Made a new linear bearing

It uses three 623zz bearings for each corner of the carriage, each bearing at 120degrees from the other. There's a video at the end which shows half the carriage running along one 8mm smooth rod.

The important thing is, it feels slippery no matter what angle you pull at it, it isn't affected by skew in the way that the traditional linear bearings are.

It's only a prototype obviously, I'm amazed it printed, fit together and worked at all to be honest. The video is awful and doesn't really show it's good points. I've also put the scad file on thingiverse in case you want to have a play. I'm just starting to get the hang of OpenSCAD, but it's not as parameterised as I'd like.

youtube of it here

You have reinvented the original Mendel
[reprap.org]
which used this idea for all its bearings


-Rob A>

Which goes to show what a brilliant idea they had

Funnily enough someone I know mentioned exactly this the other day and said something about it falling out of favour because of the complexity and cost. I think I might run with it though. The carriage feels sooo much nicer on the bars than the scritchy scratchy linear bearings version

Love that photo btw, there are some interesting alternative layouts I might steal