Cheapskate by SeeMeCNC

Cheapskate bearing page has been updated to include a dxf of the bearing plates.

[reprap.org]

John, a couple of questions for you about this design.

1. The hole pattern has holes for 3 sets of bearings, but your pictures on the page show 2 pairs (which I would expect). What's the reasoning for providing the center set of holes?

2. What thickness acrylic are you using to make the plates?

3. What's your timeline to release the files for the idler and motor end plates?

4. Are the small hole patterns matched to anything in particular?

Crispy, thanks for dxf's

1. I like to use 3 bearings, steve likes 4, so since we "agree to disagree" haha, we made them for either setup.

2. We used 1/4" acrylic in the machine you saw at NY, and the white melamine laserboard is .270" thick

3. Crispy, im positive that those files for the idler end and motor side should be in the main release zip on the rostock MAX wiki page, [reprap.org]

4. The small hole pattern isnt really anything specific. There are a lot of holes on them, so we could attach different parts/pcs until we settled on a design.

Hope that helps, and steve just said he will be finishing up to tweaks and tunes to the laser files and uploading them soon. Mainly fixes for slot widths etc...

Thanks for the response John.

I didn't think to check the rostock page, thanks for linking it.

As for point 1, my experience with Makerslide has taught me that even though 3 bearings should *theoretically* perfectly constrain it, in the real world there is always slop that having a 4th bearing helps take out of the system.

Yep, no problem. And yes, 3 do make sense for the bearings, but 4 eliminate any chances. I've ran 3 on the MAX acrylic machine for a while now with no issues. It could be that becuase we are using the carriage in a vertical orientation rather than horizontal that the binding doesn't happen?

My issue with 3 bearings wasn't binding, but difficulty in removing slop in the system. Mostly this came from the fact that my bearing plates (printed PLA) were not perfectly rigid, and on the Z axis, were also not perfectly flat due to other forces exerted on the plates.

Yeah I can see that. Well, can't wait to see what you come up with next. Do tell when you get it done!