In V7 the stand has nut traps, so the main body is not screwed into plastic threads.
I have at last found the time to complete my V7.0.0-Alpha. It does not take long, but other duties kept tearing me away.
From this
to this
With the drawer system for the electronics, the microscope has stayed attached to the base all the time whilst I have installed the software, replaced the camera (I had picked up a used one that did not work) and fiddled with things. This means that I have been able to carry it around without it all falling apart. My V6.1.5 was screwed together once, but soon had to be taken apart and was never fastened after that. It is a pain to take anywhere
.
3 Likes
Thank you to everyone for the feedback. Following the discussion my priories for alpha-2 are:
- Finish/improve assembly instructions - Hopefully with newer GitBuilding features we can trace out the broken links, and other documentation inconsistencies.
- Sort out the illumination wiring and LED mounting
- Refactor the optics module code - this will make it easier to customise the optics (See OFEP2
- Look into integrating M4 nut traps for the motors
- Work with @WilliamW to merge the upright microscope into the master branch. Thanks to @MilliRowland’s fantastic work
- Improve the documentation of the codebase itself. - We plan to use OpenSCAD-docsgen for this. We need a few fixes to be merged
Are there others priorities people want to see added to this list?
It is a pity that filament is not thinner. We could keep to only M3 nuts and screws in the parts list by using a thin ‘collar’ to locate in the motor lugs around an M3 screw. But only 0.5mm each side between the M3 thread and M4 hole is not enough for something to print sensibly.
Good point.
The plastic lugs could have slight walls on the side that go around the outside of the metal motor lugs to locate the motor. Something like this sketch:
Once the screws are tight it will remain in place.
1 Like
Hi @j.stirling @WilliamW. Is the new microscope stand backward compatible with the v6 main body?
I’m pretty sure it’s not, the v7 body is slightly bigger and I’m not totally sure the mounting holes are in the same place.
1 Like
Thanks for the clarification!
The new stand supports the microscope on 4 screw-lugs only rather than the other one which was clip-in with 2 screw-lugs as a bonus. Two of the lugs are in nominally the same place, but no checks were done in the large refactor of how these were generated. If the v6 fits it will be incredibly wobbly, being supported on two screws.