How good are 3d printed pulleys for 3d printer?
Depends on how you print them and with what material. Best bet is not to FDM print them or to use PETG so the caps don’t separate from the other layers.
Not worth it for the price of even the cheap metal ones. I’ve used both and aside from a temporary solution I don’t see the reason to use them. Too likely to wear
They work best when you print them BIG – like 50 teeth or more – so any print flaws average out over a large number of teeth. Small pulleys are extremely sensitive to tooth geometry flaws caused by the zipper, or blobbing, or backlash, or whatever else. You should also be careful with the inner bore to make sure it’s concentric and the proper diameter. A high-accuracy hole generation approach like a polyhole is a good idea.
Ryan, I like your thinking. I’m starting to see this as a theme in the past year: don’t 3d print something because you can, use the right tool for the job when you can. Exceptions are…
- 3d print because it’s fast.
you can’t get that thing quickly enough. A part broke but you have a deadline. Maybe it holds you over until a better part can be sourced
- 3d print when it makes economic sense
You have filament but no money to buy a part.
It’s cheaper to print a huge 50 tooth pulley because those are pricey and the trade off is minimal on that part.
- 3d print when prototyping. Say you don’t know what the right tool (part) actually is. You need to decide on a part to buy.
One example is you are designing but print two different pulleys off of McMastercarr.com to help you decide. After checking performance, or fit, you decide and buy the right part.
Brook
@Brook_Drumm Totally agree. I forget who first made the observation, but I think it’s really important to realize that the definition of “vitamin” in RepRap construction has changed enormously in the last 10 years. RepRap vitamins are readily-available in the “ecosystem” to purchase and offer some practical advantage over printed parts. That used to mean 608 bearings and motors and bolts and not much else. Nowadays the 3d printer parts ecosystem is so robust that vitamins have become MOST of the parts in a standard 3d printer design.
If the commercial parts ecosystem makes 16t GT2 pulleys cheap and widely-available, that’s a vitamin! No point in printing them, the purchased ones work better and don’t cost much. But >40t pulleys tend to be expensive and hard to find… and work ok as printed parts.