Starting the new design

Now I actually imagined that this slider would look a bit differently. I was thinking that I was going to have some additional fin that had a steeper angle than just extending the side curve for the bottom cover section. I also didn't originally have the top cover part in mind, and the white extrusion at the right of the image was invisioned to be a large bracket. Now that I mention it, I feel like there's a sketch I drew in a log somewhere.

These changes are due to the tubing I'm switching to coming in specific sizes. The Metal Store will still cut them to length if needed, but I assume that if I needed 1.1m, I'd have to pay for a 2m length.

Looking at the CAD, I actually need the entire 1m span to be rollable so that both Slimes can still reach the full 500mm length of the default 3 axis bed. Thus, I'm going to see if I can hold the tube from the inside. This also means that I can move the X/Y motors so that the outer enclosure looks seamless. I plan to use the same overal slider for both sides, so that's why the motors are overlapping in the top image.

[E1] Finishing the cover and finding an alternative supplier

Now this looks more solid and professional. I've got to go back though and rotate the X axis motor 180 degrees so that the X axis belt is as close to the beam as possible. Additionally, I stumbled on another box section supplier and they're much more flexible.

But yeah there goes my lovely continuous cover idea.

[E2] New X axis motor location

I think that worked out nicely actually. There's a 17mm cutout for the 15mm belt that you can see just after the white block part on the left. As this printer is being designed with CNC milling in mind, they're planned to be dual 15mm 3M belts that interlock like a zipper to hopefully have the same stiffness as a 30mm wide belt. It's an idea inspired from this MPCNC upgrade.