Design Study: Rail Inline With Ball Screw

[zvon]

I'm looking for your comments please. This would be a gantry style CNC router. The Gantry is 150mm x 75mm steel rectangular tube, and the frame is 75mm x 75mm square tube. 1610 ballscrew, 20mm Hiwin HGH20 or similar.

The point of this design is to put the ballscrew directly above the linear guide, with the gantry mount sandwiched between the ball screw and linear guide carriages. I do not believe I have seen this before.

The motivations for this:

1. Ease of machining of the frame. The ballscrew mounts/motor mounts will be machined in the same plane as the linear guide rail surface. Alignment made easy.


2. An attempt to "hide" the ballscrew from inadvertent movement. This doesn't really achieve this, but it gets it away from the outside of the frame.

3. I think it looks cool.

Thanks for your comments.