A few more bits and pieces have arrived. In particular, the NEMA 17 stepper motors, the 170mm diameter borosilicate glass print plate, and the PTFE tubing for guiding the filament from the extruder to the effector.
In the above, I have placed three of the NEMA 17 stepper motors in their mount locations. The one on the left has a thin cork insert between it and the frame; this will hopefully reduce noise and vibration. They were cheap, so I thought "why not". In the middle, the red circuit board is the stepper motor driver board, and hopefully it will be able to live down under the print surface pretty much were it's sitting now. It needs to join with the Arduino board, so thickness might be an issue. I'm still to learn how to connect the stepper motor to the board; four colour wires with no markings black/blue/red/green. I'm sure it's not too difficult
The above shows the heated bed (black hexagon) sitting nicely in the frame bed area (size is fantastic), and on top of that -- possibly too hard to see -- is the 170mm borosilicate glass. Onto the heated bed I need to attach four wires -- DC power (12V) on the rectangular pads, and underneath there are two more pads connecting to a thermistor in the middle underside of the hex heat pad. I need to somehow firmly mount not only this hex heat bed onto the frame, but also the borosilicate glass print bed onto the heat bed. I placed some small screws through the holes on the hex heat bed, and they fit and hold the bed quite nicely (but not screwed in, of course). So I'm going to 3D-build/print some mounts; the idea is that these screws will attach to an underneath mount which will attach to the inner side of the aluminium frame. Something like two screws going horizontally through the mount into the inside groove of the aluminium horizontal bar (and not visible from outside), and between them, the vertical downward screws visible in the picture will tighten onto a nut seated in the mount. On the top-side of the same screw, there will be a flat part which pushes against the rounded print glass bed. Six of those and the glass bed should be relatively firmly held in place (at least lateral movement will be negligible). So, I should be able to knock that up in a few days.
Anyway, moving on... next time I write, I hope to have the mounts/fixes sorted for getting the hot bed and print bed mated firmly to the frame, and to have worked out how the stepper motors correctly wire into the RAMPS 1.4 board/assembly. At that point I may very well have to start thinking about understanding and testing the RAMPS software... a bit daunting at the moment, but one step at a time...