10" Y Plate

With all the talk about the 12" Aluminum Y Plate, I decided to revisit my design for a 10" Y wood Plate substitute. I started redoing mine similar to the photo adamfilip shared
& it morphed into this. I started playing with printing half or part of it to test the hole pattern & realized I might actually be able to make a functional
Plastic Y plate. This reminds me of some of the quadcopter designs I have seen. I have not printed any of this yet as I thought some of you might be able to give
some better ideas or tell me I am wasting my time making this out of plastic. Obviously, this would have to be printed in ABS or other plastic that is heat resistant. I attached a photo, scad file & stl files for your amusement. I drew the profile in draftsight & use openscad to generate the stl files. I rotated the stl files 45 degs. to fit
on the build plate. The photo shows the 10" build plate in Magenta color (I made this reference 240mm square), the black vertical lines are the aluminum
extrusions. The Blue profile is the bottom half, cyan is top plate. I added 4 extra wheel holes, mostly to be able to test the spacing of the holes with only
half plotted. I probably only need 2 of those holes in the middle. I am not planning to use the square holes, but a plastic part to hold the belt. The Green rectangles
along the Y axis will be bolted using those 8 bolt holes. I could put one on top & bottom to stiffen it more. It will probably need some more stiffening along
the X-axis also which I could fix by adding a ledge underneath. I could also make the plate thicker for more strength, but probably need longer screws. I plan to print this in PLA in a day or so to test the hole spacing. If this does not work, I will probably look into having this made in aluminum at some point.

Thanks for taking a look at this & any comments will be helpful.
-David
http://3dprintboard.com/attachment.p...tid=5573&stc=1Attachment 5574Attachment 5575Attachment 5576

I have been working on this design off and on for a week now & it seems to be coming together. I won't know whether it will really work until I print all the parts, but after making the test prints it looks quite promising. If it comes out working, I will put the parts on thingiverse. It currently has 5 parts.
1 & 2 parts for the bed itself to be printed diagonally on the build plate. I use 3 dovetail joints between these
Part 3 is a plastic belt clamp which I modified from another belt clamp on thingiverse for an i3 printer. Shown in red color.
Part 4 & 5 are plates to be bolted with M5 bolts to each side underneath on each side of the belt clamp (green color). I am hoping these plates will keep it from flexing at that center joint.
Attachment 5688Attachment 5689
Here are a couple of screen captures of what it looks like so far

That looks awesome. I’ll be following this closely.

I printed all the parts in PLA at .2 infill to test for fit today. I plan to print the final part in ABS. I am getting some PETG plastic in a couple of days, so I may see how this prints with that. It is fitting pretty good. The plastic weight at .2 infill is 5.6oz for all the plastic & 10.2oz after I added all the hardware. I am printing on buildtak surface which holds it down pretty good, but the outside corners lifted a little, so I probably need to add some ears to those corners.Attachment 5694Attachment 5695

looking good

I did my 1st test fit taking the y-bed off & putting the plastic version on & ran into a couple of problems. The main problem is the extra reinforcing ledges I added at the ends will hit the motor in the back. I will just have to take the ledge out on that side to fix that problem as well as shortening the y-belt clamp some. I also forgot to add the screw hole for the limit switch screw (That was easy enough to fix at this point). All the holes seems to line up well. I noticed the original wood design has the wheels in the back further back whereas my design has them centered on the platform. That does not seem to cause any problem. The short ledges I put near the wheels might be a little too close to them, so I will shorten them. Back to the 3d drawing board. Here are 3 photos to show what the current version looks like.
Attachment 5730Attachment 5731Attachment 5732

Nice work!.... Would love to see a 12 inch version once its all completed.

I could probably make a 12" & 8" version once the 10" is done, but I would need the key dimensions for holes and size of bed.

I was not looking forward to redoing the y-belt clamp, but after finishing the redesign I am glad I did. It is half the plastic & 50mm long instead of 90mm. I think it came out well. Now I just to redo the one of the y-bed pieces to get around the motor.

Attachment 5737

Looking good!

After working out the interferences for putting the reinforcement on the underbelly of the Y-Bed Carriage, I started thinking why can't I just put it on the top. I am using a piece of cork for insulation between the heat bed & the wooden Y-Carriage bed & there is probably 7mm of clearance between the top of the cork & the heat bed. Of course the heat bed wires do stick down a little. What I have come up with is to use an 8mm - 8 sided cylinder bump all around the top & on both sides of the center triangle cuts in the bed. After printing one half in PETG, it seems to have more strength but still has some flex to it, so I gave this some more thought. I had considered putting some 1/8" brass rod into the edges, but came up with a simpler way to attach them by just cutting some grooves in the top & later melt them into it with a soldering iron. The brass would add only 2oz to the weight. Another benefit of the bump reinforcement on top is that it is 4mm above the top of the bed & just at the top of where the nuts are, so I do not have to cut any recesses in the cork for them. I may have to cut a little bit around where the wires to the heat bed attach. I attached a photo of the latest print & an openscad screen capture of what it should look like with the brass rods attached.
Attachment 5769Attachment 5771

