TTR Elevator Conveyor - 3D Print New Belts ? (27)

[@sicstar]

Hello there! I read trough your post. Sadly i couldn't watch the pictures without creating an account. And i got 1-2 ideas i thought that might help a bit for this or future projects of yours. For the belt being to short you can increase the dimensions of the print in X and Y axis by around 1%. TPU tends to shrink a tiny bit, usually around 0,35 to 1,5% from my experience. Also having the filament as dry as possible helps a lot with the stringyness and also makes it a tad softer when the moisture content is low. I use a small electric fruit drier for filaments that are a bit finnicky when it comes to being hygroscopic. And yes, i guess a tensioner would also help. Should be 3d printable too, even the treads for maybe some screws since there isn't that much load on it. Interesting restoration there. Keep it up and good luck and have fun!

[@freightuk]

Hi, problems creating an account where, on KZbin or on Platform 1 MRC, easy to sign up to P1 MRC, certainly had some fun getting the belt lengths right, in my P1 postings you can read about the filament drying and storage used while printing, certainly not string free but tolerable, Jim

[@Roobotics]

I wonder if you'd be able to retrofit something like this with a stepper motor, point being this could be so much quieter as scenery, as well you could leverage a stepper driver that has silent stepping, and back-EMF stall detection. Not as simple and needs some flavor of MCU and power regulation. But much quieter than the gearbox, and might be able to short-reverse to fix clogs.

[@darksunrise957]

Unless I'm mistaken, Stepper motors don't like running at a constant pace for long periods of time, no? I just remember hearing they eventually overheat. If they build an enclosure for the motor with some sound padding it could dramatically reduce the motor noise.

[@Roobotics]

@@darksunrise957 steppers are completely suited to sit there and spin slow or moderately fast, keeping them intentionally frozen and enabled will however heat up one specific set of coils and would be less than ideal, that's why many 3d printers opt to disable axis locking if it is idle long enough. Constant pace is totally fine though and what most applications need of them. But stepper technology has advanced a lot, especially in the drivers and how they can drive the motors in ways as to prevent coil whine in the first place. I was thinking they'd still want a small gear reduction most likely, stepeprs are torquey but not that torquey. But something like a NEMA17 or maybe 14 or 11 if enough thought was put into gearing requirements.

[@freightuk]

Hi, I have used stepper motors in my youth and are fine for positioning or open loop speed control IMO but for this simple type of function where I just want to have a nominal speed of operation a straight forward DC motor is a simpler option. Also regarding the elevator-conveyor with its original motor I want to keep it as original as possible even if it is noisy. When it came to motorising a turntable, yes, quietness was a priority but as this represents a large industrial machine involved with shifting minerals they are generally quite noisy, even mostly fictional ones like this, I can accept some noise, Jim

[@freightuk]

@@darksunrise957 Hi, any motor could overheat if not sufficiently cooled, some designs of machines are only designed for intermittant use so they can be built cheaper. Stepper motors in enclosed 3D printers work hard in elevated temperatures, although they are not running continuosly they are subject to many reversals of direction per second which I think is harder than just running at constant speed.