infiniteinquiry

Ideas are flowing in. A superior option to the bevel or worm gear might be to use the same timing belts we already use, but with a twist ( i mean that literally, not figuratively). This would virtually eliminate backlash from the system and would be much less expensive to produce without custom gears. Does anyone have any experience with running G2 timing belt (or comparable) with a twist? Perhaps it would wear the belts and cause premature failure? Also, instead of a single X and Y cross shaft, multiple shafts could be used. The torque they transmit could be used for anything from extruding multiple filaments, to swapping remotely stored filament/hotend combos. Edit: Another idea, instead of using expensive ball splines, perhaps precision ground square stock could be used. The linear motion would be transmitted through small cartridge bearings rolling axially, along the shaft axis. Since the shaft is square, torque would be transmitted tangentially through the bearings into whatever housing they are mounted on.

Hello everyone, I came up with this idea recently while trying to figure out how to reduce printer head mass. I finally finished drawing it up yesterday, and just now realized that this design would be optimal with an ultimaker style gantry. Edit: I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. See my paste from the reprap forum below for better context. Here's an animation I created to illustrate the concept: It occurred to me that either of the "idler" shafts on the ultimaker gantry could be turned into an extruder drive shaft. The idler pulleys could be mounted on bearings, decoupled from the idler shaft. Then torque would be transferred to the print head through the connected cross shaft. I need to learn ultimaker terminology. What do we call either of the two X or Y shafts that pass through and move the print head? One of those shafts would transfer torque to a filament drive gear located at the print head, directly above the hot end, much like a direct drive setup. Heck, you could even drive two separate extruder drive gears (simultaneously, if you want) for multi color, by utilizing both idler shafts. The reason this works so well with the ultimaker is that it does not contribute as much mass since there are already shafts driving the print head. Heres what I posted last night over on reprap, before I realized this was ideal for ultimaker: Please let me know if this has already been invented! And if not, I hope the 3d printer community finds it useful. Thanks. Edit: I'll get on Fusion and start drawing a complete ultimaker gantry system with this ball spline extruder system integrated in. Might take me a few days since I can only work on this in my free time.