Mendelmax 2.0- X-axis assembly

Assembly of the X axis.  Directions here got a little confusing but thats part of the fun when you are helping test something out.  A lot of changes have been made to the directions already and have clarified a lot of the questions I had when assembling these parts.  Here we go!

Parts.



Bushings. This part was pretty confusing- Think I've gotten it figured out now thanks to their support group.  They need to be "broken in" because they are very stiff at first.  Kinda hard but not impossible.  Getting them installed into the bushing blocks was confusing because I didn't understand which direction they were supposed to go in, but that has also already been addressed.









Rails.  Pretty straight forward.  One thing I discovered later is that you don't need to tighten them now- leave them loose so later when the x plate is installed you can align the rails.  This needs to be done the carriage doesnt bind.

These blue things hold the rails together and also hold a special nylon nut that the z-axis screws thread into.





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Bushing plates prepped and ready to install on the rails.





X cars ready to install. These fit in the rails and act like a bearing as the x plate slides back and forth- keeping it aligned and theoretically, low on friction.





X plate installed on cars and rails.



Belt Tensioner. ***These pictures are wrong- there are supposed to be 5 washers under the bearings to spacer them out from the plate. I will update these pics when I have access to them (posting from an Ipad right now...)









Finished x-axis. The entire thing is put together loose- I was expecting to have to do a bunch of aligning and I was right. As you will find out, it takes some fiddling to get the axis to move freely without binding.




Time Spent on this step: 1 hr 5 min.
Total time so far: 4 hrs 15 min.

Mendelmax 2.0- Frame Assembly

Assembling the Frame. Lots of little bits and pieces- the most time consuming part here was finding them all and getting everything ready.  Once the parts had all of the nuts and bolts in them, sticking them together was pretty simple.  A lot like playing with a really expensive erector set, but MORE fun!  Overall the directions were pretty accurate for this part. I had a few questions and made a few notes and suggestions, but it mostly went together pretty quickly.

The help.  He lasted about 15 minutes.



Assembling the base.  Pretty straight forward- lay the parts out, install the screw and T-nuts, then slide the parts together, align with a square, and tighten.  As long as you follow the instructions and get the parts in the right orientation, it's a snap.







Putting the top to cross bars on was a little trickier- they have to be straight and level, and when you tighten the screws in the end the bars want to twist.  With a helper, its not hard at all to hold the square across the platform while tightening the screws.
 

Getting ready to assemble the uprights:



Assembling the uprights. Here are the T-nuts I was talking about earlier.  You have to leave them REALLY loose to get them to start in the channels on the extrusions.


 
Here are two plates ready for installation.






It can be a little tricky lining up the T-nuts with the slots...




 
First uprights installed. 






Top Brackets ready to go on.




Top Brackets installed.




Second set of uprights installed.  At this point, all of the screws up top are just loosely tightened- all of this will need to be adjusted and squared still, and then all the screws get tightened.




Z- axis guide plates installed.  The hole to the right is for the guide rod.  The bigger hole on the left is under the z-axis screw, but it doesn't attach there, not quite sure what the hole is for.




Top brackets ready to be installed.




Cross bar preperation.








Top cross bar and brackets installed.  With everything set in place, I took some time with the square and tightened all of the screws.  The bracket with the holes in this picture will most likely need to be loosened and repositioned later- the stepper motor goes in the big hole and the z-axis guide rod attaches to the small hole in the front- both of which will need some tweaking to get the z-axis to move freely.





Frame DONE! Sure looks pretty!



Time Spent on this step: 1 hr 10 min.
Total time so far: 3 hrs 10 min.

Just want to mention again, the times I'm posting include time taken for studying the directions as I build (not counting the time I spent reading over them before the build), taking pictures, making notes, and finding all of the hardware.  I feel it could be done a lot quicker if you were trying to get it done fast.

Mendelmax 2.0 HAS ARRIVED!

My kit showed up on Valentines day!  I hot footed it down to the office to pick it up between classes, and here's what I got.

Surprisingly smallish box, but heavy.  Lots of aluminum in there, and several pounds of stainless hardware!



Very efficiently packed- everything was tightly wrapped up and looks to have made its voyage in great shape.



First things first, print a set of instructions, available here through google docs: http://www.makerstoolworks.com/suppo...ssembly-guide/ .  Keep in mind, the instructions are a work in progress right now and there are several others like me that are making suggestions and changes to them as we assemble our kits. 



Here's a breakdown of all of the parts in the box.

Hardware. Not pictured is a box of washers, and also a set of allen wrenches- the cool ones with the balled ends for getting in hard to reach places!  Everything, as you can see, is clearly labeled and very well sorted out.



More specialty hardware. I was afraid to open the bag for fear that I'd loose something...  It has the belts, bushings, bushing housings, "cars", derlinger (?) nuts, couplers, and all of the fancy odd-ball hardware.



Printed parts.  Not sure why the bearing was in the bag with these, but there you go.



Laser cut parts.  Most of them are of excellent quality.  Anodizing looks good- a few minor scratches here and there but nothing I'm worried about.  There was one part that the laser cutter didn't make very clean cuts on (at least, that's my opinion), but it its 100% functional so I'm not worried about it.



Extruded parts and rails. Not much to say here, they all looked great, and cut pretty much perfectly to square.



Heated bed parts.  Aluminum sheet for a heat spreader at the far right, sheet of glass (survived the shipping!) in the middle, and the heater on the left.



AND- some pretty darn cool customer service and a bit of BLING.  If you can't read the letter, they threw in $5 just in case some hardware was missing so I could go purchase it.  So far (and I'm actually getting close to done with the kit as I type this) I haven't had any missing parts.



I got kit # 6 of 40.   Let the fun begin!

As I mentioned, I have a lot of this already done, and am now typing up the assembly process.  There are a TON of pictures already posted on my thread on adventure rider here:  http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=854167 .  I will continue to post pics there first to help organize my thoughts, and then re-post them here with more details on the assembly process.