linear bearings for bottom plate

So I had a curious moment today and decided to toy with the idea of a basic linear slide setup for the bottom plate, it would be setup roughly the same as the pla bushing strategy except replacing the pla bushing with this sleeve bushing McMaster link and securing them to the bottom of the bottom plate with a 1/2" pvc 2 screw conduit clamps. Is there any reason to not do this that I am over looking? Anyone else ever try anything like this?

See attached files, I just re drew them as the originals were too tight for my bearings they take the LM8uu bearing from VXB bearings in America

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

$4.35 each? Yikes. I'd just use some LM8UUs bought off eBay, personally. In fact, that's what I did do, and it works great! ><

I think I might do that in future too, it's difficult being in NZ as not everyone will ship here

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

NelsonRap Wrote:
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> I think I might do that in future too, it's
> difficult being in NZ as not everyone will ship
> here

The "chinese" ebay sellers usually ship worldwide, for instance I bought one of those set last month :

[cgi.ebay.fr]

Delivery was fast for me (to France).

I am building the SAE Prusa Mendel, using 5/16" smooth rod, would the LM8UUs still be usable? the ID would be .07mm too large.

I just finished putting LM8UU's on both the X and Y axis of my SAE Prusa with 5/16" smooth rods and it works great. While there is certainly some play in an individual bearing on the rod, once I got all three on for each axis, there was next to no room for lateral movement. Best upgrade I've made yet next to nophead's Z couplers.

BTW I bought 12 bearings off ebay for US$20 with free shipping from China. Certainly took a while to get here, but I would imagine it's a much quicker trip to NZ.

-Jason

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.: repraponaut.blogspot.com :.

I will certainly be looking into it as I am about to start making some Prusa's as kits due to the demand here and no one else seems to be doing it

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand

nelson, thank you for the files, do you have a brief explanation of how to build the bottom plate (smooth rod distances from each other, plate orientation, etc...) using those parts? I did some snooping and couldn't find anything in the wiki about it. maybe I missed something?

Well I have set my smooth rods up at 140mm between or 148mm C/C, and can move my brackets accordingly to match very easily. I hope to get photo's up in the next day or so for people to look at, Just not having enough time at the moment and that's despite not working.

Oh the X carriage is set to 50mm C/C of the smooth rod

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Experimenting in 3D in New Zealand