Mike's MP3DP v5 build

Dang those look good!!!

If anyone was wondering, here’s a graph of the number of aluminum splinters I’ve gotten in my life…

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That mess gets everywhere. And you end up bringing it in the house no matter how hard you try!

aluminum crumbs kind of suck to deal with. Hopefully it isn’t like pulling porcupine quills or cactus needles out.

The handyman’s stripper glitter. :joy:

@mbamberg I decided to make a thread detailing a lot of what I did, settings, etc.
Guide to Milling Aluminum Plates for MP3DP v5 with EstlCAM

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Planning to cut my extrusion tomorrow hopefully.

Just a little note to any future planners out there…Plan your size before you buy your extrusion lol…

I originally bought a 10 pack of 800mm extrusion without really even thinking about it too hard.

A little later I realized that wasn’t going to be close to enough, so I bought another 10 pack of 700mm. But I could have just bought 1 10-pack of the 1220mm to begin with.

Luckily for me, my original 800mm pack was bought on sale, so I ended up only overspending by $15, but otherwise it could have been $50 mistake.

So plan better than me…

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My ‘shop’ shoes are no longer allowed inside the house.

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Ok…got all my plates done Friday night and Saturday morning

Final 12"x12" sheet after all cuts:

Was able to spend a little time Sunday working on the frame.

I used some painters tape to group my extrusion by length and ensure my cuts were the same length

Was able to squeeze in just enough time to get the frame all assembled and squared up…

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Looking good @Michael_Melancon

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A little progress today.

Y Linear Rails in place. Still need to make sure they are square with each other.

Rear motor mounts done.

Front tensioners installed.

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I have a rail aligner part in this folder, Printables

There are a bunch available, the work surprisingly well. I usually print 3 to make things real sturdy.

Is that to align the rail to the extrusion?

I meant to square up the diagonals between the 2 rails across from each other…but those might be useful too.

I saw the rail aligner, but wasn’t sure exactly what it was for

Yeah, the rails have a lot of play. Putting them dead center helps make the frame squaring matter.

I highly suggest spending extra time of this, skew compensation is amazing but so it having it only do a fraction of a mm. I end up measuring my diagonals…more that care to admit.

I get the back as perfect as I possibly can, making all the dimensions match the CAD. Then each side, same deal, exact measurements. Then I check top and bottom, last is to see if the front is already perfect or not.

I did check all the extrusion dimensions multiple times before I started adding the linear rails, and it was all dead on.

The outer diagonal on the front was 1mm out of square, but the inner part was dead square, so I moved on and assumed it was a small discrepancy due to cutting artifacts or something

So since all the extrusions are square, I wanted to make sure to square the Y linear rails with each other to make sure I was aligned as possible with the distance from the rear to the rail.

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That will make everything easier later for sure.

ugh…why didn’t y’all tell me I had the wrong pulleys on my tensioners??

I’m lost on which ones go where. Could you draw me a picture?

It’s those front ones. Supposed to be smooth idlers

I’m just following the CAD and the pictures in Ryan’s build thread. I think you can see them all clearly there.

If there’s a specific one you have a question about I might be able to answer

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Got to let you figure out some of it for yourself :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: