A1 Mechanical Assembly

My workspace is in the basement. I've got at least one bad disk in my back. Getting a 69 lb package from my front door down to the basement was going to be a problem. Fortunately, I remembered I had a folding luggage cart tucked away in the basement.

Here's the A1 box in my garage where I had Fedex leave it.
I figured I could unpack it there and take the parts down separately if the luggage cart didn't work out.
Fortunately the cart, undersized as it was, worked!
So this is what you see when you first open the box!

Under all that foam is the Y-table and a small cardboard carton that contains your heat spreader and boro glass. And another big box!

More Packing material! Note that I've cut away the outer box to be able to get at the inner. Still too heavy to lift.

That's the base of the A1. Be Careful lifting the base!

The base is cabled to the x-carriage packed below!
TL: Area for improvement - use connectors here

what's left in the box after you remove the base is the gantry, fiber, and a bunch of small wrapped packages. I moved all of that to the table and put the packing material back in the box.

Now we'll get started on the real unpacking!

In addition to all the wrapped stuff, there were also some unexpected loose items! First step, identify where they came from.

the small piece of metal turns out to be the lever arm from the X-axis end stop

Fortunately, it just snapped back into place.
TL: Area for improvement - wrapping to protect the switch

The plastic part was one of the mounting posts for the RAMPS electronics package. TL: Area for improvement - two posts are not enough to hold the electronics

Right: I noticed the braided tube was starting to unravel so I put a tie-wrap on it.

I also replaced the wire "twist tie" with a plastic tie-wrap. Personal preference.
Right: one of the potential places for the loose hardware to have come from. Others follow.

My big concern now, having found at least 3 places where hardware is missing is where are the other loose items?

Some final housekeeping. Left: I cut off the end of the ty-wrap that decided to make an appearance where it didn't belong.  Above: I added a bolt to hold this nut in place. The nut  appears to be an extra, but It was making noise as I was shaking the frame to see if there was any loose parts trapped inside either a power supply or the RAMPS.
TL: Area for improvement - pre assembly is a great advantage. If you are going to continue to leave the bolts loose put a baggie around them or tape them in place so they don't fall off during shipping. None of mine wound up in a power supply. Murphy's law says you might not always be so lucky.

On to the Actual assembly process!
I've been requesting "Documentation" since I placed my order back in December. There was no information about documentation in the package 
TL: Area for improvement - put a "Assembly Documentation Page in the package, fix other problems noted here" but there is documentation. It's just a little bit like hunting for Easter Eggs. It shouldn't be that hard.

Depending on what link you follow you don't always find what you want. If you start on the TL "Introducing the Aluminatus Trinity One" web page and click on the link to "Assembly Documentation" you wind up at an "Aluminatus Documentation" web page that only has a link to an Ikea Like 4 page assembly document as well as a link to a "Metal Dog Bone Assembly document". Neither are marked with version numbers. The first has some useful information.

What you really want is the
A1 reprap wiki which points to documentation on the TL website. Keep in mind that the Wiki has pointers to documentation on both the Overview pages and the Assembly page, look at both! The TL documentation page isn't very elegant, and most of the filenames are truncated. There are two assembly documents there that are useful. The first Aluminatus Trinity One Assembly 2003-06.pdf is an updated version of the IKEA like document noted above.  The second is T1_assembly-1.0.1-v2.pdf and is the primary document I based my assembly on, not having found the others until after the fact! Also note that there's a document  Ramps Firmware 1.4 Update Guide available in the parent directory. This will be useful if you, like me, are not experienced working with Ardunio software.
 
My unit, having been deliberately delayed till April, is closer to a 1.0.2 unit, so I get to skip some steps. (A BIG THANK YOU to the folks at TL for the extra assembly work they did!). One preliminary comment: READ ALL THE WAY THREW ALL OF THE ASSEMBLY DOCUMENTS YOU CAN FIND. THEN READ THEM AGAIN. THEN READ MY NOTES BELOW. Being really familiar with ALL of the assembly steps, and my mistakes, might help you avoid a mistake yourself! Comments follow are based on the
1.0.1-v2 assembly documentation pointed to by the wiki.

1) Assemble the Upper Gantry
(pg5) - The upper gantry assembly was already done.
2) Installing Lower Bearing Mounts
(pg7) - The lower bearing mounts install was skipped, based on a note from Ezra on the TL Forum . This was partially a mistake on my part. You need the left hand mount to hold the z-axis limit switch. I forgot that. I should have popped out the bearing and installed it! I had to fix it later on at step 12! Don't make my mistake.
3) Attaching Lead screws to X-ends
(pg10) - The lead screws were already attached to the X-ends. The loose hardware kept falling off as I worked on the assembly.
4) Attaching Smooth Rod to Upper Gantry
(pg13) - The rod clamps were already in place, however, when I went to insert the smooth rods I noticed one had been dropped. The damage is minor but that end will not pass threw the mating bushing in the X-ends.
On the Wiki Assembly page there was a discussion about checking that both of the bearings/smooth rod assemblies were working equally smoothly. The note mentioned that sometimes one bearing assembly could be significantly stiffer than the other. The reason supplied was that there might be a high spot on the inside of the printed X-ends and suggested removing the bushings from that X-end, filing the inside, and replacing the bearings to make them both slide smoothly. TL: Area for improvement - (1) do this test at the factory when you are package a unit. If both smooth rods aren't working the same fix it there. One of my smooth rods would slide right out of it's bearing. The other was a lot 'stiffer' (stickier?). I played with them a bit but I wasn't happy about filing the inside of the X-end. As it is, one of the bearing sets slides out o the X-end. I may have to install clamping bolts.

