Use the Allen key to hold your nut when you need to place it up into a recess in the plastic where your fingers can’t reach. With the other hand tighten the bolt
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Also, use a drill on the lowest torque setting & on speed 2 (for lower torque). It’ll save you hours. Go out and buy a t10 precision screwdriver with a handle under 1/2 inch or cut the one that’s provided chuck it up in your drill. A standard 1/4” driver but will not fit in most recesses. I did crack one part using the drill ( the bottom router clamp so make sure to tighten those by hand) I’m too impatient to tighten every bolt by hand using a drill can decease assembly time drastically maybe even done in 1/2 the time.
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Related note:
I think it would be helpful if the assembly instructions provided some guidance on torque. eg. Nm or what have you, i have a wrench for bike work that i could use to implement this. The provided tool shows me that I shouldn’t tighten “too much” i guess, since it’s epected i’m hand tightening with the flimsy wrench. Still i could jam on that thing or not, and when mounting motors etc, some more precision would be welcome.
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When tightening the bottom bracket below the arms, how much play should there be? Should the arms be completely flush with no gaps between the outer rings that clamp onto the router?
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I’m not 100% sure that I understand, but are we talking about play vertically between the arms? There should be a good amount here like 1mm
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As I was assembling my 4.1 today, I was also lamenting the lack of a torque spec. Rather than using “gudntite”, I defaulted to a 3 finger torque with the provided screw driver. This seemed sufficient to snug everything up and usually the fingers slipped at an appropriate tightness without risking cranking down on the fastener.
Another similar technique while assembling the sled was to use the provided wrench to lever against the side of the nut recess while tightening with the provided screw driver from the other side. This also benefits from proprioception by having your finger opposite where the fastener needs to go.
@bar Something I noticed following the 4.1 assembly instructions is that at the end of each page, the link to go to the next page points to the 4.0 page rather than the next 4.1 page.
In the arm assembly steps, because I was assembling pieces in my mobile workshop (the back of my wife’s van while waiting), I found good effect by casting the belt out behind the vehicle and passing it though my fingers to get the correct orientation to pull it through the end of the arm. Because of limited space I then spooled the belt up manually. The arm halves went together fairly painlessly by holding them in each hand, ends away/belt spool near, and folding them together like a book. If the idler wasn’t quite aligned with the belt spool it was easy to shift it with a thumb. Jiggling the two halves slightly worked to bring them together with out much effort. Even though I had seated the nuts as @Cristian_Paul_Martin indicated with a low torque drill, several were not in far enough for the bolts to catch. Pushing on the corners of the lock nuts with the provided screw driver reseated them enough for the bolts to catch.
In attaching the belt ends, I found a pair of slip joint pliers worked well to bring the two halves together if the nut wasn’t catching. If the belt impeded passing the bolt through the hole, it worked well to place the assembly on a flat surface and push the bolt through with the provided screwdriver.
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Something else I neglected was the directions should have a description of separating the encoders along the perforations firmly but without overly flexing the encoder boards; working from the outside inward. I found that a little work with 120 grit sandpaper cleaned up the ragged edges nicely. The sanding is strictly unnecessary, but leads to a cleaner build.
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Mine was somewhere similar. I was worried that the “slack” between arms would cause more inaccuracy in the cuts, such as if one arm raised while being tightened.,
Great catch! I will fix that ASAP!