So i went to a local shop and found 1’’ tube. When i get home, i google it, and i’’ is 25.4mm so i just started to print. All day on-stop to see if i can get it to work before X-MASSSS.
Today i went to the same shop and mesured the tube. It’s 28mm tube.
DAMMMM
So i went to 3 another shops to see if i could get some 25.4mm tube. No luck
Wath i found was stainless steel 25mm tube.
My question is…
Have 50% of the parts printed in 25.4, the biggest parts.
I’m printing the rest in 25mm.
How bad will it be if i use the 25.4mm with 25mm tube?
The tube is a good one! 25mm no more no less.
It won’t work. The 25.4 inch is for 1 inch stainless tube, not pipe. Usually what you find in hardware stores is pipe, which is measured on the inside, so what you found is 25.4 inside, with a 1.3 mm wall thickness. If you can find a steel supplier, they should have 1 inch stainless tube, see if you can get something with .6mm wall thickness. Usually it’s .63 to .65mm. Any thicker and it starts to get too heavy, without much extra benefit. Some folks have had luck finding 1" stainless in the plumbing furniture section of the hardware stores, it is used as shower curtain rod.
The problem is there is both too little and too big of a size change between the 25mm and 25.4mm. Too little in that it’s really tough to print a 0.2mm thick sleeve to make up the difference and too big in that you will likely over-stress the parts if you just clamp down. I’d attempt the too little part before reprinting everything though, you might be able to get close to the right thickness by setting your slicer to make a single walled slit tube with a 0.2mm thickness. If it works (I’d cut off the bottom few layers to remove any elephant foot) you can just slip it over the tube ends and clamp as normal. Put the slit such that it aligns with on of the gaps between pieces.
I have built 3 MPCNC’s, the first rebuilt with the upgraded parts. I used 25mm tube.
When building the 3rd one I went to 25.4 od stainless tube. I trialed the 25mm Z axis while assessing what height I could could go to and found to my surprise it fitted the bearing arrangement perfectly.
I put this down to printer imperfections. When I did try the 25.4, the fit was on the tight side but still usable.
