Has anyone printed this gear bearing and had it work?

3D Printing
, , ,
1

Has anyone printed this gear bearing and had it work? I’ve tried twice now and both times the planetary gears have stuck hard to the outer ring. I’m not sure what I need to do to get it to work. Annoyingly, when I look at the first layer, I can see a gap between the gears and the ring, so it’s higher layers that are stuck.

I’m printing PLA at 180C (45C bed) with a .5mm nozzle and .4mm layers.
http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:53451

2

I believe the original was meant to be ABS, not PLA. Try scaling it down a few percentage points before printing.

3

I’ve had the same problems as you describe whilst attempting this, and since the last try I heard someone recommend the following: if you are slicing it in Slic3r then “split” the stl so it breaks into it’s constituent parts (via the Split button in the Plater screen).

My machine is still in boxes due to the recent house move so I haven’t yet had chance to give it a go myself.

4

Try raising the Tol (clearance) parameter in the customizer from 0.15 to something like 0.25. I have two working with PLA, one with 0.23 and one with 0.25.

5

Interesting about the splitting in Slic3r. I’ll try that tonight. I’d also increase the tolerances, but the Customizer decided not to work. However, I downloaded the .scad, so if I can’t use the site, I’ll try it manually. Thanks for the help, all.

6

I wasn’t able to get it to print right when sliced through Slic3r, the perimeters would run from the outer gear into 1 or 2 of the inner gears. But the exact same source file worked fine through Kisslicer. Good convo though, I’ll have to look into the split option as well.

7

I printed mine in ABS and it was glorious. Worked on the first print. It was stiff to move at first – had to crank it a while to grind/pack the plastic – but after about two hours of just fiddling with it in my hand (sort of like using a stress reliever toy), it was free spinning. Your printer calibration is very important to make this print come out well, though.

8

I got mine to work on the 5th try or so. I ended up at about .45 for tolerances and had to twist hard to break it. I’ve got some Z layer issues and a slight backlash issue.

A drill does quick work of making it run free. My backlash makes it ‘tick’ as it goes around.