Linear Bearing Development with Chris

Thu May 4, 2020

1

Chris,

Can you print linear bearings in POM? I'll buy them from you for production printers if you can produce them with documentation on how they are produced but they would have to be lower cost than the current China sources. I'm seeing it's possible to do 10 pieces/hr. I'm aiming for the high T chamber here by the end of the month, and looking into 4-head printing so that we can set up high quality part production.

Marcin

2

Hey Marcin!!

Yes I don't see why not! I have not tried to print this material before, but it looks interesting - ordered a spool to come in and I'll let you know how it goes!

For the linear bearings you are thinking this same size that we used before? Or for all sizes 8mm - 3in?

For the D3D, they will need to be low friction but also stiff, I was having issues for some of the axes. Y axis linear bearings worked fine, but the Z axis did not great as they had too much give.

I'm sure we could get price down under import cost - 4grams even with this more expensive material, something like 10 cents each raw material cost. So sale price of $0.50 makes 80% margin, and 6 minutes would make 10/hour, or $4 profit per printer hour -- which is right in the sweet spot!

3

Great. I am thinking more like these - https://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=igus&type=things&sort=relevant - since these are more proven. If you can test our open source design and it works for stronger force, that would be good, too.

Ideally, we have one that is your spiral for low force, and one super solid for higher force. So a customizer in OpenSCAD would be a good deal.