It’s been a few years since my reprap’s journey began, and I think it has reached the conclusion, before a total overhaul and replacement of the frame (3.0?).
I replaced the 45° rear frame brackets with slightly better ones (used a bit off-label — I’m just bolting the frame part to a table) that mount to where I had originally intended the supports to go, decided to see if the hype was real and swapped my worn out three year old belts for real, live Gates GT2 belts, replaced the original y-axis mounts that made it impossible to remove the y-axis without getting under the printer with metal brackets that are accessible from the top, and swapped the y-axis parts for the Wilson II y-axis.
This resulted in some slight improvements in print quality (mainly in y, since the original belt was really worn out and there was a ton of backlash… not helped by my super misaligned belt line), but nothing major. Worth the effort if only for the y-axis not being awkwardly mounted and impossible to remove, and the control board being in a better position.
At this point it’s clear that the 2020 frame is too flimsy for a printer of this size… as such, I’m planning to design a new frame inspired by the Prusa i3 MK3 Bear Frame Rebuild, but in openscad instead of a proprietary cad program that doesn’t run on GNU/Linux (still debating continuing hacking on the pre-MK2 community version of the Prusa i3 or just re-forking the mainline Prusa i3 MK3).
Original frame braces for the TS … I sized the rear extrusions for mounting to the top of the frame but never go around to making my own mounts so the extrusions went way past the edge of the table… 
Replaced the idler-side frame brace. Not messing with the brace the control board is mounted to until rebuilding the y-axis. 
cat tax 
new y-ends! In addition to having adjustable tension without adding backlash like the old tensioner did, they give me ~6mm more z height. 
Just before the overhaul 
y-axis mounts from hell 
you can’t get a screwdriver into either of these except from below the machine which makes working on the y-axis a major pain, especially since my frame has to be bolted to a table for rigidity. 
After much struggle, these replaced the y-axis brackets. The attachment to the xz frame uses ball spring t-nuts so they stay in place when removing the brackets for easy alignment on re-assembly. These also feel way stiffer than the plastic mounts (and the screws can be checked/tightened regularly). 
Was a bit messy under the printer after getting the y-axis off. 
All clean now. And the plastic corner brackets I couldn’t get out (without much suffering) before have been replaced with metal brackets, matching the top of the frame (I had to learn the hard way how much stiffer the metal brackets are) 
What have I gotten myself into? 
Y-axis back together, with the fancy GT2 belt (and original 10mm hardware from the TS, not taking the entire print bed apart this time…) 
All together again. Much nicer looking I think! Still needs some cable management redone (not that it was ever done very nicely before) 
Back and ready for action.
A quick and probably meaningless rough history of changes to the machine, that I want to expand into a page on my actual website eventually (more naval gazing?):
- 1.0: Straight Wilson TS, with a 300x400x300 mm frame, an itty bitty double flex extruder, and 10mm linear rods for the y-axis.
- 1.1: Swapped the threaded rod for a lead screw on the z axis
- 2.0: Upgraded the linear rods on the x and z axes from 8mm to 10mm
- 2.1: Upgraded to a Panucatt Azteeg X5 GT running Smoothieware (great hardware, adequate firmware).
- 2.2: Fixed bug in z-axis that was causing the motor mount to shift 2mm vs the x-axis parts (perils of using two different source trees for different parts)
- 2.3: Swapped the y-axis for the Wilson II y-axis, replaced the rear frame braces.
Printer v2.3 by clinton is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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