Embedded sliding front door for CraftBot by ckupcu

Last crawled date: 2 years, 12 months ago

This space saving sliding front door is designed to nicely fit CraftBot's internal free space on the sides and bottom of the build plate. It is seen from outside only three transparent polystrerol plates and a thin handle to open/close. Design is assembled directly to CraftBot's original screws on the sides. Whole build volume is still accessible when the door is all the way down. When build plate is completely down, door can still be used without any problem.
Transparent plates are 365 x 88 mm2 with 2.3mm thickness. I did fine tune the dimensions of the plates and sliding links which hold them.
As a second option, you can have 4x 365 x 66 mm2 plates in the same rails. New Door_links_small_left_10.stl file contains new links for 66mm tall plates.
Refreshed *_10.stl files:
tested with CW 1.08 beta #10237 (PC) and CW 1.06 beta #4248 (Mac)
Improvements with *_10.stl
Door_rail_horizontal_left_10.stl file is updated, corner is lowered another 2mm so that last plate completely closes. Printed and in use already :-)
Contents of Door_rail_vertical_rail_10.stl and Door_links_left_10.stl are exactly same as *_9.stl. If you have already printed these two, no need to change.
New Door_links_small_left_10.stl file added. This contains links for 4 x 365 x 66 mm2 plates (to be printed...)
Improvements with *_9.stl:
Door plates height is reduced to 88mm. Links which hold door plates are also shortened 1mm to accommodate new plate height.
Horizontal rails are 4.5mm longer at the back. This will help door open another ~10mm down giving more access to the build volume.
Door handle is 2mm longer for better access, corners are nicely rounded to match CraftBot's corners ;-)
Remarks:
When opening the door, briefly push bottom plate's lower end with your finger while pushing down the door handle. You may need to do this every plate if you are opening the door slowly. In this way, you can stop the door at 3/4 different heights. If you open it a bit quicker, lower plates pull the others, hence door segments open all at once. Actually I did not design it to operate like this, but I kind of like this way. In my very first design, corners between vertical and horizontal rails were round. It was sliding much nicer, but plates were hitting CraftBot's rubber feet internal extensions (~5mm). To clear off feet extensions, I had to change it to a straight corner...