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Recirculating balls

Discussion in 'General Talk' started by bhalkett, Apr 26, 2014.

  1. bhalkett

    bhalkett Well-Known Builder

  2. kram242

    kram242 OpenBuilds Team Staff Member Builder

    Hi @bhalkett
    A little over a year ago on the RepRap forums EL34 pitched this very idea to us and even sent us a prototype he had made for testing.
    http://forums.reprap.org/read.php?177,193087
    His version used balls that spun in place in sockets, this sparked the idea of the recirculating ball bearings on V-Slot and the OpenBuilds design team went to work on the idea. Unfortunately though our testing there was always too much play to be useful for what we were after in a bearing, so the idea was put to the back burner (for a while). We went through several months of prototypes but we were not happy with the performance of any of them.
    We do have plans to go back and look at this concept again to perfect it, but for now we have moved on to some other exciting ideas that are working very well (top secret ;) ) and we plan to have them out soon :)
    Here are some pics of the early trials and design of the V-Slot recirculating ball bearing system.
    Once we complete a satisfactory working version we will share the cad of this design.
    Enjoy
    P.S. You can download the model files from the green download button on the bottom of the OpenBuilds Part Store page here
    http://openbuildspartstore.com/v-slot-20-x-20mm/
    You can also get more cad formats here in resources
    http://www.openbuilds.com/resources/categories/parts.1/


    VSlot Travler_43.jpg

    VSlot Travler_21.jpg
    DSC03542.JPG untitled.237.jpg DSC03493.JPG
    skarab likes this.
  3. Darkfibre

    Darkfibre Well-Known Builder

    Mark : Does this mean you have your 3d-printer up and running again? :) if so: Yay!
  4. kram242

    kram242 OpenBuilds Team Staff Member Builder

    Not yet, theses pics are pretty old. As you may know my printer hot end jams to the point of making it usable so I have since purchased an e3d hot end just have not had much time (with the move) to get back to putting it on but its on the list to get done. Once things are squared away with orders and work I can get back to playing :)

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