Helpers

Nothing here is a stage of the build. Each page is one job you do once, on a part that several later steps need, and the step that needs it links straight to it. So read these when a page sends you, not in order.

Using a tool

• Using a multimeter. Continuity, resistance and DC volts, the three checks the pages below ask for. Each one links straight to the check it needs.
• Crimping connectors. The two kinds of crimp and their pliers, how to read the die, and the steps for each. Every lead page below links here.

Preparing a bought part

• Installing heat inserts. Pressing brass threads into printed parts, with a soldering iron or an insert press. The most-used page here: eight assembly steps call for it.
• Fitting T-nuts. How the M5 T-nuts go into the aluminum extrusion, and what changes if you bought the cheaper style.
• Preparing the Lazy Susan. Pulling the rubber feet off the bearing, if yours came with them.
• Preparing the 20-tooth timing pulley. Removing the top flange so the pulley fits the interface gear.
• Soldering Pico headers. Optional. The parts list buys a Pico with its pins already on, so a standard build skips this page.
• Preparing the 3D printed cable cage plates. Optional. Gluing the printed pieces into the two cable cage plates, if you print them instead of having them laser-cut.

Making a cable

Seven of the machine's cables are made by hand, one page each. The eighth, the USB hub's 24 V lead (W2), is a barrel plug screwed into the hub's own power terminal, so it needs no page.

• Preparing the LED strips (L1 to L3, L1p to L3p). Cutting a lamp's length of strip and getting its cable on the end, clamped or soldered. Three per machine.
• Make your own PSU output pigtail (PJ1 to PJ3). The barrel jack and its two fork terminals, for each of the PSU box's three outputs. Three per machine.
• Make the control board's 24 V lead (W1). Barrel plug at the PSU, JST-VH at the board. The one lead nobody sells ready made, so the harness order has it made, or you do.
• Make the Orange Pi's 24 V lead (W3). A barrel plug onto the buck converter's own input wires. The shortest of the three 24 V leads (W1, W2, W3).
• Make the channel stepper leads (S1 to S4). The four c-channel motor leads. The lead in the motor's box cannot be used as it comes. Four per machine.
• Make the chute stepper lead (CH). The chute motor has bare flying leads, so this one gets a tail and a housing.
• Make the chute limit switch lead (LIM). Push-on tabs at the switch, a 3-pin housing at the board. Nothing soldered.

Every socket these leads plug into is on connecting the components, and the drawings and lengths are on ordering the wire harness.