PLA printed LM8UU bearings.
I printed these back in november and have been using them for the Y axis on my Prusa i3/Mendel90 style printer since then.
Have had no problems and no signs of wear. What do you think?
What’s the wall thickness on that?
Wall thickness? I used 3 parameters with a .2mm nozzle, so I guess .6mm, but infill was 80%
So its basically a slider with no bearings, how many hours roughly do you have ? I really hate the bearings that came with my kit.
@Jeff_Dewe I don’t know how many hours I have, but I print about 5 days a week & about 7 hours each time. So doing that non-stop since november–They have served me well. But this really depends on how smooth your rods are, its worth a try.
Replace one bearing and see how it does.
Keep in mind, to achieve near-zero friction, your tolerances must be near-perfect, might take a few prints to get it right–Play with your extrusion multiplier.
I think they would work well on my printer, The rods are SS.
I want to see these done with POM or nylon on SS rods.
A tiny amount of grease and they should last as long as any roller bearing in a 3d printer application.
This is essentially the same thing the original Prusa Mendel used - people started migrating to proper linear ball bearing fairly quickly as they add nearly no cost these days (but do require better rails than bushings). They can work well once you add a bit of grease, but I’d be a but worried about the springiness of this particular design.
@Thomas_Sanladerer This design looks springy, and it was intended to be, but it really isn’t. Quite a lot of force is required to deform them. What advantage do standard bearings offer over bushings in this application?
With my testing, these are quieter, they offer less friction, they give less play than cheap chinese ball bearings, and they seem to last so far (as long as I’ve tested them)
@Mark_Rehorst Print quality is identical to that of regular bearings. Absolutely no change in quality. If they ever wear, you can simply print more.
I just checked my bearings and like I’ve said, absolutely no sign of wear.
The original Prusa Mendel design, used printed bushings as well. Worked like a charm for me for several months. It gets problematic on the X axis, if you print abs with a heated bed. When I rebuilt the printer for ABS printing the bushings showed no sign of wear at all. If your smooth rods are not hardened, the printed bushings are the better choice compared to lm8uus
@Robert_Koppl Exactly. I only use them on my Y-axis, but I never thought about problems with heat on X axis.
@Engineering_Nonsense Thanks for unspamming me!
These bushings sould be the best on the z axises. In most designs the grease seals alone take most of the load.
Might get out the spool of POM and make some for my machine. It has a rebuild due anyway.
This is the version I’d love to try too: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1039173
And some others if you haven’t fond them yet:
There are so many to choose from, all look like they have good and bad points.
@Electra_Flarefire Wow, that’s pretty genius to use PTFE inside, lol I can’t imagine how little friction you’d achieve with that–I’m gonna try that one, thanks for sharing.
You could even make the bushings from ABS if you did that, since they would not be in contract with the linear rods–This would allow you to use printed bushings even on your X axis.
As for the other three links, I tried using all of those and some others before I designed mine, I personally believe that mine works better.