LitePlacer.com forums

Greetings,

Am doing a liteplacer build and can't wait to get it working. During assembly, I'm getting to know the parts--it's great that most are standard/pretty common but I've been wondering where I'd source a few of them and how long it might take (e.g. the drive belts, nozzle, limit switches with these M3 holes, etc).

My question is: which components are expected/most likely to die? Are there any stats or a general idea of time to failure for specific parts of the machine as a whole?

I'd much rather have an unused belt lying around forever than get caught waiting on a shipment in the middle of a project.

Thanks!

Good question! I don’t know the answer, actually. The only part I know that will experience wear are the o-rings, but you already got spares with the kit. I don’t use my machine daily; I haven’t changed any parts of it. Customers are not asking for spares often either, so I don’t have any data from that front either.

The TinyG could fail from a bad motor connection or due a mishap of some sort, and I guess it is possible to damage a nozzle or the holder by accident. The belts have inforcements built in but the surface is of rubber. In general, rubber doesn’t like sunlight- but then, the vision system would not work in a place where it gets sunlight anyway.

I know that the above is not really an answer, but I don’t know better. Anybody have something to add, experiences?

Well, it's a reassuring answer. I won't be using it daily either, but will still be asking a lot from the device.

Biggest worries for easy/quick replacement, at this point (i.e. before even powering it up so I don't know), in terms of failing components whether through wear or accident are:

• drive belts
• rotation and z motor
• pickup tube
• pickup nozzle

I'll, at a minimum, get some spare belt.

Also, how standard are the limit switches (though my main worry on that front is that one will get lose, swivel out of position and allow a crash)?

Anyone else experience an untimely component death?

I will sell spares if you need anything and of course, replace any doa parts (rare, but has happened). The switches are a standard Omron part, and there is nothing special about it, any similar switch would do.