I attached the plastic Y-bed carriage to test it yesterday & got as far as leveling the 3rd corner before hitting a problem. I printed this test part in PETG at .2 infill. Actually ran into 2 problems, but one was minor. The minor problem was I did not leave enough room around the Wheel nuts to get the wrench around them easy. That is easy to fix. I used 1/8" brass rod to stiffen the frame & it worked quite well, but there was a little flex between the wheels & the corners. Thicker infill & printing in ABS may fix that problem, but am adding some plastic to the design as well. The combination of those 3 elements I believe will fix that problem. All the screws lined up well. I did measure the distance between the hotbed mounting screws & they were off by about 1mm from the design. Over a 248.6mm distance, I guess that is within tolerance. I am printing a new version in color changing ABS today at .6 infill. I am about an hour into this 4.5 hour print & it is looking good so far. If it does not lift off the bed, this maybe the last iteration before releasing this design on thingiverse. I attached some photos of the assembly & 1 photo of the new version I am printing today.Attachment 5849Attachment 5850Attachment 5851Attachment 5852Attachment 5853

I spoke too soon. The ABS lifted up from a corner on the BuildTak surface after about an hour an half of printing. I will try one more print with the new version using PETG at .7 infill & see if those 2 changes will fix the problem.

Looks like the latest part printed with PETG at .7 infill fixed the flexing problem, but I am going to print one more version of this as the back ledge I added flexes some. I added some more support like the attached photo. I am not sure I really need the brass in there now. Hopefully I will have time to print this tomorrow & finally get it off my plate. The last part took 5.25 hours. This one will take probably take 5.5 to 6 hours.Attachment 5859

Thanks for your work on this. I am courious as to how the weight will compare with the one from Makerfarm.

A couple of versions back, I compared the weight when I had my machine apart. The original wooden part with all the hardware including the wheels weighed interesting enough at 1 lb even (that was with the solid V wheel). That did not include the weight of the heat bed, glass or heatbed mounting hardware. My version was 11.8oz with the same hardware attached. I have added some more plastic since then, but should be a little less than the wooden part.

Think I have finally printed a version that I am happy with. The brass really gives it some added strength & flatness with Attachment 5884Attachment 5885very little additional weight. I will get my files together in the next day or so & upload to thingiverse. Here are a couple of images of half of the bed.

Sweet dude!

The last version still had a flex problem between the wheels & where the heat bed mounts to the plate. I decided to try one more version before releasing this. I am adding 4 more short brass bars along the those points as shown in the photo. I also cut down on the amount of plastic in the print, since the brass should take care of most of the structure. I believe there is enough plastic height to get those short bars under the long bars. There was also a slight sag in the middle which is probably not really a problem, since the brass will keep it from sagging anymore & mounting points are on the outside corners. I am going to see if I can compensate for that by cutting the middle hole for the long brass bar .5mm lower to pull the middle up. The printed holes came out at a nice tight fit for the brass to go through. I am waiting for some more PETG plastic before printing this again.Attachment 5967

now you just need to expand this out to a 12" size :-) since the 12" aluminium plate seems to have gone nowhere...

Here are 2 versions of the 10" Y-bed in DXF format that could be used for aluminum cutting & also 2 versions of my guess for the 12" Y-bed. This has the hole patterns that work for my 10" Y-bed. 248.6mm between centers of Heatbed mounting holes.
209.38mm between outside aluminum extrusions
228.38mm between Wheel holes along the X-axis
I also need 2 dimensions to set the Limit switch hole.
I assume the limit switch is done similar between the 10" & 12". Attachment 5969Attachment 5970

If you can verify these dimensions or give me the correct ones, I will design a 12" plate based on my 10" design.
I also attached 2 versions scaled up by 1.2 as my guess for the 12" plate.
Attachment 5971Attachment 5972

The 2 holes in the center are where my version of a y-carriage Belt clamp mount & not the original wooden belt clamp.

I'll get the 12" Y endstop dimensions after this print finishes

I found where someone had posted a dxf file of the complete i3v 12" makerfarm which appears to be scanned in. I will use that as a guide for adjusting this to 12" & repost it for your review. I can not find the post where I found that before on this site & did not make a note of who posted that.

Dave I think this is the file you are referring to?

Attachment 5976

Quote:

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Originally Posted by PyramidDave

I found where someone had posted a dxf file of the complete i3v 12" makerfarm which appears to be scanned in. I will use that as a guide for adjusting this to 12" & repost it for your review. I can not find the post where I found that before on this site & did not make a note of who posted that.

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That looks like the file. Were you the one that posted this originally, so I will no who to credit with the dimensions?

no, I cant remember either...I tried searching for the post but no luck. :confused:

Update: found who it was: beerdart
Here is the thread: http://3dprintboard.com/showthread.p...ighlight=plate

I had some time today while my printer was printing & came up with this 1st draft of the design for the i3v 12" Y-Bed. Here is an image of the dimensions if someone can verify these. I think within a millimeter or so will be accurate enough, but can change these if need be. I did not include the dimensions between the wheels along the Y-axis as my design is about 24mm shorter distance. The original distance measures 298.3mm from that dxf file & my design is 162mm.Attachment 5983

I did my 2nd test fit today & adding some more brass to the design & test print came out well. I see 3 problems with the design so far.

1. It will flex a little if you press down some at any of the 4 mounting bolt holes. Hopefully the brass will give it enough structure to not be a problem.
2. Binding clips are a bit tight since the bed has a little more height to it. I am using 3/16" cork for the insulation
3. Eccentric side wheels were at the loosest spot. This was not the case on the 1st test fit. Probably should move each of the 4 wheels out 1mm to allow for adjustment. I will see if I can make that a variable in the openscad file. I plan to upload the files to thingiverse today. Here are 4 photos of the latest design.
Attachment 6008Attachment 6009Attachment 6010Attachment 6011

Here is this design on thingiverse. http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:824227