Printed fine and works great, even under some load. The spring for the break broke, but it works well enough without it. I might remix it sometime with skateboard bearings instead of the print in place one, although it does do it's job.
Cool design!
Fully Printable Swiveling, Locking Caster
Fully 3D-printed caster utilizing a printed "ball" bearing and thrust bearing to provide rolling and swiveling function.
1,898
2216
6
28 k
updated
April 21, 2023
Makes
Comments
This model lwas a lot bigger than I expected it t be but it prnted pretty good. I had a few problems with the TP wheel as you can probably see. Fr some reason I have a layer shift a little more than halfway through i Have investigated and I am not sure what caused it as I have printed a few more prints with a taller zheight without issues. Secondy problem was that I ran out of Blue tpu folament ad had to swap for black tpu filament. Thanks for the upload
But nothing about if it works well? :)
I had fun printing it. I bought 6.35mm bearing balls as the printed ones didn't work for me.
@cargUlet Looks great! Glad to know the 6.35mm bearing balls worked!
Wonder what the weight limit on these would be. Can’t imagine much.
@TheRealWyman_387401 I agree - I don't think it's a whole lot while rolling but statically, it's actually not bad. I put 4 of these on a cabinet that I had my Ryobi planer mounted too and it seemed to hold the weight but the "tires" squished too much when I tried to roll it so they ended up breaking. Should work pretty well for light duty though or if used without the locking lever and a hard plastic tire, that might work for heavier loads as well.
really cool!
how big are the ball bearings? can 6mm airsoft BB's be used insteads? and what print orientation, layers, infil, top and bottom layer amount should be used for the parts? (edited)
@Aikano9 the ball bearings are 0.25in diameter (6.35mm) so that would probably work and would certainly be more robust and smoother if it does. I had thought about designing around those but wanted to make every single thing printable. I would love to know if that works though! Generally the parts should be printed in whichever orientation produces the least amount of support material but they will be strongest if you can orient them to make the layer lines run in the direction that would be most likely to break (i.e. so your break isn't along a layer line). I think I pretty much printed everything trying to minimize supports though. The lock lever should definitely be printed flat on the spring to make it the strongest. Generally, I like to use a minimum of 30% infill, 4 walls, and 4 top and bottom layers. Hopefully that helps!
@JeffOrtakales_781789 GHeat! I assume a harder type of TPU is used, and not something very soft like Ninjaflex?
View 2 more comments
Absolutely love it when people design 3d prints around being fully printed! not having to get additional hardware. superb!
Dang I was looking for something like this 2 months ago and had to change the direction of my project because I couldn't find anything of this sort. Looks super cool and well designed. I almost want to print it just because this is so cool.
@Paddy wow, this came out great! Looks really nice!
also crongrats, this is the first FULLY 3dprintable whells on printables
Thank you