V2 Anet A8 Y carriage 3 bearing conversion upgrade

thingiverse

This is version 2 of a bearing/bushing housing which converts the Anet A8 stock y-carriage to a 3 bearing type. Three points must exist on a plane. Version 2 addresses the issue that my y-carriage was upside down. Yours might be too if you followed the video assembly instructions. You want the carriage rails that have the housing mounts to be above the rail which holds the y-belt, so the y-belt is closer to being parallel with itself. As you can see in the pictures, I've compensated for the additional thickness of the carriage in the housing dimensions so it remains level. I left version 1 up in case someone wants to try this with an upside down carriage. You'll want to make sure you put this on the left rail of the printer (when facing the printer), as the right side bearing housing is what contacts the y-endstop. Just like the original by aeropic, you can feed a staple through the housing to retain the bearing. I wanted this because the stock carriage I have is slightly bent, so I was having a really hard time getting my bed to glide smoothly on the rails while using tight tolerance bushings. They would slide freely independently, but once all assembled on the printer they would bind up. Keeping 4 points on the same plane within the tolerance of your bushings is much harder than 3, and this resolved my issue. Additional benefits include less friction and weight reduction. If you're coming from stock housings, this print can save you over 50 grams on bed weight. The stl file is set up so you can just screw the part into the existing threads in the carriage. In the correct carriage orientation, no nuts are needed and you can really tighten this down with the stock m4 screws since you're threading into metal already. Housing diameter on this stl is 15.2 mm. I've also included the modified .scad file if you want to change the housing diameter, screw hole size, etc.