Hi

Belts are next. You need to get the Y belt ends roughly correct (the motor and the front mount) to get the belt length right. I found it easier to do by measurement than by eye. There is not a lot of extra belt in the kit. There also isn't a lot of adjustment range after they are in. You want to get them as tight as you can when you install them. The pictures imply that you can have a bunch of extra belt hanging out past the ties. The pictures lie. Obviously you want to tighten the belts with the adjusters all in the "loose" position. That is pretty obvious with the X motor. It's not quite as obvious with the bolt assembly on the front of the Y belt.

You now are up to the heat bed. There are a couple of choices here.

You need to put some sort of insulation between the bed and the aluminum plate. I decided to use Nomex felt:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

The stuff is gross overkill. It's rated for use over 200C. That's way beyond anything the heated bed will ever run at. A minimum order of the stuff is plenty for a bunch of printers. You can cut it with scissors. There is now weird debris when you cut it.

The second decision is how to mount the bed. The "old" way was to use springs. That really isn't a good idea. Mount it solidly with spacers. The bed extenders are great for this. I have some custom parts that I like a little better. I'll post them eventually. The gotcha is that the heated PCB changes size / shape as it heats up. The ones I did don't confine the PCB at all. That gets the PCB closer to the glass plate at all times.

One thing I *thought* would be a good idea: Supporting the heater PCB with the Nomex felt. That turned out to not work very well. You go from zero contact to a "middle high" situation very quickly. The best approach for me was to keep the felt below the PCB.

End stops .... oh joy ....

MakerFarm has used cable ties for mounting micro switches forever and ever. It does work. It saves playing with some really strange sized nuts and bolts. People have been complaining about it forever and ever. I went with the cable ties. Others would go find some nuts and bolts.

Pictures show the Z end stop hitting the roller on the microswitch. My thought is that this is not the best approach. I moved the arm out a bit and let it hit the "flat" on the switch. It seems to be more consistent that way.

The X carriage end stop also has a wheel on it. The normal mount will have that wheel hitting the roller at right angles. The wheel does not turn, it just drags (or misses the roller completely). They break off easily. Once you do that file off the rough end on the arm to the switch. It works fine that way.

Mounting the LCD is next. It is pretty clear in the instructions.

Building the hot end and extruder depend a lot on what you bought. Other than cleaning up the printed parts, none of it was very crazy.

Mounting the power supply and Ramps is an exercise in figuring out where the wires will fit. The LCD cable to the display is one constraint. The other limit is the wire to the Z axis stepper on the left side. Test fit both cables before you decide on how the supply and Ramps bolts down. With both cables there are some compromises you can make on cable dress that will move the assembly up or down. My decision was to extend the cable to the Z stepper and mount the whole thing high. You don't *have* to do that. I just liked getting things up a bit higher.

Getting the Ramps hooked up is as much about how the wires are dressed as it is getting this or that wire to here or there. Plan on spending some quality time working all of that out. Accept that you may tear it all apart once or twice while getting it all done. I wired mine all up with the printed cable shields and the nylon jacket / braid stuff. I would do it the same way if I did it again.

My heated bed was a "two wire" version and I got an outboard relay card. Before the kit arrived, I had decided to run a solid state relay rather than the mechanical one. I do not doubt that the supplied relay works. I have plans to abuse the heated bed a bit (run it hot) so I wanted some margin. I picked this one:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Yup, a 100A relay. Actually it's even worse. It's likely a MOSFET based part. The power rating thus goes by I^2 so putting 20 or 30 A through it is very much loafing along. As expected it runs dead cold. If I run the heated bed up to 18V it still should do just fine. It also will do fine running PWM. There is no need to do this unless you have really nutty plans for the printer.

For the miscellaneous 12V stuff, I wired in a terminal strip. From past experience, there are always more things getting lashed on the printer. Tearing open a wire harness each time you put on a fan or something is no fun. Just screwing things down on the block is a *lot* easier.

I did not go with the outboard switch. I will eventually put in a fuse. It's just not been done yet. One thing I did do while wiring the power supply ... run a ground wire to the frame of the printer. It's not a big deal in the middle of the summer. Come winter and sparks every time you touch the printer, it's well worth it. There is also a safety benefit.

Before you plug the beast in for the first time, double check all the wiring. It's very easy to mess up. When you do fire it up:

Noting at all happens = end stop switch over one pin and shorting the 5V supply to ground
No display / blank display = big fat connector on the Ramps plugged in one pin over
Temperature indicating off of "room" = thermistor not plugged in
No heat up when commanded = wire loose on screw terminals
Axis dances rather than moves = stepper connector one pin over
Axis does not move = stepper not plugged in

When you do power up the Ramps, either with the 12V supply or USB to a computer should give you LED's on the board. If not, check the end stop switches.

Load up the firmware in the Ramps from the MakerFarm download. Use the (old) versions of the software he has listed. Get the checkout done before you mess with any new versions or updates. The stuff he suggests is all stable and well tested. Run through the basic motion tests he suggests in the instructions. Stop before you get to printing. You still have some mechanical stuff to check out. You want to be done with the electrical first. It makes some of the checks a lot faster.

Alignment will be a whole post by it's self.

Bob