Well, the first Stepper Driver Board is assembled! Didn't take too terribly long either. I'm not sure what the industry standard is for soldering components, but this assembly took about 1.5 hours. It's been a while since I have done *any* board assembly. Turns out it's just like riding a bike. After the first five components were in place things started picking up. The way it looks rght now, if I can build one board a night over the next two nights, that leaves Friday open for assembling the Opto Endstops. All things being equal, I should (may? better?) have a working 'bot be the end of the weekend. My original goal was to be printing by the end of the year. Depending on how things run on the Extruder build, that goal is still looking promising. Next update will be once I get the remaining Stepper Drivers and Optos assembled, installed and powered up/connected to the Arduino. Fingers crossed, that update will be out before the end of the weekend! 
4 comments:
Look great! Now, have you tested it out as it says to in the documentation? I found that this was one of my biggest sources of problems during my electronics build...test, test, test! You can never run enough tests...and before you get it inside a wiring harness!
Demented
Checked what I could on the electronics side as best I could before assembly (ohms, continuity, etc.) Wanted to try and get all of the boards assembled before I did any testing in hopes that it would speed up the testing process (build one test rig and just swap out boards which I could still do...I'm just not wired that way ;) ). Fingers crossed that should take place this weekend, though!
Okay, just be careful! One bad setup with everything attached and phizzzly...POP!!! there goes your hard work. Not being negative, it's happened to me. Just be cautious. Your build is looking awesome. I especially like that you didn't bother with the expensive piping for the McWire...very smart.
Demented
Expensive? I actually purchased it all. I think the stuff I ended up not using totaled $15.00...not too big of a hit. Biggest issue I had was with the mounting hole template lay outs for the X stage rails. In my opinion, you should work from dimensions based upon the plane from the back of the frame towards the front (towards the rails) and even then, only *after* you have the frame assembled (screwed together). See the second November post for a little more detail on what I'm talkin' about.
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