Printable x and y carriage replacements (Level 2 - Techie Consumer) (Page 3 of 11)

It probably wont be the best option for you freight wise,
http://allthingsstainless.com.au/home/s … d-bar.html

Any "Baulstrading" store (it was very 'in' in the late 90's-early-00's ) will have the stuff, or any Stainless Merchant..
but the specifications I used were:

304 Stainless M8 Polished Round Bar x 4
( 2 x 360mm for Y-Axis, 2 x 340mm for X-Axis )
304 Stainless M6 Polished Round Bar x 1
( 1 x 340mm Y-Axis Link Rod)

If you live in a salty or seaside environment, go the extra for 316 "Marine Grade" stainless....

The only thing is - you want them to be plasma/laser cut, not guillotined, as that will bend the rods. Get *them* to cut them to size, even if it costs $1 or so a cut.. because its a complete PITA cutting it yourself. Most places sell the rods by the meter (i guess over there by the foot/3-foot length)... so you actually get 2 sets of most rods from those lengths...

stock works fine, you just have to break your OEM carriages to remove them

Mine slides about the same to my hands but I know it's sliding around on bearings instead of scraping directly on greased rods.  The other upside is the head is much more stable than stock.  When I received my Solidoodle3 the head wobbled forward and backward 1/32" till I tightened everything down to the point I wasn't comfortable with the friction on the back rod.  I happily took a pair of vice grips and broke the old stock parts free without giving it a second thought.  I cleaned up the glue with acetone and polished the rods and put it back together.  It's fairly simple just don't mark up the rods while you are removing everything.  You can't do better than bearings.

Mcmaster Carr has it.

http://www.mcmaster.com/#88625k67/=nny3hx

And how hard is it really?  I am not familier with hardness scales. Looking at the info it doesnt look very hard.

I was thinking of going with these and using a grinder to cut them down to size.

http://www.mcmaster.com/#6112k45/=no3y8g

sounds good then. going to replace all the rods with these, and keep the OEM as spares.

I've replaced my rods with much high quality hardened ground rods and I can flick the entire contraption back and forth on their respective rods with one finger when the belts aren't connected.  I wouldn't describe what mine do as drag.  I would say from 1-10 with 10 being snot on a glass doorknob slick mine are about an 8.  I used the rods from McMasters as previously described above.  They're very nice.

I found a place that has them for $0.60 and some of them slide free and others are pretty tight.  Also someone pointed out could be the shipping oil on my hardened steel rods causing issues also. going to clean them with WD-40 and then reoil with some light machine oil.

Printed the parts and just got the bearings in the mail.
Please let me know if i need to buy addition M3 screws/nuts for this mod.

Do Solidoodle have  a hardware BOM available online?
I want to get some spare M3 screws but not sure what size to get.

Has anyone got a photo of the y-axis front pulley arrangement they could share with me?

its the one on the front left hand side as you look at. (above the hinge on the door )

thanks!!

Thanks.

Now.. this may be a silly question, but if you don't ask.....

M6, and M8 .. I am assuming that is 6mm and 8mm

I didn't notice any rods actually called M8 or M6

I finally got all of these parts printed.  Now to assemble them.  I am particularly worried about tearing my printer apart, the worry is it won't go back together, lol.

I understand that in order to get the x axis rods the old carriages must be destroyed.  I purchased a couple of 8 mm rods in the hopes that I can use them to create a new x axis.  Can I remove all of the extruder parts without ruining the carriage?  I want to keep the original as a backup.

I had a bear of a time printing the top x axis carriage due to the holes that go from 6 mm to 3 mm.  The slicer kept starting the 3 mm hole in the middle of the 6 mm hole resulting in a mess.  My solution was to import the .stl into sketchup and put a .3 mm layer at that point.  After nettfabing the .stl it printed one layer at the transition resulting in nice clean 3 mm holes.

Oh, and 4 wraps of painters tape results in a nice snug bearing fit (for me at least).

What else should I watch out for in installing these?