Customiser: YAPI - Yet Another Pulley for Idlers (aka "Yay, no more soot") by Bushmills

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

Put together to reduce the amount of black dust and soot, the result of abrasion of Y belt at the idler of my cheap Chinese interpretation of a Prusa i3 Pro B. Traces of belt wear are clearly visible in the enlarged photo.
Divided into two (no bearings) or three (bearings, additional axle chuck / bearings distancer) parts, overhangs are entirely avoided, resulting in an easily printable implementation.
Can be customised to operate with or without ball bearings, however I'm afraid that without bearings, I'd eventually have blue PLA dust instead of black belt soot decorate my printer.
It is possibly now to set values which in their combination don't make sense - only few variables are protected against values which don't result in a feasable item. Especially too large bearings can be a source of amusement, if so inclined.
Presets yield an X axis idler pulley for the Prusa i3 Pro B, with MR74 bearings (4x7x2), and slightly increased barrel diameter to keep the X drive belt just a tad more apart - the default "pulley" (two ball bearings without guard) caused the belt running end (opposite of the standing end, relative to X carriage) to touch the channel which leads the belt through the X carriage, furthermore to rub on the pulley holding bracket. Because of increased barrel diameter I had to replace the screw which holds the X idler against a screw with a flatter head, or the belt would touch the screw head. Finding a better fitting screw wasn't hard, because the original screw head had a high profile.