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Sunday, March 04, 2007

CAPA vs. ABS bodies extruders

I've hit a temporary snag with the PC software, so I'm going for the firmware while fixes happen by magic. Well, sweat & swears - er - tears from Simon and Adrian, I suspect, but let me carry on in ignorant bliss...

I've noticed that my half-washer bearings slip a bit (crappy job of smoothing the lands on the screw, I suspect), so I've packed a little bit of CAPA on top of them. This prevents exposed sharp edges engaging with the filament from dragging things around. In short, it stops your half-washers from popping out. I hope. Here's an old ABS one compared to the freshly-minted CAPA part. The CAPA part is the one on the left. The slightly fuzzy appearance of the bearing is due to Vaseline.



I've taken advantage of the squishy properties of CAPA a bit, I know, but it seems to work. Now we just hope the bearings don't heat up enough to melt the CAPA when you run them fast.

Keep on reading for our shameless fund-raising plug...

Vik :v)

10 comments:

  1. Damn! You've got it runing! How many hours have you got on it so far?

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  2. None. Just got the connections wired up this afternoon. Been somewhat distracted by Wifey being ill.

    Vik :v)

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  3. OK, fired it up. The motor linkage ripped through. I'm going to have to fix that sucker. Bed time now though.

    Vik :v)

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  4. Thanks. She's got an inflamed facial nerve, and the meds required to make this bearable kinda put her in the situation where she needs a fair bit of help.

    On the extruder side, I'll probably insert a pin through the threaded shaft and coupling. Dunno if I'll get around to it tonight - must be careful about when I use power tools...

    Vik :v)

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  5. Had one of those once. It was maddening to touch the area served by the nerve for about a week and then the whole area went numb. Found out later that I had a viral inflamation of the nerve which destroyed the nerve sheath. The sheath eventually regenerated after about a month and I got feeling back in that part of my face (left temple down to the cheekbone). It was not a happy experience.

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  6. Vik, I hope your wife recovers quickly! Nerves are precious. We are fragile creatures. ;)

    Now as for the extruder, it's just the big CAPA cone, threaded rod to motor connecter that stripped?

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  7. Suz isn't improving. Seeing Doc again tomorrow AM.

    The CAPA cone is the bit that tore free. I'm pinning it.

    Vik :v)

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  8. I used a CAPA form inside the coupling nut that I used to connect the gearmotor to the polymer pump. I had the same problem with the slightest flexure heating the CAPA which would then go "plastic" in the materials science sense of the word and fail. I kept tweaking the coupling till the flexure was about zero and the problem went away finally.

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