Anyone tried PLA printed bushings?

[NickW]

I've started getting more and more weird offset problems on my printer where the print suddenly moves over a couple mm mid print, and I noticed that my linear bearings have cut some ugly scratches into the polished surface of my rods.  I noticed, even new, that they sometimes seemed a little stiff when changing directions, and I guess over time, they've worn away the surface.

I still need to do a little more testing to be sure they're related, but I think it's a good guess.

Instead of getting more, possibly junk bearings to run on my already slightly damaged rods, I'm thinking I may try printing some bushings out of PLA.  Has anyone tried this?  I know there's a couple that are being used for rotation and linear motion on the tantillus, and haven't heard any major complaints about it.
I'm thinking one of the slightly springy self centering designs will probably work best, but I want to see if I can do something that doesn't require disassembling the printer to install them.  Anyone seen anything appropriate, or should I just model my own?

I'm thinking something similar to: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:16813 or http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:102482, but split so they can be replaced without disassembly.

-Nick

[John Biehler]

All the bearings on my original Prusa were originally PLA printed...they worked great and were quiet. They tend to wear out fast though.

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[Rob Hall]

So was mine but I suspect the lm8uu style will last better do to the larger surface area

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[Tiago Santos]

IGUS makes special plastic bearings that supposedly work well - although the ones on the Lulzbot TAZ have an incredible amount of slop. IGUS also sells a filament of their bearing material which would be really cool to try!

[Nick Wimpney]

I made a split one similar to of first one I linked last night, so it'll be easily replaceable in the future,  and more importantly doesn't require me to pull everything apart to test them.  Hopefully I'll have time to try them this evening.

On 3 Jul 2014 07:26, "Tiago Santos" <tiagosa...@gmail.com> wrote:

IGUS makes special plastic bearings that supposedly work well - although the ones on the Lulzbot TAZ have an incredible amount of slop. IGUS also sells a filament of their bearing material which would be really cool to try!

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[John Biehler]

Nice! I miss how quiet the printed ones are compared to the LM8UUs....

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[Rob Hall]

I will be trying printed ones on my next build

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[Nick Wimpney]

Well, if you want to mess with mine, it's currently at http://arx.ca/projects/printer/split-printable-bearing.scad

I'll probably put it up on thingiverse if it works decent, but I'm not a fan of the droves of mediocre/non-tested models, so I'll wait until I've tested it a bit.  And in the mean time, play with it yourself, but don't pass it around until I've documented it better, and whatnot.

I'm cheating slightly, instead of using trig to generate the cutouts in the initial shape, so there are some tiny grooves along the edge of the contact ridges (you can see the jaggies in openscad), but I think for any reasonable size bearing they're going to be below the resolution of the printer anyway.

It's all parametric, and I intend to either just hold them together with the cable ties that hold the bearings in the carriages, or just stick them together with a little CA glue.  Rather than using settings from the slicer like triffid_hunter did on the one I'm modelling after, I just put the wall thicknesses as an option at the top so they can be tweaked until it looks right.  The idea is to set it so that the springy middle part is just 2 layers of plastic, and the ends, where it's glued are 1.

In theory, if you wanted it stiffer, you could increase it a bit, and it would infill, and I think shouldn't cause any problems, but probably isn't necessary either.  For less stiffness you could go down to 2 ridges and/or make them narrower.

It might also be fun to try printing with an extreme spiral like 360 degrees, and then twisting them together on the rod.  (it might be tricky to get them on though)

[Rob Hall]

If your replacing then why do you need split ones you have to get the old bearings out anyways

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[Nick Wimpney]

Nah, I can just drop them down to the bottom of the rods, the carriages actually can't go down that far before the nozzle hits the table anyway.  I just don't feel like pulling off the top plate, and having to re-wind and tension the fishing lines. etc.

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[Rob Hall]

Ah OK didn't realize this was a delta

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[Kimball Andersen]

Here is a link to that Tribofilament from IGUS

http://www.igus.com/wpck/11723/N14_4_1_iglidur_TriboFilament?C=US&L=en

I have had my eye on it for a while, and I am curious has anyone tried it? or do you know anyone that has? would love to learn more about it.

K

[Ashley Webster]

I signed up to receive a sample, seems like ages ago now. Will let you know if it ever comes.

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[John Biehler]

The filament looks interesting but what printer is that in their photos? It's like a mini-mini delta.

On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 2:19 PM, Kimball Andersen <pyrop...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Nick Wimpney]

after a bit of minor tweaking,  and bug fixes I think I have a split bearing that should work.

because I am splitting it along one of the support spokes,  the print has a half thickness on the ends.   Unfortunately, the way slic3r cuts it, I ended up with those two half spokes that were only one perimeter thick as a separate little segment, so it jumps to it,  prints 1mm and jumps away.   Obviously that's not going to work well due to some lumpyness, so I thickened it just enough to increase to 2 layers thick,  and it slices in a sane way now.   I  also switched to 2 contact points instead of 3, because there seemed to be way too much drag on my 1st attempt.   New file is posted as well. for anyone who is interested.

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