Labor day weekend had record heat, and my mini-split in the shop just wasn’t keeping up. I decided to spend the day practicing Fusion360, and 3D printing some parts that I felt that the machine wanted.
Endcaps for Rails & Ballscrew
There are three different styles here - one that works on all the top rails (X, Y, Stiffy), one slightly clipped on the edge that works on the motor side of the rails, and one for the front of the right (or left depending on how you installed the touchscreen) to cover the end of the ball-screw opening. (this one has a small hole in the center for removal, as it’s flush with the aluminum). Everything is a friction fit, and initially printed in PLA+
I even added the OneFinity logo to some of them for some extra flavor!
Mount plate & Wyze camera mag-shelf
Then, I proceeded to model and print a similar mount plate as the one that came from OneFinity for the touchscreen. The blank one can be used to use VHB tape and your mount of choice (GoPro?). I’ve got a Wyze camera, so I printed a version that had a shelf for the Wyze mag plate. Both plates use the same bolt pattern as the touchscreen mount plate. I’m still trying to “iron out” the finish on the top of these… 
Only the wyze plate is shown in the photos.
X-Rail Cable stress relief
I’ve got my router cable coming over to the side and getting wrapped into a larger cable bundle with the X & Z controller wires, forming a bundle that’s about 1/2" in diameter. As the machine is moving - my thought was that adding the router power cable into the bundle would let the router cable handle the stress of the gantry moving, and not stress the controller cables which dead-end into plugs, which it does.
In the 3D printer world, any place that you can take away stress from a plug connection is wise, especially with moving beds & gantries. This is more important when ]those cables are sometimes in a wiring “bundle” and hard to replace. That’s why we have “drag chains” on 3d printers & CNC machines.
For me, since I’ve already wrapped the wires into a single bundle - I just had to make sure it wouldn’t pull on the plugs for the X & Z stepper motors, so I modeled something overly complex in Fusion360, again using the hole pattern on the rails. This is what I came up with, and it works great - no stress on the plugs, all the stress is moved to the 3D printed part and the aluminum part of the rail. if it breaks, it only takes 45 min to reprint.
I’m the most proud of this part as it’s completely original.
If there’s enough interest, I’ll see if I can either sell the 3D printed parts - the end caps (to cover all rail openings, 9 caps in all), mount plates (I’m working on a RAM mount plate right now to replace the touch screen arm with a RAM arm) and even the cable-stress-point-thing (I need a good name for that one), or even sell the 3D files so you can print your own. I’m still finalizing my business website - maybe this will be a good reason to get off my butt (and out of Fusion360) and finish it up!
Let me know by liking this post or replying to let me know if you’re interested in any or all of the above parts.
