Printing Mini Spare Parts?

[John_Mc]

OZ

My question on spare parts came from a discussion in another thread here in the Mini Hardware section entitled “Head Crash & Filament jam in new Lulzbot Mini”. This printer is in an elementary school, no matter how careful they try to be, someone is going to break something (and, as that other thread noted, it happened on the class’s first attempt to print something). I’m sure given the environment, sooner or later something else will go. I did not want them to face extended down time in the middle of a project, so I had asked in that thread if there were any spare parts people would recommend we get in. I actually bought them a spare complete toolhead assembly, as well as a spare PEI sheet (in addition to the one I used to replace their damaged sheet). Here was Piercet’s response:

@piercet

The Z motor couplers can break occasionally, and it’s a good idea to have a few spare Idler arms and Gear sets for the extruder body around, especially the small gear that can wear over time. The idler arm can wear at the top notch, or crack at the pivot base. It is gluable with plastruct plastic weld, but printing a few good ones of those printed parts out of ABS should be a priority for the teacher. If you can source some of the tiny set screws for the motor pulleys (I think they are M1.5 thread) those do work themselves loose over time and occasionally fall out. The belts and pulleys themselves should last the life of the printer, but I have seen a belt shred itself before too. A GT2 timing belt 6mm wide (https://www.lulzbot.com/store/parts/gt2-1164mm-6mm-belt) might be useful to have in a crash kit, but its one of those parts you probably shouldn’t need to have on hand. Nozzle wiper inserts, I don’t know how long they last, but you can make new ones from felt or red scotchguard pads, or they have a 4 pack or so in the lulzbot store. A couple of 608zz bearings for the Idler arm also might be a good idea. They don’t usually fail anymore since they moved over to the sealed bearings, but that used to be a problem. You might have to replace them once every 3 years with really heavy use now. The rod bearings should be fine for quite some time so i wouldn’t worry about keeping them on hand.

And here’s the link to the current (as of the time of this writing) batch of production Mini parts:
http://download.lulzbot.com/Mini/1.01/production_parts/

Rather than continue to build on that head crash thread, which was really focused on a specific problem, I thought I’d start one about tips for printing Mini parts, since that might have more general appeal - especially to newbies like me.