That's just the sort of feedback I was looking for, and will hopefully make my task a lot easier. The printer I am going for iniially, and can modify once I have one, is the Delta Pi , which is still in the early stages, but the simplicity of the towers appeals to the engineer in me, and the tube system will lend itself to being "hardened" with tube bearings, things like that, without much pain.
Silver foil on glass would be a cheap way to provide the contact, a better route would be a piece of aluminium plate, but that's clearly a higher cost, and if it's only basically a one off, I'm not sure that it's justified, a lot will depend on how often the accuracy has to be checked.
The math at the end is blowing my fuses right now, I shall have to take a very close look at the whole calibration scenario, and also have a closer look at the switch concept that's been used for calibrating to see which will work better, if the switch is a removable device, (which I hadn't completely recognised) then that may not be so much of an issue as I thought it might be.
I've already realised that calibration will be iterative, in that one change to the bed levelling will change other readings that have already been set up,so if a corner is moved up or down, to coin an old Monopoly phrase, "Go to Jail, do not pass Go, do not collect £200!,", but if the process is done with care, I think it will be good in the end.
What's thrown things slightly is that the developer of the Pi has just posted that he's about to migrate firmwares, so I'm not quite sure what that's going to mean, and he's not yet posted up a config file for any of his initial set up, which would at least provide a starting point, and right now, I would be the first to admit that I do not have enough knowledge of the cartesian Polar conversion systems to understand what most of the variable parameters actually mean, or how changing them will affect the device. Making the mechanical side of it will (in the scale of things) be relatively simple, getting it to perfom accuarately after I've done that will take a lot longer, so I'm desperately trying to get ahead of the game in terms of understanding what and why I'm doing, before it bites me or damages something.
I shall be printing your message, and storing it on my local machine, so I have some more reference information that will hopefully get the thing productive as quickly as possible.
Again, many thanks for a comprehensive reply, it's appreciated.
Steve
Silver foil on glass would be a cheap way to provide the contact, a better route would be a piece of aluminium plate, but that's clearly a higher cost, and if it's only basically a one off, I'm not sure that it's justified, a lot will depend on how often the accuracy has to be checked.
The math at the end is blowing my fuses right now, I shall have to take a very close look at the whole calibration scenario, and also have a closer look at the switch concept that's been used for calibrating to see which will work better, if the switch is a removable device, (which I hadn't completely recognised) then that may not be so much of an issue as I thought it might be.
I've already realised that calibration will be iterative, in that one change to the bed levelling will change other readings that have already been set up,so if a corner is moved up or down, to coin an old Monopoly phrase, "Go to Jail, do not pass Go, do not collect £200!,", but if the process is done with care, I think it will be good in the end.
What's thrown things slightly is that the developer of the Pi has just posted that he's about to migrate firmwares, so I'm not quite sure what that's going to mean, and he's not yet posted up a config file for any of his initial set up, which would at least provide a starting point, and right now, I would be the first to admit that I do not have enough knowledge of the cartesian Polar conversion systems to understand what most of the variable parameters actually mean, or how changing them will affect the device. Making the mechanical side of it will (in the scale of things) be relatively simple, getting it to perfom accuarately after I've done that will take a lot longer, so I'm desperately trying to get ahead of the game in terms of understanding what and why I'm doing, before it bites me or damages something.
I shall be printing your message, and storing it on my local machine, so I have some more reference information that will hopefully get the thing productive as quickly as possible.
Again, many thanks for a comprehensive reply, it's appreciated.
Steve