Look... no fender washers! (608 bearing Idler hub)

With feedback to my previous post suggesting stationary fender designs of any kind were really the wrong direction to be going to reduce belt friction, I "bit the bullet" this evening and went to work on proper hubs for my idler bearings! Here's one of my new idler hubs now fitted to my y-axis. You'll notice the absence of the large fender washers, and I'm glad to see the back of them! :)I began by reviewing the existing designs such as this...

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Belt fender and other ideas...

The traditional Mendel design has large stationary metal washers (fender washers) on either side of the 608 bearings keeping the drive belts on the bearings. The problem many people have experienced with this arrangement is the belt can rub and grip on the washer, causing resistance and leading to motor step skipping, that can ruin a print job.Despite spending a lot of time aligning my pulleys with the belts on both the X and Y axes, ensuring...

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"We can rebuild..."

"We have the technology... we can rebuild..." It's more like "spot the difference" really, but regular followers will observe that the transition from wood to plastic has commenced. I've replaced my wooden x-axis components with newly printed plastic (PLA) ones. As I've become more fussy about print quality I've realised a little looseness here and there, and tiny wobbles in the z-rods were showing up as patterns in my printing. I've printed...

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More extruder improvements...

My extruder design has evolved some more... The last iteration (seen here ) worked quite well, but would succumb to jamming after a few hours of printing. After having to dismantle it once too often it was time to think things out a little further. Here's my latest construction, and some detail on the changes I've made.Latest extruder iteration pictured above, printing a set of PLA bushings for a friend.Pict (above) showing most of the...

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