SO3 Afforadable Rail Protection Online

just like the big boys use — conforming bellows rail/track covers at McMaster-Carr:

a small price to pay to protect such a reliable machine?

$30/foot is way cheaper than trying to make these yourself.

There was a guy on the ShapeOko forums who was cutting and folding such bellows covers out of paper:

http://www.shapeoko.com/wiki/index.php/Side_Shields#Paper

http://www.shapeoko.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=662

yeah I’ve seen that before… so cool… origami

Did anyone order any of these? If so which product number and was it successful?

You can also get them off Aliexpress for cheap

The main issue I’ve found whilst looking at these is the compressed length at 1/13th or so of expanded length, that’s 70mm required each side on an XL / XXL. Whichever way I looked at it, this reduced travel if using the standard extrusions.

Looking forward to being proved wrong by somebody so I can use rail covers though.

Have you already done your linear rail upgrade? If not you could buy longer rails then needed and have some extra overhang to compensate for the bellows. It would look strange but with some 3d printed or machined brackets it could be made to look good.

I’m assuming most people don’t have linear rails installed on their shapeoko. Not sure if this thread was made for the few that might, or if it’s for the v-wheel track protection. If so, here’s something I’ve recently acquired:

A youtuber, “DIY Engineering”, made these and sells them on his website.

2 Likes

Yep,

The problem is I’m following the basic layout of the Dan Storey conversion which leaves the uprights at the ends of the main extrusions in basically the same place so the only option I can see is to go into the config and restrict the travel, or just rely on the wipers on the linear rail carriages.

Is that a nice squidgy rubber strip to wipe the crud off the rail in the end of that?

1 Like

I’ve thought about using some form of fabric [i.e. vinyl] that ties to both ends of the carriage plate and loops around the extrusion rails with 3D printed parts that hold rollers on either end of the extrusion; topped with an long aluminum flat bar or sheet metal as a cap.

1 Like

Aha,

This guy did some similar stuff, he 3D printed some flexy rail wipers for the Z axis
see the bottom of this page;

http://www.mycncuk.com/threads/10658-El-Beast-Initial-design-phase-comments-and-critique-welcomed!/page28

And put a recirculating chip guard belt on the X axis like this;

http://www.mycncuk.com/threads/10658-El-Beast-Initial-design-phase-comments-and-critique-welcomed!/page38

Both of these are potentially adaptable to a railed Shapeoko, maybe with some slots cut in the Y plates for the belts to loop through?

Thanks again for sharing your designs BTW, I’ve only made a few very small changes on the X mounting design, I removed the home switch bracket protrusions from the main adapter plate as the new inductive switches use a different mounting, that meant that I needed to make a new mount point for a bumper to keep the linear rail blocks away from the Y plates, that might be a good place to mount a squidgy flex-filament wiper block…

I have also luckily been able to export the STEP file for the big plate for Xometry to manufacture days before the Autodesk Ogres make my hobby a non-hobbyist license matter :wink:

1 Like

That is an awesome build! Gonna have to drool through that thread :stuck_out_tongue:

Possibly, I actually forgot about the X-axis :laughing: It would definitely be more involved.

Nice, I was lazy and only designed built-in mounts for the OEM switches. I have my own inductive sensors that I plan on 3D printing adapter mounts for but I doubt I will change the underlying design to accommodate C3D’s inductive sensors offering at this point.

1 Like

Yes, it is! :smile: I have not yet been able to test them since I’m doing a bit of work on my machine right now. I’m hoping they do the job!

2 Likes

The more I look at the CAD and work on mods to your existing designs the less willing I am to believe that you were lazy :wink:

4 Likes

Here’s what I did with the bumpers to protect the rail blocks, I think the HiWin blocks are a bit longer than the generics so they stick out a bit further.

Looks like there might be room to put a support plate and rail wiper in there.

I failed to find any less awful way to bolt the bumper / wiper mount in though, don’t think they make an allen key short enough to get between the rail and the plate there…

5 Likes

This topic was automatically closed 3 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.