New Router = new base plate required. Just waiting for the paint to dry.
I’m not sure that this will be the long term configuration, but it will be the one that gets me going.
Well I’m going to blame Angus @Makers Muse for sending me down the Boolean Intersection rabbit hole yesterday. But in between a few quick sketches and an hour of picking out support material, I had plenty of time to contemplate the state of the LowRider, and I’ve concluded it’s a bit like a Boolean Intersection.
If I look at it from exactly the right angle, it all becomes clear!
I rebuilt the entire structure over a few pleasant hours, righting some wrongs, re-orienting all of the steppers to suit myself rather than following what some random dude on the internet did, and generally being grateful for the effort and skill @vicious1 has put into those parts. It’s great to know that when an issue arises it’s something I’ve done rather than a bit of ill design.
Case in point: I couldn’t feed one of the cable ties through the xz piece. A quick dash to my computer, stuck the part in the slicer, “x-rayed” it, and discovered that in one of my three alignment adventures I’d allowed the tube to creep over the little retainer lip, which then allowed the zip tie to catch. One more disassembly later, and I’d also solved the puzzle I’d had as to why it had taken so much effort to get the alignment of that part right!
It’s altogether, belts on, pretty much aligned, now waiting for some angle aluminium, and a roll of filament to arrive from Czechia.
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It feels like intermission!
I’ve had a bit of a tidy up (of my mind as well), ready to play with wires. My USB C adaptor and cable have arrived so I should be ready to go with Repetier in a day or three, but there are a couple of other things that are likely to hold me up for a week or so, and I’m inclined to let it all sit until I can get a clear run.
So here’s the state of play.
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on another thread @vicious1 said:
How do you know your tensioners are perfectly square?
This is part of the setup. Use your machine under power to mark all four corners of your work area and measure them diagonally. If the numbers are not the same or within a mm or two you need to move or shim one of the belt tensioners. Mine was built close enough to where I just use a few layers of blue tape to shim between the belt stop and Z rail.
…Which sent me scurrying for my tape measure. I guess this is why this forum is so magical, answers just fall out of the sky before you get to ask the question.
Had I known this of course, I would have taken a little more care installing the tensioners. Instead I just packed 'em off the edges with a bit of MDF, being only concerned that they looked good!
To cut to the chase - the diagonal is almost exactly 2mm out which doesn’t tell us a lot except that the maximum parallel error can be 2.5mm give or take - if I wasn’t in such illustrious company I’d be happy with that! 
As a worst case I guess I’ll be printing a shim!
I am really glad to have that little bit of understanding tucked away before the setup begins. Thanks.
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The ducks would appear to be in a row! USB C cable means I can plug the laptop in, pen adapter (thanks @SupraGuy is ready, aluminium angle resting in place (more on that next week), wiring temporarily loomed up more or less (I know not everyone is quite so obsessive about tidy wiring, but if it’s not in a neat bunch it just does my head in!) until some pins arrive in the post hopefully late next week and I can tidy it up a bit more), oh and I’ve made a couple of mounting brackets for the AC adapter so I can screw it under the table in due course, AND my filament arrived this evening as well.
I haven’t made up my mind whether to turn the router through 90° or not - I really don’t want to let that get in the way of progress for now.
Not sure if I’m going to get it fired up tomorrow, I have a problem. We are going away until the middle of next week so if I get it running and all is well I won’t be able to sleep wanting to get it finished. On the other hand if it doesn’t go as expected I won’t be able to sleep until it does.
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If you’re the kind of person for whom building is the means to an end rather than a journey itself, it might pay to avert your gaze for a bit.
I thought I’d drill a few holes in the back of the Rambo case to hide a bit of wiring, and in the process remembered how I quite like using the step drill. The only thing lying around that looked as though it could do with a few dozen big holes drilled in it, was the aluminium angle that will one day carry the vac pipe.
So I spent a pleasant morning making a jig and drilling to my heart’s content, followed by a bit of a rub with Mother’s Mag Wheel polish for good measure. The printer is printing the final case mounts, we’re still going away for a few days, so it what nicer way to take my mind off firing the thing up? 
