Considering that the price for locknuts is insignificantly greater than the normal nuts,

3D Printing
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1

Considering that the price for locknuts is insignificantly greater than the normal nuts, is there any place in a 3D printer where you wouldn’t use locknuts? Basically all nuts are prone to vibrational loosening so I guess about all bolts that a 3D printer is composed of should be locknuts, am I wrong?

2

if two nuts are cheaper than one lock nut, you can always tighten two against each other and they will hold the same

3

But with hundreds of nuts that go into a 3D printer that would be most bulky and quite ugly looking…

4

Well i use M4 a lot and they are 2 euros for 100pcs. So i dont understand what you mean. I worried more about the stuff for the extruded aluminium profiles and the screws for them. That cost a lot…

5

I used a threadlocker on all the nuts and screws (they’re mostly machine screws, not bolts) on my Kickstarter Printrbot Plus and it’s held for nearly 4 years. Loctite is a popular brand, and has versions you can apply before or after tightening the nuts. I used blue before, and the green wicking variety when the nights were tightened first.

Kirk

6

oh sorry, i read that as “significantly” rather than “insignificantly” and assumed you were trying to save money. i’m not awake yet, lol, my bad

7

@Kirk_Yarina ​ beat me to it but that’s the next thing i was going to mention

8

Buying in bulk is probably the best option. I started designing my printers to inset the nuts for this reason.

9

@VolksTrieb
I’m saying there is no reason not to use locknuts everywhere :slight_smile:

Using a bottle of locktite is an option too, one drop for each nut would probably hold one bottle for the whole printer…

10

@Florian_Ford ​​​​ Washers prevent nuts from loosening , depending on the material and the application . Rubber mountings dampen vibration .

11

@bernd_slemmen
http://www.boltscience.com/pages/vibloose.htm
“For example, conventional spring lock washers are no longer specified, because it has been shown that they actually aid self loosening rather than prevent it.”

12

i’m with you @Florian_Ford ​, why not do all lock nuts, seems smart

13

In Alu Extrusion thread-locker is basically mandatory, no real way around it.

What I like about the nylon in the locknuts is that it is reusable and you can play with it if necessary even after some time… I am not sure about the chemical thread-locker…

14

Maybe a word of caution: make sure you don’t use red Locktite for this, or you will never be able to remove the nuts, apart from destructively.

15

I am planning to use nylock nuts but I guess the blue locktite is to be used otherwise…

Thanks for pointing it out.

16

I like nylocks. Only real downside is when you have to run a nut down a long bolt in a tight area. Gets pretty tedious to turn a nylock 20+ rounds one sixth of a turn at a time. Shouldn’t be doing that very often though.

17

@Ryan_Carlyle
If you have the luxury of designing the parts, you can design that with intention.

18

@Florian_Ford I usually just pull bolts out of my big-ass tackle box of metric bolts. Spec’ing exact bolt lengths is for when the BOM is finalized, not prototyping :slight_smile:

19

@Ryan_Carlyle
So true.

20

I wouldn’t use them on the threaded rod that makes the Z axis go up and down

@Gianmario_Scotti_Mar Red loctite can be removed with heat, no destruction necessary. I used it on the set screws on my RC car pinion gear by mistake,
bit of heat from a torch and it unlocked like magic, all components were intact.