Cable drive

I wonder, which mistake I would make, if I abandoned the belts of the Mendel90 in favour of a cable drive like that one of sublime.

I must admit, I hate belts. If you make them too tight, you spoil them, if not, you loose acuracy. They are difficult to get outside industrial countries, cost a lot, and they like to tease me by pressing against the washers on the idler side. Wherever possible I replaced them by rod and pinion and I must say I am very happy with this decision. To me a belt is nothing more than a reinforced rubber band and as such a source of inacuracy.

The disadvantage of printed rods and pinions is that you need a calibrated printer to produce them. That one can't use your own rod and pinion, because otherwise the printing inacuracies would be inherited. That's the reason why I decided to turn my repstrap into a Mendel90 like one - a printer with convincing features.

Only the fact that it uses belts make me thinking ...

To get the belt not rubbing against the washers I find that if you slip a shim ie say a 3mm washer to tilt the bearing out or in as the case may be you can get it to run OK. I have stopped useing big washers to keep the belt on the bearing it is better to tilt (or cant) it slightly so that it runs true. I also put two bearings (side by side) together. by moveing the shim around the bearing it is possible to make it run completly true.

Do you have a picture of that? I am afraid I didn't get it.

Here are two pictures one on a Prusa and the other on my version of Nopheads Mendel 90 I think you should be able to see the 3mm washers that I used to pack the bearing to get the belt to run true.

I personally prefer using syncromesh cable to belts and find it a lot easier to get to run true. To get it to run true on the bearings i use this... [www.thingiverse.com]

Syncromesh cable and pulleys can be bought here...

https://sdp-si.com/eStore/Direct.asp?GroupID=768
[sdp-si.com]

You can see it working on my standard Mendel i2 on this youtube video

[youtu.be]