I am in the process of fitting a ball screw setup into my big table kitted micromill. I faired fairly well in getting the x axis aligned even if it was extremely space limited for a nut holder under the table.
Then I proceed to the Y screw, which so far has been a C-F. I bought a new OEM Y nut just so I'd have a pattern to follow as I made that nut holder, but made it about 5mm too tall as I can't see, when its assembled, that the OEM nut is sitting on a raised boss, 4.5 to 5mm high in the base casting. Looking at the OEM nut, my screw height is within .5mm of the OEM nuts screw height. But in making the OEM rig work smoothly, I had forgotten there had been about .5mm of fiber shim installed under it to raise the screw so it was running somewhere near level with the base, done much of a decade ago because it was binding due to the miss-alignment. Now it appears that I will need to bore the mounting ears of the bearing boss casting to allow it to be moved to align vertically with the new nut. This was not a surprise so the padding (I saved it) will be reinstalled if it still clears the bottom of the Y sled. I have perhaps another .5mm I can take off the top but its one of those boring bar stories when souping up a motor, I might find water. What is really surprising is that the nutholders mounting boltholes in the base will have to move about 5 or 6mm to the left in order to align the screw left-right. That is turning into a PIMA as I'm trying to do it with a chain saw stone in a Dremel, so its slow going in this heat. Looking at the Y sled, it can be seen that the bosses mounting holes are somewhat offset too, about 2mm, but in a direction opposite to what would properly align it. Howinhell did the OEM work as well as it did once I padded it all those years ago? I have no clue, but its looking like several more of my limited (in this 90F hi humidity heat weather) length days work to get things running smoothly. I _will_ get it done, but its at least 10x the work I figured it would be. Is there a Murphy's law about that? If not, there sure ought to be. ;-) Basically, this is a heads up to anyone else contemplating making a ball screw kit for an HF Micromill. I think I am plowing virgin dirt here, as I don't think anyone else has tried it, or at least I haven't found it on the intertubes. ;-) Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ HPCC Systems Open Source Big Data Platform from LexisNexis Risk Solutions Find What Matters Most in Your Big Data with HPCC Systems Open Source. Fast. Scalable. Simple. Ideal for Dirty Data. Leverages Graph Analysis for Fast Processing & Easy Data Exploration http://p.sf.net/sfu/hpccsystems _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
