Stepper Wheel - 28BYJ-48

thingiverse

I designed a wheel for my 28BYJ-48 stepper motor with a rubberized tire, so I created this wheel and additional files to make the tire with. I discovered that adding a true rubberized tire with 3D printing is difficult to reproduce quickly, but while chatting with a friend about this, I had an idea (thanks Mark!). Hot Glue! Hot glue, when cooled, is extremely rubberized, its general friction coefficient range is quite similar to rubber, and it's easy and quick to use. All of this makes it perfect for rapid prototyping. In this pack of files, you'll find the wheel itself and three other parts: + Tyre maker - pin + Tyre maker - base + Tyre maker - wall I strongly advise putting some covering on the inside of the wall to make removal easier. Also, ensure that the base is a good fit to the wall without being too tight. This is the procedure I used to make my tire: 1. Print all parts and clean them up. Ensure the wheel fits nicely on the motor spindle! If it doesn't, scale (and reprint!) or file to fit! Don't skip this step. 2. Cover the inside of the wall with blue painters tape to one layer thickness. 3. Fit the wall to the base to ensure the blue painters tape doesn't rise up, crinkle, or bulge out from the wall. 4. Heat the glue gun up. 5. Insert the pin into the wheel, then insert the wheel with the pin in the base. 6. Ensure the wheel is centrally located in the base. Any mistakes now will result in a non-centered tire on the wheel. 7. Ensure the glue gun is heated up to temperature. If you can increase the temperature of your glue gun, do so. The less viscous the glue, the better the injection will go. 8. From the top, between the wall and the wheel, inject the glue, working around the gap until it's filled. 9. Remove the base to check that the glue has been injected all the way to the bottom of the gap. 10. If there are still voids in the gap at the bottom, repeat the above procedure to inject glue into the voids. Go and have a beverage of your choice. The cooler the glue is, the easier the next bit will be. Let's evaluate what you have here: A messy mass of glue and printed plastic. Brilliant! :( So, I started on the outside of the wall using clips and a sharp craft knife to remove all the glue down to the wall surface. Then, I worked down from the top and removed all the glue, clipping off as large chunks as I could before neatening up with the craft knife, then I did the same with the bottom. Another evaluation? A slightly nicer-looking solid lump of plastic and glue. Did my wall separate from the blue tape on the tire? NOPE! So, I used a file edge and the craft knife to make a cut groove down to the blue tape level on the outside of the wall (careful now). Then, when it eventually showed a consistent line of blue tape (if you see glue, you've cut down too far), the wall should lift off the painters tape! Ooooh, last evaluation! Excited now! Now we have a wheel with a tire made from hot glue on it, and a layer of blue painters tape on the tire! Yeah, you go remove that painters tape, you totally earned it... :D So now you're in the land of 'make it nicer, make it better'. Bit of cleanup to make it look especially pretty and offer it up to the stepper motor to fit the damned thing! (making any adjustments necessary to get the thing friction-fitted to the motor spindle) As a footnote, right up there at the top as part of the first step, I was all snooty telling you what to do with 'don't skip this bit!', sorry for the snoot. Had you not done that (and if you didn't, but got away with it you were really lucky!) and it hadn't fit correctly, you wouldn't have known until you got to the end and tried to fit it to your stepper motor. It wouldn't fit, and you'd be all sad, and I don't want you random person on the internet to be sad because of me :)