Hi Joe. I will Wait to see how it works out for you. But I do have to admit that you mod. looks pretty nice. Good luck. C.A.G.
----- Original Message ----- From: "'joe biunno' via Legacy Ornamental Mills" <legacy-ornamental-mills@googlegroups.com> To: legacy-ornamental-mills@googlegroups.com Sent: Friday, January 9, 2015 1:58:42 PM Subject: linear bearing update...the good, the bad and the ugly progress to date: 1) "X" and "Y" axis' are done 2) "X" axis was not as simple as i had hoped...in retrospect, welding the rails end to end to achieve the 16 ft. lengths i needed was not the best idea, although it did save money on the purchase, i lost some of that savings in the labor of filing the joints(total welding and filing time was about 3 hours...total of 16 joints, 8 per 16 ft. length)...in hindsight, i should have bought four 8 ft. pcs. and then deal with just one joint per rail...cost of purchasing the longer pcs. probably about $300, cost of the 22" pcs. i bought was about $100...there is a bit of a "clack-clack" noise as the carriage rolls over the joint, but only if it is done with a bit of speed...but not issues with the carriage doing it's job of keeping a tight tolerance...a good test was when from one end of the machine, with a good "push", the router carriage almost makes it to the other end(16 ft.) 3) i was a bit worried that if the front and back rails were not parallel, the router carriage would bind and thus not roll as easy as it should...legacy originally designed the carriage to be locked into the front rail using the black "top hats"...on the back rail, the carriage just "floats" in the rail on black slugs...with the linear bearing set up, both front and back are locked into place...no room for a lot of error in the rails being parallel...but all worked out well over the full length of the bed...i believe i can attribute this to the base we made...due to it being very rigid, straight and having no flex, the machine stays square and parallel 4) the "Y" axis is really nice and a huge improvement than before...i can see using a template will be much easier now...again, just a careful layout, some drilling/milling and it was done...i still have to play with the lead screw mounting on the right side of the carriage, but do not anticipate any problems there...just extend the original mounting brackets 5) and some of the bad...the manufacturer suggests greasing the rails...obviously that is not going to work, considering the dust problem...i did have a conversation with them and explained that the carriages would only be moving at a snails pace for the vast majority of time...these slides are intended for heavy, rapidly moving loads (like sliding doors) and thus, the grease requirement...and although i could not get them to say it( CYA time!), they basically said under my conditions, it would not be necessary to grease the rails...what they were concerned with was the outside of the bearing wearing and i don't see that ever happening( if it does happen, that means i made a ton of money!)...worse case scenario, replace the carriages, if needed...and i certainly am not going to worry about that in my lifetime, LOL!...total height sacrificed in doing both axis' wound up to be 1 3/8" to 1 1/2", so no issues for me, not sure if that would be a problem for others...the jury is still out on the dust situation...the company says in their literature that they can make wipers for these carriages, but it seems to be a custom thing, and most likely would add enough to expenses to possibly blow the budget and make this upgrade using this bearing set up, not practical...i will look into it though, just out of curiosity pictures are not great...second picture basically is of the "X" axis and you cannot see the ball bearing carriages under the original legacy carriage cross pieces...in the first picture the linear rail is offset to maximize the router travel...the router projects away from the "Z" platform a bit due to the rotary table, so the rail offset was necessary...but a nice feature of this mounting is that it only takes a minute to set it back up to the front of the rail...still need to drill and tap for a carriage stop so it does not slide out of the rail...can also still use those white, nylon adjusters legacy used on the front of the router carriage to apply a bit of drag, if needed...and the split nut on the "X" axis lead screw is going to need some special attention, due to the carriage height being raised a bit...want to set it up so a standard nut from legacy will work with no issues, when it should need replacing...and while i am doing that, would like to beef up the split nut's surroundings in a fashion somewhat like jon preston did on his machine, only in a cruder fashion...but then again, a bit of red, "legacy" paint covers up a lot of sins...LOL! well, that's it for now...looking forward to your comments and critiques...joe -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Legacy Ornamental Mills" group. 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