you automatic belt tensioners now? or are they manual? automatic belt tensioners rock. so. hard.
Not automatic, but I have been thinking about it.
The Rostock in standard form uses zip ties to just tie the belts up. You have to clip the zip tie to re adjust the belt any time it slips or stretches and on these the belts stretch quite a bit being as long as they are, how many you have, and how much mass the system can generate.
And so the magnetic arm saga comes to a crashing end.
So I got one print out of the magnetic ends (a set of green Vortex universal plate adapters), nice quality, though not a massive improvement. After that finished, I noticed my effector (head mount) was a bit tilted. It didn't effect the print, it just annoyed me as it looked sloppy, and being easy to remove I took it off and started looking for the cuplrit. One of the steel balls wasn't quite sitting right and as soon as I tried to mess with it, the ball pulled right off. Grrrr. Getting them to stick (using JB weld), and getting them all precise has been the bane of people trying these. I spent a lot of time getting everything right, including testing a few types of epoxy. They were holding when I finished, so I can only imagine that the system must have gotten torqued pretty good at some point during assembly.
I wasn't that happy with them anyhow. While they were nice when performing maintenance, and at speeds under 50mm per second, they were great, but the rest of the time they weren't worth the hassle or money it took to make them. Doing infill at 60mm+ made a racket, if I moved the head by hand, there was a good chance the thing would disconnect, and it was heavy enough to droop with the motors off (I figure it doubled the weight of the assembly). Meaning I had to take extra care when moving it, since the head parks at the top.
I can re-use a few bits, and I can copy the belt tensioners onto a rod end carriage without much trouble. I think I'll stick with my tie rods with bands to keep them tight for my new printer. It's more secure, lighter, and MUCH more quiet. It also handles a LOT more speed. I had this one printing nicely at 180mm per second the other night and doing well. A week ago I had it at 240mm per second, but my prototype extruder was having trouble keeping up. All told, I had about $80 and 2 weeks of my spare time wrapped up in this, between the tensioners, carraiges, effector and rods, all of which I had to either build from scratch or completely redesign.
Sometimes it's the journey, not the destination (hmm, road trip sounds good!).