Printed bearing, non-printed balls

prusaprinters

<p>By avoiding the need to print the spherical balls necessary for a ball bearing, I my design is nearly as small as a stock 608 bearing.</p> <p>This is still a proof of concept, and not meant to immediately work. The little plastic tab does not adequately fit into the slot on the outer ring. In a further redesign I would shrink both rings to exactly match the dimensions of a 608 bearing and move the hole for filling the bearing to the inner ring.</p> <p>For the spherical balls inside I tested the small plastic pellets from craft stores used to stuff knitted/crocheted objects. As long as I chose the more spherical ones, these were reasonably acceptable. Unfortunately, as these pellets were not very uniform I spent too much time picking out the best bits.</p> <p>However, I found a much greater success with using small 3mm spherical beads from a craft store. These were all essentially identical in size and shape. All of the parts have a hole through the center, for them to be used as beads, but this feature did not appear to impact the functioning of the ball bearing.</p> <h3>Print instructions</h3><p>Unassociated tags: ball bearing, 3.0mm BBs, Printable Bearing</p> <h3>Instructions</h3> <p>Print interior and exterior rings.<br/> Fill bearing with small spherical objects of approximately 3mm in diameter.<br/> Cover hole with tape.<br/> Rotate as desired.</p>