Earlier this summer I made a post asking about controllers and drivers, and now after some research and sketching I think I have an idea on what i'm going to be doing for the mechanicals. I plan on keeping it mostly by the book with a roughly 500mm x 1000mm work area with the major axi's moving along c-beam lead screw actuators. I'm fairly confident about most of the design so far but there was one area I was hoping to get some feedback on. For the y-axis I was going to use 2 c-beam actuators connected to a "bridge" for the x and z actuators. But I was concerned about having to slave 2 steppers and the associated costs. So I came up with the idea of using a closed loop gt2 belt being connected to a single nema 23 stepper, the two y actuators, and a scissor type of tensioner that would keep the belt around at least half of the driving pulley. Pretty similar to how a serpentine belt on a car would work. I assumed that since the tensioner is acting on both sides of the driving pulley, that quick direction reversals wouldn't be a problem. I would love any feedback on this idea, constructive or otherwise. Fusion360 has been a bit rough on the assembly process for me so I don't have anything besides a few hand sketches at the moment but that's my next step to get final dimensions and part counts.
