El Beast - Initial design phase, comments and critique welcomed!

[Zeeflyboy]

Had a productive day or two... apart from some minor things left to do, the Z-axis is now completed.

First up I made the top counter bearing plate. I had planned this to be 10mm but I only had 12mm and rather than skim it down I decided to just roll with the 12mm instead so tweaked the design.






Flipped and rear chamfer




I also made another knurled knob on the lathe, this time for the tension adjust. Same process as last time so I won't show it again




While cutting the tramming plate I had a bit of a booboo - I was trying out a full 16mm depth of cut with 0.8mm axial engagement, which was actually working ok until it turns out the stock wasn't perfectly squared up to the bed and on the far side it started taking much more than 0.8mm... caught it just as it came to a stop all gummed up. Need to give it a bath in some Lye to de-gunk it.



Unfortunately this mishap resulted in some machining error which I didn't pick up on until afterwards as I thought I hit feed hold in time. Thankfully nothing too serious - the holes that mount the spindle are just about 0.3mm off from the rest in X - everything else is fine so I'm not going to re-do.

So with that tramming plate done, the Z-axis is now more or less complete. I just need to shorten and tidy up the ball screw extension piece, make a small collar for the tensioner and then at some point I need to apply a finish. I'm currently leaning towards sandblasting and then anodising for a nice matt anodised finish.

Anyway, here are some assembled shots... everything is nice and smooth to turn by hand with no binding. The tramming adjustment works especially nicely now that I extended the shoulder bolt around which it pivots and the shoulder bolt that goes through the eccentric nut into the plate behind.








And here is one for reference to the current machine. This thing is huge! Gonna need a bigger boat...