I was wondering if anyone knew what the Maximum wall thickness was for the Stainless Steel 1" O.D. tube? I know Ryan says he recommends a Minimum of 0.065" but is there a recommended Max? I was able to get some 0.120" wall Stainless Steel Tube but I’m not sure if this will be too much mass for the Nema17’s to move around. It’s definitely strong so flex won’t be an issue over the 4’ width of the table I am building, I’m just not sure how accurate the machine will be moving that much mass around. Anyone have any experience with thicker walled tube?
You’ll be fine. More mass is just slower.
1 Like
Thanks Ryan! The speed doesn’t bother me for routing. It might be an issue when I do plasma but I’ll just have to play with it to see how it goes.
I wish I would have your problems, I live in Thailand, and was just browsing yesterday the catalogs of the local manufacturers, seems stainless is the only option to go (1" OD). But usually those profiles on paper thin, nothing for structural building.
I saw adapter plates for nema 23 to nema 17, they might exist the other way around too?
I also had to get pipes with thicker walls since I couldn’t find any thin walled pipes with the correct OD. I’m still putting mine together. I can report back when I have it running.
The problem with the thicker pipe is the tolerances of the bearing in the printed parts will be off. From what I’ve read on other posts here is that even 1” OD Pipe (which is around 1.005) is too big, that why the spec for 1” OD Tube (which really is 1.000”). It’s not the stepper motors, but the 3D printed parts that need the correct size tube.
Hopefully you can find some Tube with the proper wall thickness. I’m kinda lucky in that I have 5 different metal suppliers within 45 mins of me that all sell drops at about 1/2 price of new material.
I used thick wall SS for my MPCNC but when it was time to get the tube for the laser machine I went with the thin wall stuff. You will have to sand down the nut traps quite a lot to be able to get them into the thick walled tubes - and then you may need longer bolts/screws than spec’d. It works, just needed that workaround.
You could always get short pieces of thin wall just for the Z axis of course.
Good call on sanding down the nuts. I tried to install the Z tubes yesterday and they were hitting the nuts for the Hose Bracket. I’m either going to file down the inside of the tube with my die grinder or file down the side of the nut to fit.