( 5) Assemble the Z-axis (pg14) -  Since I didn't install the lower bearing mounts, the helical couplers were already on the lead screws, there was nothing to do for the rest of the Z-Axis assembly. Note, you'll need some painter's tape to put on you smooth rods. Otherwise your X-ends will just slide off the smooth rods when you stand up the gantry for the next assembly step! TL: Area for improvement -  I noticed that the stepper motors have flats on their shafts but the lead screws do not. Add flats, it eliminates the chance of a feed screw slipping. I got this wrong, but didn't know it (yet) see below - end of step 8.
6) Assemble Extruder  (pg15) - My extruder came assembled. Unfortunately that has one drawback. There's not enough clearance around the extruder motor to install the button head screw. At least I didn't want to force the issue. My solution was to loosen up the two screws that mount the motor to the extruder body and then mount the extruder to the X-axis SIMO stage. See Below
After installing the extruder body it was simple to tighten the motor mounting screws back up!
7) Attach Feet
(pg19) - My feet were already attached to the base 
8) Install the Gantry (pg21) - I had more captive nuts that are shown in the instructions pre-installed in the side rails of the base so I made use of them.

note the pencil marks for the spacing on the captive nuts

Here's the gantry installed on the base. It's not easy to see at left, but in the picture above that's the bolt heads you are seeing. If you zoom in (150%) on the picture on the bottom of page 14 you'll see that it should be the the other way around.
TL: Area for improvement - include a closeup pix so it's obvious which way the X-ends should be facing.
(new info added)
9) Install Kapton heater (pg26) - There is an excellent discussion of methods to use in the TL Forum thread How to install Kapton Heater.
The method I'm going to use is to spray a light coating of soapy water on the glass.  I didn't have any baby shampoo but dish detergent (just a drop!) worked fine.
Before you start clean the surface you are going to attach the heater of all fingerprints that might prevent it from sticking.

The soap film allows you to slide the heater around until you like the position.

When you start out applying the heater only fold back a small portion of the mask. Not having done this before, I didn't have enough soap film on the heat spreader and the Kapton film stuck when it should not have.

Move the heater around until it's centered on the heat spreader!

Working from the center out to the edges, squeegee out the excess water.

Once the water is removed you can also use a wallpaper seam roller (if you have one) to press the heater down. Don't roll over the thermistor!
Remember, you have to wait for the trapped water film to evaporate before turning the heater on!

10) Installing the Bed (pg27) - My dog bone spacers were already installed, as were the corners on the bed. Note that the bolts that hold the bed to the dog bone spacers are a very very tight fit in the holes of the bed.
TL: Area for improvement -  that fit is actually too tight. The holes need to be one drill size larger! The bolt threads are actually filling up with aluminum scraped out of the holes. The bolts holding my dog bone spacers were 40mm. They need to be shorter. See the TL Forum thread Wobbly Bed - Fixed
11) Attaching the X-carriage (pg31) - This is when my earlier errors come back to bite me for the first time.


This set of pictures  look almost exactly like the ones in step 8 above, except now the X-ends are turned around and facing the correct direction!
At this point I've got the X-carriage attached.
TL: Area for improvement -  I've got the X-carriage cables threaded inside of the smooth rod. There's no clear picture of where those cables go. I thought the pg33 instructions to use the Nylon clip (pictured on pg32) was for these cables, now I realize it's for the extruder cables. The cable routing for both needs improvement.


You can just make out some blue painters tape on the top edge of the X-carriage. It's where the end-stop cable runs. At the left end it's held in by the bolt end of a nylon cable clamp. The other end was most likely held in by the one that came loose during shipping. I couldn't manage to work it back in place so I used tape for now.
12) Z-End stop (pg34) - This is where my assembly error at step 2 came back to haunt me. You can see the Z-limit switch sitting on the base in the picture above. And there's no place to mount it. What's worse, there are no captive nuts in the gantry rail to screw the end stop into. Go back to step 8, dismantle the gantry (again), Install the left hand end stop. Before you do make sure you can mount your switch to it! I didn't have a screw in my "goodies bag" that fit the mounting hole. Not a big problem. A 4-40x1/2 screw will fit the switch and it's easy to tap the plastic to take the 4-40 screw. Also note you'll have to remove the coupler on the LH side as it goes on after the endstop!
The close-up (left) shows the switch mounted and installed.
The picture in the instructions is taken from the back of the A1.

TL: Area for improvement - Only the Aluminatus Trinity One Assembly 2003-06.pdf has the instructions for installing the  bolt on the X-end that is positioned to trigger the limit switch and is used to set up your Z-height.
This is as far as I've gotten with my assembly. It took me about 4 hours to get here. Considering the re-work on the gantry (my own mistakes!) I don't consider that bad.

A comment on Tools needed for Assembly. I don't have much experience building 3D printers but clearly TL, and the rest of the reprap community are firmly embedded in the Metric environment. There's nothing wrong with that, I've been in electronics for most of my career. But they cheat! IC pin spacing is 2.54mm, so it's "metric" at .1 inch! This is my first encounter with a construction project that's entirely metric. I have a set of metric bit's for my "universal" screwdriver (one that can change tips - see the pix). Much to my chagrin, there are places in the A1 design where you can't use one because there isn't enough space to fit. I consider this an area for improvement, although TL won't be making any design changes soon, it's something to keep in mind for the future. IMHO everything in a design should be accessible so that, if nothing else, you can tighten up screws that come loose. Below are some places I've identified.


This was the extent of my Metric toolset. I has to use the hex keys for the places the screwdriver could not fit.

Most of the bolts here are inaccessible.

If the Anti Backlash nut were rotated 60 degrees you might be able to get to all of the bolts.
Left: the upper bolt for the coupler is almost hidden. Or, my coupler is mounted up too high. Can't tell which.

Next Step: Electronics



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