DIY Caster Wheel

A quick little showcase and build of my take on a (mostly) 3d printed caster wheel assembly.
Full design and build details, as well as links to model downloads here: jfs-agri.com/i...
It is designed as a set of nested, integrated roller bearings. With the bearing races made by v-grooves printed into the parts. The v-grooves were then filled with some steel bearing balls (I found that 3/8" slingshot ammo is basically just cheap bearing balls sold in bulk :) )
The offset for the caster is a bit exaggerated in an effort to keep the total height manageable while keeping the effective diameter of the bearing large to help distribute the load. If you're curious about how much load she can take, I did a follow up video where I put one in the load tester and squeezed it 'til it popped: • Load testing 3d printe...
I printed mine in PETG, with a 25% infill. I used a 0.6 millimeter nozzle with 0.48mm layers. The models are freely available if you want to build one of your own, and if you run in to any problems, challenges, or interesting discoveries, I'd love to hear about em!

[@802Garage]

I knew there was a reason I've been saving the balls out of all my destroyed wheel bearings... Didn't even think about 3D printing stuff to use them.

[@bubsbuilds]

It's not hoarding if you eventually find a use for em! :)

[@mjones2431]

Cool, but I don't see it taking much load

[@pokimepikac7389]

structurally unstable

[@bubsbuilds]

Thanks, and yeah, definitely wouldn't be my go to wheels for a welding cart :) But I did proof test a few of them to a bit over 5kg each without getting to play 30 ball pickup, so it's got that goin for it, which is nice. That was enough to just start overcoming the preload in the main bearing though, so I wouldn't recommend using them on a 4-wheeled cart that you intend to load with any more than 15kg (leaving some buffer to account for rolling over bumps and such.)

[@ginaman]

@@bubsbuildsout of curiosity, what materials have you tried?

[@bubsbuilds]

@@ginaman So far I've only tried this one in PETG and an ABS-like resin. But I've also made similarly-designed bearings with TPU and PLA. No surprise, but the resin ones are the smoothest running, by more than a tiny bit. The PLA ones are second, in terms of getting smooth rolling and lower runout. The TPU run nice and quiet, but they also have the most friction...shocker :) I tend to just go with PETG since it lands somewhere in the middle in a lot of ways.

[@802Garage]

@@bubsbuilds I initially thought this was printed in TPU which can take MASSIVE loads without actually breaking down, though it will of course deform. I actually think a TPU caster like this might work pretty well. It would definitely have a load limit before it stopped rolling well, but it wouldn't actually fail until well past that. You would need big washers to retain the outer wheels though and the design might have to be altered in some other ways.

[@justincase3230]

Be cool to see one incorporating those print in place bearings

[@bubsbuilds]

Agreed! The part I couldn't figure out for that was getting the print in place bearing that's off-axis. All of the ones I'm familiar with need the build orientation to be along the bearing axis. Have you come across any designs for them that would work in the other orientation as well?

[@justincase3230]

@@bubsbuilds nah sorry, I'm still very much new to this, printing my very first remixed STL now, had to reinforce some bits on a part that kept snapping. Weirdly I'm having an easier time modifying stuff in cura than tinkercad. Probably just cause I started with cura, the plugins on it have worked for most of what I've needed so far though.

[@bubsbuilds]

@@justincase3230 Nice, congrats on your first custom build! And oh yeah? I haven't tried editing STLs in Cura, I'll have to check it out. I usually slice with PrusaSlicer, so I always have to just bumble my way around Cura. I guess I should give it more of a chance, thanks for the tip. Hope the reinforcement does the trick for ya, let me know if ya end up sharing it somewhere. Would love ta see how it comes out.

[@justincase3230]

@@bubsbuilds there's a custom supports tutorial about using them to cut parts of prints away (nine minutes long, technivorous was the channel I think, he makes good stuff) and I kind of just worked my way up from there. It's good for making some pretty quick and dirty changes, the settings menu takes a little practice but it's all drop downs and plain text, I read a lot so I find that easier than all the bright colours in tinkercad. I will say tinkercad is probably way better for making things from scratch, just find it too fiddly for the smaller stuff atm. It handled things much better but still snapped, I'm learning a lot though. Me and my best mate have spent ten years getting baked and coming up with inventions when we catch up, we just never had the resources, tools or time to prototype any of it. Now I can at least see if an idea is worth following up on, total game changer

[@justincase3230]

@@bubsbuilds and thanks :)