Had one of the Gantry wheels split in half on the GF Basic
Only noticed it because I took the Laser head off for cleaning and saw it laying in pieces
Even though I was a little out of warranty GF sent me a new one.
In the mean time I trudged thru the GF user forum and found several references, seems like this happens a lot
A known problem it is a weak design that has little alternative but to break in two
The choice of the 12 x 6 x 4 bearing is likely not a problem but the root cause is the close placement of the wheels to the rail
The plastic roller pressed onto the bearing is about a 1/2 mm thick in the middle and so it is thinnest where the splitting forces are the greatest
While waiting for the replacement (it came very quickly) I thought I would try one of the 3D models offered in the users thread, they are not workable.
I went thru careful efforts to measure a good one and came up with a very good CAD model hear for your use
I increased the thin mid section as much as possible and made the roller a little taller because the 3D45 needed a little more material to print reliably.
I’m going to run the 3D version until it breaks.
Printed at the highest resolution, solid fill
For a test I made the gauge for setting dividers
Precision is right on and the straight lines show no waviness
I know this was almost a year ago when you posted this, but I just thought I’d share my experience with this file. My v-wheel broke, and threw off my laser (broken half managed to get under the laser block and tilted it), so I looked to see if I could print one and found this.
I printed it using a Prusa slicer at the highest quality I could, 80% infill. I didn’t change the settings otherwise. Printed in roughly 18 minutes, but the opening for the bearing is too small, by almost 2 mm. I tried resizing it a bit, but after looking at the .stl file, it appears you’re supposed to drop the bearing in from the bottom? The bottom hole seems bigger than the top one (but only 1mm, which is still too small, as the bearing is 12mm), but there’s a lip to “catch” it. I’ve been messing with the file trying to get the inner dimensions sized a little larger, but haven’t quite gotten it yet.
The print, itself, does seem “meatier” than the one glowforge supplies. I feel like if I could get the inner hole sized correctly, it would probably work well otherwise.
The wheel has changed over the years. Original machines are still going strong, it’s only later models that appear to have issues. So the size of the bearing has very likely changed.
