Friday, April 25, 2008
Ball-chain update
I've put a Z axis together using some ball-chain and 4 gears printed on my Darwin in PLA - I needed to fit a new motor anyway for testing with Arduino code. It appears that "4.5mm ball-chain" is a standard of some kind. It's a bit bigger than that normally used for keychains and biro bondage at the bank, but is I believe widely used by makers of window blinds and vents.I have put the experimental ball-chain gear AoI files in the SVN on Sourceforge. You may need to re-scale the rim using AoI depending on how thick a line your RepRap/RepStrap extrudes. With mine the chain fits well up to about 110 degrees around, then gets too tight. Fortunately I only need 90 degrees, so that's OK.
Turning the motor by hand makes the platform go smoothly up and down. Now to build some drivers for it.
Vik :v)
Labels: ball, ball chain, chain, reprap
