It's upgrade time! The PLA bushings that come with the standard Prusa Kit are pretty good as long as you keep your smooth rods well lubricated (I'm using some lithium grease I found on eBay and it does the job).
However I decided to to upgrade to linear bearings (LM8UU's) for a number of reasons:
I don't have any PLA to print replacements when the bushings wear out (still got tons of ABS!).
Hopefully the linear bearings will reduce friction even more allowing me to run my steppers with less current. Less current means less heat and less wear so everything lasts longer!
Less friction also helps eliminate backlash from quick changes in direction which will hopefully improve print quality.
While researching the upgrade I came across RichRaps blog which is really cool, there's tons of info I especially like his multi-coloured prints they are stunning. He recently built a seriously pimped up Prusa with loads of bells and whistles including linear bearings.
So I've got my upgraded plastic parts printed now I'm just waiting for the linear bearings I ordered....I hate waiting for parts in the post...so in the meantime it's time to procreate.
Sadly that's not a pretentious way of saying I'll be fucking, I actually decided to make to make another Prusa, why? Because I can! I've got a lot of left-over parts from my first printer (including an old set of Gen 3 electornics) so I'm going to see if I can make another Prusa exclusively for printing PLA with 1.75mm filament. So I can print in both PLA and ABS without the need to change/clean nozzles.
I'll starting by printing up the frame vertices and assembling the frame and go from there.
