you how I managed.
Picked all the boxes up on a Thursday, and did some snooping in the contents of the kitparts, and I thought: “wow this is something, a lot of neatly packed little bags, with the contents printed on the side, there must have gone a lot of work into it!””

Got finally home on Sunday, and unpacked the whole encillada.
The first impression I had was; “man, this looks like a giant jigsaw puzzle”!
Looked some parts of the video to get a feel of the build.
The second impression: I was really really really flabbergasted about the workmanship of the design, it is really well thought out, and I got a great admiration for such creative minds! (that’s you Mark & Trish)

Monday, started on testing the electronics from EasyCNC. In my hobbyworkplace I want to run the Phlatprinter off of my so called Race Control PC, which is used for my digital Scalextric race track (another hobby of mine;-) Since this PC is already controlling the racetrack via the parallel port, I installed another PCI card with a parallel port on it. The PC has a nice 1800MHz Athlon controller with over a GB of memory and it and it runs Windows XP.

Hooked up the CNC things, (I had installed Mach 3 prior) did the settings as per the instruction video, turned the power on, and….dead silence… absolutely nothing. Hmm, must have made a mistake here or there, so I checked all the connections again, and still nothing but the 3 red powerleds on the board were all illuminated, which was kind of weird since on the board Mark uses on the video they were green. But no mentioning of colors in the instruction manual so I figured (correctly) that they must have used a different batch on this. I tried everything that I could think of in my book of PC tricks, but nothing worked.
Then I went on the Artsoft internetsite to check out all the videos I could find on troubleshooting, and tried all the tricks there. Several hours later and still no success, I tried the last option left, and that was to get the PC from my homeoffice. (which could not really make the difference since the parallel port on the racecontrol PC is working right…(like I said it controls my racetrack, so it functions!)

Well, to make a long story short: with the other PC: Succes! Everything does what it is supposed to do. The only not so nice result is that I now need a new PC in my hobby workplace. And it took me the WHOLE Monday to figure it out…

Tuesday; kids are off to school, finally lets start the build! Since I did not like the prepping of the pressurerollers, I skipped that and started right away on the gantry. Finished that and continued building the rest until about halfway of the cabinet.

Wednesday; after I brought the kids to school again, I continued the build, and finally got to the part where the big drive roller was to go in, so I went back to the first part of the video and made the rollers. Luckily I had skipped this step a day earlier(!), as I had just checked up on the Phlatforum, and saw the vid that was just put up there by Mark of him putting sand in the pressure roller. So off to the hardware store to get some sand. Well everything went good so far, but what I had already thought, the taping of the drive rollers was a PITA. (some grip tape is already letting loose after a day…)
Tape letting loose, later easily fixed by brushing some superglue on the back and it sticks forever..

Anyway got it all done, and continued with the build. Since I did not do a thorough check of the parts before (only generally made stacks of them) I found out that some parts (about 3 or so) where missing, (like from the part that had nine, I had only eight, and so) but luckily I had the examples of them so I could copy them with some MDF I had laying around. After a quick 20 minute job, the parts were now on the exact number. So on I went.

Self made part

another missing part

The missing part made

But I did get some extra parts ;-) (Even pt 79,the bottom of the drawerstand, I did not buy a stand...)


Next thing: The top of the machine has 2 alignment lines, that were routed out to deep, so the wood almost separated. I fixed this by sandwiching another flat piece of MDF on there.

The vertical line is routed too deep.

Almost all the way through


Sandwich of wood


And the fix finished; if you wouldn’t know better you’d say it’s stock ;-)



The Big flatnuts that the Tscrews screw into are too long, they will stick out of the wood if pressed all the way into it, and that will cause binding in the gap along where they wil travel. So I did not put them in all the way, and filled it with a “collar” of glue.

And called it a day when the only thing left to day was constructing the lid.

Thursday: finished the lid with the easy pressure roller mod (sand)

My converter has arrived in the mean time, so I can turn our 220 into 110Volts, and I can turn on the Rotozip…
I have constructed a stand, which cost me all of $30, since I had most of the stuf laying around here anyways…

Tata:

It has a lower shelf now, where the converter sits


I decided to give the PC one more try, and guess what? I got it working!!! Maybe I missed something somewhere on day one, maybe in the ports and pins, but I cannot replicate it. Which is Ok by me, as long as it works!

So now on to DVD 2. Again, what an awesome job the designers did to get you up and running!

When I did the calibration of the motors my luck finally ran out, as it turns out I have a bad steppermotor..(for specifics see my post about that)

So no foamripping until I have a replacement…

But I still had to do some more work, since I felt I needed 2 mods, done by others who shared them on the forum. The mods are the “Vacuum mod” and the “LED mod”. Thank you guys for putting it up there, and by that give me a startingpoint to work on!

So far I can describe the whole effort as: “Man what a ride! I enjoyed the build immensely, what a work art of ingenious design!!! My hat is off to you Mark & Trish!”


I can't wait to get her up and running and "Let 'er rip!" (Who knows who said it and from which film this quote is? I forgot myself))



Now for the mods: To be continued in the Phlatprinter MKII MODIFICATIONS. see you there!

 

BTW Mark, I just sent you a PM today, I did NOT get the one you were asking me about (the gantry?)

 

Great job on the build Martin!! Now start throwing some dust


John

 

Congrats on the build!!! Great Job! Now get some Printing happening