Continuing misadventures with a cheap Chinese Core-XY printer (TronXY X5S).
The print-head had more wobble in the X-motion than I liked. The hotend assembly moved on three rollers. The rollers travel on V-channels in the extrusion. After ~100 hours (or less) of printing, there was noticeable wear and play - with no provision for adjustment.
Have a linear rail, which is quite stiff, and also rather heavy. Could have adapted for X-motion, but would have about doubled the weight of the gantry.
Dithered a bit, then printed solid top and bottom PLA plastic solid bearing sliders to fit exactly between the existing metal plates, and snugly within the V-channels of the extrusion. Soaked the plastic with silicone/teflon oil spray, and coated the extrusion with mold-release spray. Entirely discarded the rollers.
Seems to have worked. Less play in both X and Y. Test print looks rather good. The new assembly is even a bit lighter.
That seems like a really, really aggressive wear rate on the wheels. I assume you made sure they weren’t binding or dragging or anything, so I wonder if they used a high-wearing type of plastic instead of delrin?
@Ryan_Carlyle Well, cheap Chinese, so no specs. Took a closer look, and all I can say is the material appears to be a hard plastic. Tried rolling along the extrusion (in hand), and … oh my … these bearings have a lot of drag. Might be they are sliding as much as rolling.
I experienced the same issue with a tronxy x1. They most probably share the same sort of wheels. It also helped a lot in my case to redo the spacers and keep the wheels straight, and to design a triple pulley tightener ( https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2854082 ). Now as you say, the bearings really are crappy (at least they have no play!). Anyhow in my case I am still impressed by the print quality such a low cost printer can achieve (6th printer in my case, it is no more like we were in the early years!)
