Anet A8 Bearing Block Tool

thingiverse

I'm preparing to modify 50 Anet A8 kits so that when my students build their A8 printers, the X axis will have Drylin bearings instead of ball bearings that are problematic. The X axis rods are really hard to get out once installed, so I've decided to avoid the hassle and go straight to the Drylin bearings. Doing 150 bearing conversions made me think of the best and fastest way to do this, so I designed a bearing tool. A long plunger is used to remove the bearing and a short one for installation - it places the Drylin bearing exactly where it should go. I'll be using an arbor press with this tool, but you can use a bench vise or even a hammer to drive the bearing out. Ball bearings are held in place with a drop of glue, so they're hard to break the glue bond. After installing the Drylin bearing, apply a small drop of super glue at the gap along the bearing block - just a drop is all that's needed. Replacing linear bearings with Drylin on 156 bearing blocks took about 90 minutes using this tool. The picture shows progress at about the halfway point, and the tool works great!