Pillow block / stepper housing designed with Cadquery

     Just to share one cool pillow block / stepper housing design. This was designed to take a pair of 6801 bearings and a NEMA 17 stepper, hence the parameters in the script. In my application it will receive a shaft loaded in cantilever. 

The assembly for my application (without bearings), to hold the bearings in place, we have in one side a flange (purple),  on the other a flanged nut (not shown) screwed to the shaft. In red is the shaft designed for my application, with a groove to receive a belt. In black is a representation of a stepper motor. 

Here is the pillow block / stepper housing alone. The feature on the top is an access slot for easy access to the curved jaw coupling. Inside the cylinder theres a ring, meant to be an spacer for the bearing pair. 

    The cadquery code for this part:

	import cadquery as cq
	from Helpers import show
	# pillow block
	height = 42 #cube parameters
	width = 42
	length = 35
	cyl_dia = 32 #cylinder parameters
	cyl_lenght = 17
	between_holes = 31 #holes parameters
	bore = 3
	cbore = 6
	cbore_depth = 18
	fbore = 2 #threaded hole for flange
	fbore_depth = 10
	ring_dia = 18 #inner ring diameter (bearing spacer)
	bearing_OD = 21
	acess_slot = cq.Workplane("front").box(14, 20, height/2).edges("|Z") \
	.fillet(4).translate((0, -5, height/3))
	pb = cq.Workplane("front").box(width, length, height).edges("|Y").chamfer(2) \
	.faces("<Y").workplane() \
	.rect(between_holes, between_holes, forConstruction=True) \
	.vertices().cboreHole(bore, cbore, cbore_depth, depth=None) \
	.faces("<Y").workplane().circle(cyl_dia/2).extrude(cyl_lenght) \
	.faces(">Y").workplane().hole(ring_dia) \
	.faces(">Y").workplane().hole(bearing_OD, 45) \
	.faces("<Y").workplane().hole(bearing_OD, 5) \
	.faces("<Y").workplane() \
	.polygon(6, cyl_dia-6, forConstruction=True) \
	.vertices().hole(fbore, fbore_depth)
	pb = pb.cut(acess_slot)
	show(pb, (204, 204, 204, 0.5))

view raw pb.py hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Some pictures of the part after the machining:

All the parts ready for the assembly

The shaft with the groove for the belt

A custom hand ground HSS tool bit made to cut the groove in the shaft. Worked like a charm. 

Once again, 

Cheers,

Edi