Z axis alignment and wiring

[LeonS]

I finished the assembly of my Hadron today. It is a really big improvement over my Prusa.

I had some trouble getting the Z axes aligned and turning but I worked my way through it. I ran the delrin nuts up and down the threaded rods by chucking the rod into my cordless drill. It worked great.

When I first got the everything aligned relatively close, I found that the Z axis Pololu driver was getting very hot but if I turned the current down it wouldn't drive the z axis. I then wired the two motors in series and that really helped. I would highly recommend wiring them in this manner. The gantry is pretty heavy and there is little leeway for misalignment since the drive nut, stepper, and coupler are all rigidly attached on each side. The squareness and rigidity of the design is the saving grace to this implementation.

After getting the steppers moving well, I proceeded to get everything else aligned and it works great now. I could probably go back to running the Z steppers in parallel and it would run fine now, but everything runs much cooler with the steppers wired in series, without loss of torque.

I ran all my wires inside the extrusions which was a bit of work but the result is clean.

Thanks Bart for such a great design and kit!

Cheers,
Leon

[IPvFletch]

Damn you!! I'm jealous, I'm weeks away from mine being fully assembled and even pretending to work!!