Sunday 22 September 2013

Last Z parts

Fixed bearing mounting plate. I fortuitously found a new NSK bearing on eBay for which it would appear my surplus THK ball-screw journal was designed for. The label on the box for the Z ball screw is:

THK
Lm System
Model: BIF2504E-10RRG0+895LC2
Serial  KX07G01373

https://tech.thk.com/en/products/pdfs/en_a15_188.pdf

Although some of the info in that PDF is a little contradictory. The dimensions seem correct for the 2504-10 "semi standard" size, but the flange shape is different...




Motor mounting plate. Note that both have the CNC signature rounded corners that are essentially impossible (I.e. far too much trouble) to do on a manual mill.


A second mounting plate for the top of the column. This is sligtly redundant, but the bearing is thicker than the first plate and the mounting position (which I definitively established only after tearing down the column) would require cutting out an inch or so of the casting with hand tools. The second plate also allowed me to integrate a counter-balance design for the head, which I had neglected to think about when I cut the first plate.


Lastly, the ball-nut mount. The X axis screw came with a nut-mount which I just couldn't use in that tiny space inside the saddle. It is well made and seemed a shame to waste so I came up with a strategy to reuse it. I didn't have any 2" Mic 6 stock on hand, but making the extension for the mount out of two 1" pieces was pretty straight forward. The tube in the middle fits snugly into the hole in the Z slide that was a generous clearance fit for a 13mm bolt. I'm using a 1/2" bolt instead . The tube will do the job that the two taper-pins were doing in the initial design I.e. pin the nut-mount to the slide while the bolts hold it in the correct position. However, because there is now only one "pin", the nut is still free to rotate so it can be aligned perfectly along the axis of the screw. I just didn't see any way (or real need) to get the holes for two existing pins correctly positioned. Instead I'm replacing the pins with a couple of 1/4-20 bolts for extra (and likely superfluous) holding power.




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