1.5 Conversion BOM

#1
Aside from the printed parts, has anyone put together a list of additional materials needed to convert from from the 1.0 angled frame to the 1.5 vertical frame? I'm still contemplating this, but have not seen anything official come out.

Thanks!
 
#2
I'm away from my printer so I can't take any photos, but the only things I recall needing were 2 metal L braces and a 5/16" tap. The L braces secure the back sides of the two vertical legs to the base frame. I used some spares I had laying around. A variety of sizes will likely work. A plastic printed part secures the front of each vertical leg.

I used a bolt to secure each end of the top bar to the vertical legs. My vertical leg v-rails already had a hollow center hole but I needed to tap out screw holes to secure the bolts. If your v-rails don't have a hole in the center it could be tough to drill one. I shaved the edges of two bolts so they could slide into the top bar v-rail without the heads turning. Then I screwed the vertical legs onto these bolts by twisting them. After the legs were tightened I used the L braces to secure the hole assembly to the base frame. If you attached the legs to the base frame first you won't be able to twist them on to the bolts. You could also use screws instead of bolts but then you would need to drill holes through the top of the top bar so you could fit a screwdriver in to tighten the screws.

There may be an official way to do this but I couldn't find it documented anywhere. I've been using this new frame for months now and it works great.

Chris
 
#3
I'm considering doing this, but just from the perspective of going vertical. My gMax is decommissioned and between that upgrade and a completely redesigned Y axis from scratch, I think I may have something usable again for printing out jigs for machinery until I make my 2' x 4' Cohesion model.

Once I have another printer operational (Cohesion #3 is very close to being done) I'll start printing 1.5 parts from scratch.
 
#4
Thanks Chris. I'm going to dig thru the garage for L-Brackets this weekend then. I like the table leg approach you took with the vertical bolts. My 80/20 does have the center hole, so taping should not be a problem. For the 4 corners on the lower frame, I don't really want to work up a jig to drill it so I think I'll stick with the 5 point mounting plates I implemented early on.
 

mwu

New Member
#5
I built my gMax from scratch as a 1.5 so part-wise I didn't keep track of what is different between 1.0 and 1.5.

On the base, the two shorter extrusions are end tapped on both ends and have bolts placed in each end. The heads of the bolts are slid into the longer extrusions to form the frame. The bolt heads acts as t-nuts. The longer extrusions have access holes drilled into them to allow a hex key through to tighten the bolts. Once everything is tightened the frame is very rigid.

The same approach goes for the upright extrusions connecting to the top bar. The upright extrusions are only end tapped on the one end that connects to the top bar, though. That assembly is then connected to the frame base using the L brackets and t-slot nuts.

Technically, one could drill access holes where the uprights should be, end tap both ends of the uprights, and use bolts to secure the uprights to the base as well as to the top bar. I don't know how / if it would affect rigidity of the uprights, though. I think part of the reason gCreate uses the L brackets for the uprights is because 80/20 can do all of the machining they need this way -- 80/20 only does access hole drilling at the offsets necessary for connecting the extrusions at the ends of the cuts as far as I know.