Thoughts on the plastic panels
Given the overall construction of the Open GB, especially of its more vital parts such as the frame, printing bed, dual extruder housing and linear rails, and the top notch wiring job makes it almost hard to complain about anything.
Still, in an effort to provide feedback and to help make Open GB the best that it possibly can be, here are some thoughts on where I think things can be improved.
1) Doors - Piano Hinges are always a bit of a challenge. If you put them on the outside, they look rather ugly, but if you put them on the inside, the door won't open 180 degrees. I can't fault re:3D for wanting to keep Open GB's outside lines smooth and sleek like they did, she really is a thing of beauty as a result, so they made the right choice putting the hinges inside.
That said, interference between the doors and the screws into Open GB's frame prevents the doors from opening as much as they could and likely over time will cause someone to break a door.
I will likely countersink the two screws in the three locations that interfere to eliminate this concern.
For future generations of Open GB, my suggestion would be to move these screws a 1/4" or so away from the door opening.
2) Doors - Fit up - Its a bit disappointing that the doors don't actually close because the leading edges collide.
The easy solution going forward would be to cut the doors slightly undersized, say 1/32" on each door, 1/16" overall, assuming the production process cuts to that kind of tolerance. A very slight gap would be preferable to them not sitting flat.
As I have time, I will likely remove them and see if I can sand them with my belt sander to resolve the issue on my machine.
3) Main Back Panel gaps from the machine - This again goes to the fit and polish and making this beautiful machine what it really can be. Overall just a couple of additional screws will fix most of the problems.
The back panel might be the hardest to fix. Not a huge problem to fix, thinking perhaps a couple of small tabs that can be screwed to the inside of both the metal frame and the plastic to hold them together nicer.
4) Side Panels Gap - The frame is already there for every problem location, so this is a really simple fix. An additional screw and cagenut in each of the following locations is all that is required.
a) The middle of the front and rear vertical edges
b) Two locations, bottom edge - into the two middle frame members
and 2 locations at the top, into the same frame members
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In reviewing the drawings I see that the current drawings show holes where I was suggesting in Item 4 above, so it looks like later versions of Open GB will have this Item addressed. The rest still need to be reviewed.
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Looking at the door fit-up, the top of the doors are currently just closing. I think given the thermal expansion rate of most plastics that if the room was much hotter they likely wouldn't.
The bottom foot or so is actually the only place where they overlap.
The magnets seem like a good idea but the ones currently in place are too week to do their job. It also seems like adding additional magnets at the two lower cross members would be really nice.
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We have been trying a lot of new things with these printers, one of the biggest things has been the paneling so the feedback is amazing to hear for this. On future bots as you have seen in the cad the plan is to drill more holes so the panel will hold better. For the front doors there were talks of adding magnets to the bottom and we would love to hear any ideas you have for those.
As for the back panel we had not had anything in the works yet and I really liked the idea of a bracket to hold it in place so I designed on that could be easily printed in the spirit of open sourced.
here is the file: https://skfb.ly/NCtK
and a few photos of the bracket
It just uses a M5 screw and nut and then directly bolts into the extrusion with M5 screws and post assembly t nuts
for printing I would use ABS at around 15% infill
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