So I sold a few other things and ordered the cheapest delta 3d printer kit I could find. It came in and took a bit of learning curve… but that is the point when you get into 3d printing, isn’t it? =)

First off, my stepper motors were wired incorrectly. Thanks to the help of those into he 3d printing community, I found I could just play with the wiring till I found out what worked. It did help that I had my little tessel board already programmed to play with a stepper.

Once I got the wiring corrected the motors were still extremely loud when moving. Finally a user on reddit mentioned I should check my jumper settings. Jumper settings?! I just assumed the firmware could do all that. Guess not. Of course, the kit I got was missing all the jumpers needed. Between some help from my awesome neighbor and some old computer drives I had laying around and was able to get all that I needed (12 in total). Once those were in, no more shaking and buzzing! Still not done though.

After scouring through the G-Code wiki and reading up on the firmware that I had (micromake) I found the key setting that I really needed to tweak was the z-endstop-offset. Using the “paper test” that many refer to, I was able to home that setting in. Then came the fun of learning how to load filament in this thing.