RepRap: Blog

I took apart a swivel chair the other day and noticed an interesting ball bearing race in the bottom of it. So I made a RepRap'd version to fit under the Z axis drive rods, which currently sit on a couple of washers and some grease. Suz an I will hopefully fit them to Phoenix today, if we manage to get any time to ourselves.

On my machine it needs some tidy-up with a 5mm drill because I've not got the smooth-moving Arduino board installed on the Darwin yet. But once reamed out, the holes in the bearing race hold eight 4.5mm (.177) BB's normally used in an air pistol to plink at tin cans with in the garden.

It's sort of a compromise between running on bare plastic and using skate bearings - which cost me NZ$6 a piece. BB's cost me less than a cent each and are also available from the same sporting goods stores as the skate bearings.

If they work well enough, I'll add them to the next run of the lasercut design. Ponoko's website tells me that the current one is 60% complete, so hopefully I'll see it early next week.

Vik :v)

Labels: bb, bearing, reprap