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Now that is a fancy vac rail!
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Speed holes.
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Anyone else catch Vice Grip Garage on YouTube? “Weight reduction,” “direct venting,” and “speed holes” are common turns of phrase there.
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One of my current favorite channels.
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More on the “Joy of Building”:
I had to add a bit of weight back on today, I really don’t know what I did before I had a 3d printer and that wasn’t all that long ago!
I’ve worked out that when I set up the jig to drill the holes I had an error of about 0.2mm between the centres. Normally if I can cut somwhere along the line marked by a fat Sharpie I consider that to be a spectacular level of accuracy, I can’t ever remember being that close to anything before. Sadly when you have 30 holes in a row, that sized error creates a cumulative error of 6 mm or so which puts the bolt hole in the xy bracket in exactly the wrong spot.
Five minutes of drawing and ten minutes of printing (x4) and the problem mysteriously disappeared and it solved a problem with what to do with the holes that were partly obscured anyway.
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No action for a few days because we’ve been away, and the dupont crimps are on a slow boat from somewhere and haven’t arrived yet.
In the meantime I’ve stumbled across a couple of posts arguing the merits of tidy wiring, which have encouraged me greatly. While I profess to know very little about electricity and even less about electronics, I do like a tidy wiring loom.
My fifteen year old grandson looked on bemused a little while ago, as I rerouted everything on his Ender and neatly bound it all into tidy little bundles, even going as far as to suggest that I might have a problem.
When I asked him for evidence, he replied “Your toothbrush charger maybe”…
Maybe he has a point.
(Hopefully the Lowrider will be as tidy in a day or two)
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Nope, You are doing it right. I see a bit of wire poking out under that plug…room for improvement, so you are not completely crazy. 
I bought a hair dryer once just to rip the retractable cord out of it to use it on my project. Tidy wires are the way they want to be.
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I just can’t get there I try and try but they keep getting moved rerouted or disturbed I have a constant mess and right now I have this
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That looks like any part of my desk or shed when I’m working on a project, I am a neat freak in terms of organisation, but I tend to leave everything I need in big piles on top of themselves! Therefore, things that are arrayed in neat tidy rows in drawers when they are not needed can never be found when they are!
Sigh! Another day of tidying up and staring into the space where the postman should be dropping my connectors.
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I use it a lot works great just need to get the wire under controll again I disassembled it 3 times in 2 days and now have to do it again to get it back together correctly.
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Heck throw a few zip ties at it and it might not look too different from how I end up using stuff.
I try to wire stuff neatly, but I seem to lack the planning for wire lengths and runs to actually implement neat wire harnesses. My wiring often ends up looking like a spill at a technicolor noodle plant. On a good project… like a spill that someone tried to clean up with zipties.
Even in kit builds where the wiring is pre-made, I can have trouble.
When I was competing in autosound competition, one of the biggest areas that I lost points in was wiring looms. (Sounded good looked… less good.) Even when I was extra careful and willing to rework everything after it was supposed to be done.
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Which might explain why in the time it’s taken me not to build one machine you have at least four (almost) working! And I quite like your technicolour noodle plants, mostly because they are yours!
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Looks as though I’ve hit a bit of a temporary brick wall; The pins and crimper I ordered appear to be from an “unreliable” supplier - an eBay supplier who had an unusually long delivery time, but that’s become the norm since Covid lockdowns and usually stuff arrives a few weeks inside that estimate.
Not this time, and the seller’s reputation has gone from 99% to 79% in the time I’ve been waiting, with thirty consecutive “didn’t receive item” feedback comments! I could of course get it all up and running and then fix the wiring later, that is what sensible people do, right?
But I’ve waited this long, and it’s not quite a year since I printed the first parts…
On another note - I have to address the looming CAM issue soon - as per my garbled musing/hijack here: Running Estlcam on macOS - #2 by bitingmidge
Will KiriMoto do well enough for this Mac user, or will I feel like a lone goldfish in a tank of piranha?
I think I’ll fill in my day putting locktite on grubscrews.
I think there are enough kiri moto users around here to get you going.
The smart ones learn from others mistakes.
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