101Hero - Now Less Bendy!

As I experimented with increasing print speed and acceleration, my 101Hero would noticeably shake, twist and flex.

I looked at some of the stiffening and support solutions tried by other 101Hero owners, and to me they all felt like overkill in engineering and/or cost.

I imposed some restrictions on my solution:

1. It must not require modifying the 101Hero itself.  No new holes, no glue, no bolts.  The solution must be completely removable.
2. Cheap.  Like the 101Hero.
3. It must be truly rigid, and not require fussing to make the printer geometry correct.

My solution was simple and provided the extra benefit of also serving as most of an enclosure: Clear Acrylic panels slid in the outer grooves between the pillars/pylons.

My Setup

The Acrylic

The Printer

The acrylic panels had to be about 3 mm thick to be strong enough not to bend and actually add rigidity to the printer.  That's also about all that will fit against the pylons and still leave room for the slides to travel freely.  But the groove width was only about 1.5 mm away from the ends.

So I made three 304.8 mm x 18.5 mm panels from 3 mm acrylic.  Then I reduced the edge thickness to 1.5 mm, and added a 60° bevel on each long edge.

The above pictured aren't very good (need a macro attachment for my phone), but they should get the point across.

The printer is now amazingly rigid!

You'll also notice the $5 Walmart fan up against the pillar: It provides less cooling than it did before adding the panels, but it seems to be enough.