Precision ball cup rod ends

[Michael Anton]

Karl,

I came across these on another group: http://www.tricklaser.com/Ball-Cup-Rod-Ends-Retro-Fit-Kit-BC-RETRO.htm, and thought you might like to know they exist.  They have the mating balls as well.  Perhaps these would work better than the current FPD rod ends.

Mike

[Joshua Pritt]

We recently got a Deltamaker 3D printer at the Melbourne Makerspace here in FL and I spent some time looking at the rod ends for that.  What's the reason why we aren't using those same rods and connectors at the ends?

https://www.deltamaker.com/

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[Karl]

Michael/Joshua,

Those both look better than our current FPD 3DP design.

The 3DP design of the FPD ball sockets unavoidably has ridges

as well as step discontinuities as the Z-axis jogs up between layers.

Those ball cup irregularities may well be the root cause of our precision

and speed difficulties.

I really like the aluminum laser cut effector with injection molded

ball studs. Upgrading to those parts should make FPD more precise

in a larger envelope. It would hopefully also eliminate the need for LPP moves

to ensure precision, which would potentially double the speed of FPD.

Unfortunately, I feel stretched thin. My head is currently wrapped around 

FirePaste, which is taking longer than I had hoped. Would you guys like to

experiment with the newer designs for us? FireNodeJS should be able to

detect any improvements with the new ball joints. 

[Joshua Pritt]

I should have some free time coming up in January once I finish the projects I'm working on now.

I could go ahead and order those parts now to have them...

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[Karl]

Thanks, Josh!

This should be very interesting!

[Jacob Putz]

I was looking at this as well, just to find out what the cost would be for precision milled ball joints.