We recently got a Markforged Onyx One 3D printer and have been having an issue where after a while, 1/2" hex pulleys etc are worn down into a more circular shape, even if they are printed to press fit.
Would any teams that have an Onyx One be able to help us solve this issue? Not sure if it’s a common one or not.
Somewhat common, happens all the time with PETG printed pulleys particularly.
That’s somewhat the nature of the material, especially if you’re using thunderhex rather than standard hexagon hex shaft. Due to the geometry even continuous fiber won’t help much.
TTB makes some inserts for this particular problem: QTY 5 - Aluminum Insert for 3D Printed Parts
And this McM part also does a decent job: McMaster-Carr
Thank you! I didn’t know these inserts existed, I’ll have a look
A hex gear also works well here, depending on what resources you have at your disposal.
There are settings in Eiger that allow you to add more walls to your parts, you can try that as well. It seems to bring up the structural integrity to parts we 3D print.
Once we broached a 1/2” hex hole in wood. Got the same result — a metal hex shaft rounded the hole. Could be something about metal being stronger?
Increase your wall layers to at least 4 and this will help. This goes for any pulley 3D printed from any material too - 2 walls is usually not enough.
It really depends on what the pulley is doing too, might want to post a picture of that. There are absolutely still use cases where you’d want to use a metal pulley or a metal insert.
For pulleys in PETG we use 7 walls with a .4 nozzle. 40% cubic infill. Sized to press fit. Fine for medium loads. extending the length of the hub helps. Poly is also very good for pulleys but is a harder print. We used poly for our winches in the past in extreme loads but the we had 4 or 5 " of engagement with a .5 hex shaft.
We had this same issue last year on our turret, the way we solved it is by printing it with a larger hex bore and pressing in an aluminum tube to bring the bore size back down.
Onyx ones will only print in markforged materials. There is almost no customization availabe when it comes to materials.
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