We 4160 are a tight budget team. We always seem to run out of hex bearings, and reuse old bearings that perform poorly for prototyping and believe it or not even after saving old ones for 10+ years we run out…
3D printing hex bearings for the team to use for prototyping is one budget friendly solution for getting us off the ground without having one prototyping group steal bearings from another group’s prototype.
These seem to work pretty well honestly. They hold up to a decent amount of abuse, and heat due to friction seems to be what eventually kills them. Even under a decent load, running reasonably fast, they hold up long enough to decide if an Idea will work or not. Lightly loaded (force) or run for shorter periods of time, or at lower RPM, they last longer than I’d expect.
Large amounts of YMMV, but hope this helps someone. Model published over at Printables:
https://www.printables.com/model/756740-3d-printable-05in-hex-bearing-using-45mm-bbs