Hey guys! Hope everyone had a great weekend.
Wow… Lot’s a DD up there! I’ll need to catch up… some nice looking pics, too. Thanks!
David - that’s a COOL design. I hadn’t thought of laying the rails horizontal! I did started poking around and looking at linear bearings, which this design seems to replicate. Albeit, more expensive… but not totally out of the question.
Do you use little belt loops for the 2 Y axis motors?
Thanks, Dennis. The 2040 rails are laying horizontal because that’s its orientation in the cantilevered TimSav machine it’s based on… imagine the right-most rail gone and the gantry just cantilevered out in the air, to see it. The added axis is simply a mirrored version of the left-most rail setup and captures and supports the gantry end to allow heavier loads, such as my Z-axis mechanism and a laser module, to be mounted a bit more stably. The Y-axis motors are series-connected as with any dual-motor axis on MPCNC.
I’m planning to change out the 2020 gantry rail to 2040 (oriented vertically) to give a bit more stability to the Z-axis machanism. Then the entire machine will just be three lengths of 2040 V-slot.
Not sure what “belt loops” you’re referring to with the Y-axis motors… maybe a photo will help?
– David
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Yes, sir, that picture helped. I see now how the belt works for Y. Thanks, David. I’ll keep this design in mind as I engineer my idea.
I just got on a Linear Bearing kick and been look at thingiverse for stuff. There are some cool ideas for sure, and then I started thinking "what if I didn’t make the bearing out of abs/pla, but rather used some Oiless Self Lubricating bearing/bushing to slide up and down the tubes? Finding something with 1inch Inner bore is the trick… but something like:
I like that first one because I could design a housing thing that will hold it in place. Lot’s of folks also complained about lubricating… I thinker with old cars and transmissions and engine rebuilds… so that’s how I got to thinking about these. Basically, they would replace all the bearing rollers in the LR2 and just slide on the tubes. I suppose the only problem would be how tight the roundness tolerances are on that tubing. Might have to do some polishing on them! 
(I didn’t opt for the stainless ones, either)
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