Hi Folks,
Seeing as how many of my adapters have reached their customers at this point and are starting to pop up in the wild, I've put together a basic design for a single juki nozzle rack (can be into an array of your preferred size, obviously) for use with my adapter.
I saw that Genie put together a 3D Printable design, which is awesome, and I've started it printing on my machine, but anyone that's spoken to me knows that I design for production (and use that exact phrase a lot) and I don't see FDM printing as viable because of dimensional issues, rough surfaces, and time spent when making many.
As such, I considered CNC milling the two halves, which when considering the fact that I need a 1.5mm groove in 12mm thick stock, didn't seem like the best idea. I could get this SLA printed which would work as far as no internal supports and smooth surfaces, but it would be cost prohibitive as a production strategy. So, laser cutting and stacking it is!
The following pictures, and keep in mind that this is fresh out of CAD that I did in the last hour so, represent a half section of a series of 3mm plates that I intend to laser cut out of acrylic (and could be done out of delrin which might be a better material for this type of 'gliding' application) and stack together. You are seeing 4 plates in the half section, which would make for a total of 8 plates resulting in a total width (as viewed from the front) of 24mm and the plates will be retained using M3 screws probably 30mm long and nuts. Now keep in mind this is just a first revision and I haven't tested anything yet. Maybe the orange plate needs not to follow the top contour and instead be a wall for the collar of the adapter. Maybe the path in the red plate that the juki nozzle's ring sits in needs some chamfers on the outside to make it easier to guide in, and maybe the path needs to dip towards the end such that the nozzle falls into a shallow groove and thus would be unable to wobble out perhaps due to vibrations. All things that will be figured out...
I look forward to all your thoughts.




Cheers,
Ray