Contrary to what the photo above may suggest, I am not using a laser cut acrylic piece for the Y carriage of my RepRap… What I am using it for is a template to make sure things work properly, and once I’m sure I’ll use it as a drilling template to mount things on the Aluminum Y carriage I have. (Which Frankie gave to me, oh, maybe six years ago!?)
Here’s the Aluminum Y carriage. The photo looks weird because it’s from my flatbed scanner. I often scan objects so I can bring them into Inkscape and trace them to get a vector drawing I can work with. (And I had to scan it in two passes and stitch it into one image.)
Here’s the SVG file created in Inkscape by tracing things. Notice I added more holes, which will be used to hold the bearing blocks.
It seems to slide pretty smoothly. I mentioned in a previous post, the igus drylin slide bearings want to be under some pressure to work properly, so I adjusted them just right with the blocks I printed and did some slide tests. So far I’m pleased!
Next up will be the holes in the Aluminum. I’m not sure if I should drill and tap for 3mm bolts, or drill for pass-through of 3mm bolts and hold in place with nuts. My thought on the first method is that my alignment via drilling has to be perfect, while with the second method I can adjust just a bit with some slop. Thoughts?