Dirt on rails after rain storm

Hardware
#1

Hi All,

We had a bad rain storm the other night which caused a lot of dirt to be thrown on the rails of the farmbot in between the wheels, etc. which of course caused the FarmBot to stall out. I was able to fix by hosing down the rails, but it got me thinking. What is everyone else doing to prevent soil from being washed onto the rails? I’m thinking about putting some 1x5 lumber on the inside of my bed up to the top of the rails to see if that helps minimize dirt spreading. Curious if others have run into this and if there is a better solution?

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#2

Which FB model do you have?

#3

Genesis XL 1.5

#4

I don’t have a genesis but there are industry standard methods of protecting machining equipment axes from chips and dust. Three come to mind.

First the most common are accordion/bellows style covers that span from one end of the track to the slide (robot leg). You would have two for each track. The downside is that you need space beyond the travel of the legs to fold into.
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Another class of solution are cleaning brushes, wipers or squeegees. I see them employed more for dust in sliding doors but I suspect they would be rather appropriate for the FB.
4PLR4_AS01

Next up for the sake of completeness is track-mounted brushes or split shroud

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image1200×800 101 KB

Conveyor systems sometimes use a tambour style cover but I cannot find a picture ATM.

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#5

The easyist self modification I can think of is to spray water on the tracks to clean them.

To do this you could add 2 solenoids on the spare periferal ports. Split your hose line into 3
lines including the UTM line.

Take the two spare hose outputs and attach them infront of the wheels on the tracks to spray the dirt, leaves etc off. Make sure the spray head gives you somewhat high pressure.

Create a Track Clean sequence to turn on the solenoids and run the X axis from home to the end. The dirt should be sprayed off the tracks.

I haven’t built or tested this it’s just a theory.

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#6

Actually you may need only need one solenoid not two.

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#7

Thanks guys. These are all cool suggestions. I like that accordion stuff. I’ll have to look into that.

Another thought I had was to 3D print some kind of mount that slides over the wheel assembly and contains brushes to sweep the tracks as it’s going but protecting the tracks all together seems more logical. I’ll play with these ideas and see what i can come up with.

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