For those that have used the stainless steel EMT conduit how is the surface finish? It’s about half the cost here as the normal SS tubing. Is the straightness any concern on the EMT vs the standard tubing? I think the EMT wall thickness was .050" vs the .065" tubing i was looking at. I plan to build the standard size machine with the hopes of doing some light aluminum one day. The EMT should be rigid enough?
Thanks.
I don’t think they make stainless EMT in the right outside diameter to fit any of the printed parts.
I didn’t know they even made SS emt!
McMaster-Carr part number 1831T22 shows an OD of .92 which is basically 23.5mm.
The issue I ran into with my SS build was opposite what you’d get here it sounds like. I bought thick wall SS tube and it was so thick the nut traps wouldn’t fit inside. I had to sand them down to get them to fit into the tube!
No question of rigidity on my machine ; )
For anyone wanting to use stainless conduit or pipe make sure you double check the OD before you start printing parts. I started printing the 23.5mm parts because they are for standard conduit here in the US. Well the SS conduit/pipe I got isn’t .922" like the regular steel, its 1.05". So I just printed half my parts in the wrong size…
Nah, you printed in the right size… You just bought the wrong size conduit. There are no printed parts to fit 1.05" (26.7mm). Unless you’re planning on a really big build I’d just swap your conduit out for the normal EMT. It’ll also save you a bunch.
Only problem is I already have the SS pipe. I might try to scale up the new printed parts or see if i can turn down the pipe a little bit.
I would just get new conduit but I plan to do some aluminum milling eventually and want the extra rigidity/accuracy of the SS.
That is probably going to be wayyyyy to much scaling.That will open up all the bolt holes and leave you a sloppy build. If it was that easy I would not have to maintain three versions. In the early days many tried scaling 25mm to 25.4mm even that didn’t work well enough.
I luckily found a local steel supplier (State Steel) that quoted me $50 for 2x 10’ sticks of 304 welded SS 1" OD and 14ga thickness. Had to ask twice because all the other prices I got were close to $160.
That seems almost too good to be true deal on 1” stainless steel. I’ve been looking around in my area, all I can find is the 1.05 inch S.S. conduit @ $100 per 10’, I considered doing the scaling thing mentioned above then filling the holes and re-extrude cutting them in their proper placements and diameters. But that’s a lot of work, I’d rather find a good price on 1” OD S.S. Tube like that. Will they cut it to smaller lengths too?
how close is the tolerance need to be for conduit and steel pipe.
I checked the 3/4 conduit at the local homeDepot was 20.48 mm OD. which doesn’t seem to fit any of the builds.
I found 3/4" Galvanized Steel Pipe which measured 24.49 mm OD, 10ft for $23, is that close enough to use the 25 mm plastic parts?
It was about $7 per cut for the SS tubing. I just got the 10’ sticks and used a cut off wheel to get them down to actual size. Being its a welded tube you can slightly feel the weld joint on the outside of the pipe. As long as you keep that weld off the bearing surfaces you should be good. This thing is hella rigid!
Where are you located at? State Steel has a few places throughout the Midwest.
I did google “state steel” in the hopes they might be near, just to see. I’m in Idaho, closest one is Sioux Falls, SD. Having a hard time finding 1"OD S.S. here. I’m going to try giving state steel a call tomorrow, see how much shipping charges would be.
You could perhaps remix to fit the larger diameter of tube/pipe, which would certainly involve remixing the braces, and may or may not involve editing other parts. The core has some flexability on gripping different diameters, but not sure if it can accommodate that size or not. It may able to!
UPDATE:
What he said! 