El Beast - Initial design phase, comments and critique welcomed!

[Chaz]

Works ok for me.

[mekanik]

Me to

[routercnc]

I can see the pictures

Nice work on the squaring and tramming.

[Zeeflyboy]

Charlie, if it's working for everyone else might just be that imgur was over capacity when you looked and the older pictures were cached... try clearing your cache and refresh.

Thought I'd experiment a little with the seals for the Z-axis. I have some red material on order so we can stick with the colour scheme but for now to dial it in I'm just using what I've got which is a nice orange!

So this is the part, I've designed it now so that it has a locking flange to prevent it from going walkies... it should just push into the top/bottom plates and wedge in place.






So off to the printer to try it out... I'm using a material called Cheetah by ninjaflex. It's a fairly firm but flexible rubbery material (shore hardness 95A) which is abrasion resistant, resistant to chemicals and pretty tough.








Here you can see the flexible rubbery nature:




Fit is excellent, but maybe just a smidge tight. I need to check it with the part actually held in the plates, but it may just need a very slightly enlargement of the interior cut out.

[charlieuk]

strange I just tried the other halfs mac and that is the same, I can still see all the new pictures in other threads though. o well I'm sure it looks great.

[routercnc]

Charlie:

How about this - the last photo showing the 3D printed part on the rail:


Zeeflyboy:
Great timing - I've been thinking about how to seal the rails on my Z axis. I've planned ahead and have tapped holes in the base of the Y axis to accept a plate with some sort of brush/seal, and I was playing with ideas for the actual seal. I was thinking about cutting them out of a small piece of plastic with the router, and inserting them into the plate, as you have done.
But 3D printing is a much better idea as you can get tight into the corners, cheers for that. Also by chance bumped into a colleague today with a 3D printer and he is now lined up ready to make me some parts. I just need a slot this week to get back onto the CAD and draft something up as a trial.
I think as you say it is a matter of fine tuning something to keep the worst out but not rub too much.

[charlieuk]

yes that shows up