Machining Ballscrews with a mini lathe (& ballscrew support questions)

[HankMcSpank]

They were keyed a litte then bonded with Cyanoacrylate (which sounds a whole lot better than saying superglue) & clamped in a vice to set...when I spoke of acrylic being brittle earlier, I meant to work with - there' no way on earth those mounts will ever snap in situ!!

[steve123]

Looking good,what sort of difference did you get on your rapids?.

Steve

[HankMcSpank]

Hi Steve,

I haven't actually got around to working it out yet - but unscientifically I'd say about 3x what I was getting before...

M8 rod has 1.2mm pitch, whereas this leadscrew has 3mm pitch, so a 2.5X win there...but now the motors aren't turning so fast (operating a the better end of their torque delivery - so I'm reckoning there's win there too!

... to mention way less overall nois and erhm less drive screw 'wobble' - my previous M8 threaded rod was marginally warped! I'm sure I'll have less backlash too versus my crap homemade delrin nuts!

[steve123]

Sounds good Hank,maybe you can post a video once its all up and running.


Steve.

[irving2008]

They were keyed a litte then bonded with Cyanoacrylate (which sounds a whole lot better than saying superglue) & clamped in a vice to set...when I spoke of acrylic being brittle earlier, I meant to work with - there' no way on earth those mounts will ever snap in situ!!

I was thinking more of the screws pulling out of their threads... but you're right, its unlikely within the boundaries you are working to..

[HankMcSpank]

Just to give a bit of closure here - I got around to setting up my machine with the new 'old' leadscrews tonight - they are in fact 1/2" pitch doh...kn8 mentioned a figure close to this when he offered them up, but to my untrained eye they looked like 3mm! (BTW if anyone could look at those pictures above towards ID'ing the likely leadscrew I have, it be useful if I want to source some delrin nuts in the future ...as kn8 said, the leadscrew 'thread' diamater is about 11.8mm ...the pitch is 1/2" pitch....I'm easily confused at the imperial way of describing stuff!)


I'm using 1/8th step on my driver which works out at about 125 pulses per millimetre (& gives me a resoluton of about 0.0078mm :-) )

With respect to rapids, I'm now getting a figure of about 6000 on the motor tuning page (previously about 500!) & my backlash measures 0.06mm - not sure if this is good or bad, but it's very good for my needs!

Thank kn8 matey....you've made my whole CNC experience a whole lot faster, quieter & enjoyable. :dance: