Game on!

[kingcreaky]

as lee says its great to see new methods. thanks for posting, keep it coming,

[routercnc]

Somehow I managed to miss this thread and have just caught up. Great work Voicecoil and I heartily approve of the twin Z ballscrews. Glad the stiffness spreadsheet is still helping people out.
Let the over build commence - great machine !

[Voicecoil]

Somehow I managed to miss this thread and have just caught up. Great work Voicecoil and I heartily approve of the twin Z ballscrews. Glad the stiffness spreadsheet is still helping people out.
Let the over build commence - great machine !

The twin ballscrew thing kind of evolved, it came from trying to minimise twisting moments on the gantry - I'll be finding out in about a month's time how well it works I guess! Meanwhile lots of wiring and screwing together to be done :-)

[Voicecoil]

Had to take a break from this for a few weeks due to the pressures of (paying) work, but now I'm back with a vengeance and looking to get it finished ASAP. First I've installed the steppers and wiring into the base:

then it was time to start putting the gantry together:

here's getting the rails levelled:

Just realised I need to get the oiling sorted before I go any further, so there's been some frantic buying of bits on the bay of fleas this afternoon: more pics coming it a few days when they land!

[Voicecoil]

So I've mostly gone with an idea Lee suggested, using 4mm pneumatic connectors/tube to supply lubrication to inaccessible parts:


On the HGH15's I couldn't find any suitable adaptors so had to turn up some barbed brass push on thingies:


Tried the same on the long axis, but then realised they would foul the ballscrew covers:

Tried spinning the ballnuts through 180 degrees but then found everything was seizing up - turned out the ballnuts weren't concentric on the screws - thanks Fred - so those are going to have to be a manual lube.
On the subject of lubrication, does anyone know where I can buy a sensible quantity of synthetic semi-fluid grease please? Looks like to be the DB's for this sort of setup.
Z-axis ont' gantry:

So onto the wiring... Found that the closed-loop steppers have the connectors on the encoder cables of such a length that they would sit in EXACTLY the wrong place - half way down the drag chain

....so had to do some inline splicing......

and to finish off added a touch off probe socket into the base

So onto the wiring

[Wal]

>On the subject of lubrication, does anyone know where I can buy a sensible quantity of synthetic semi-fluid grease please?

My mini-mill has no practical way to get oil to the ball-nuts or the bearings riding on the supported rails, instead I lift the rubber skirts every once in a while and squirt a load of a TF2 Teflon oil onto the shiny bits:

https://www.google.com/search?q=tf2+...99006240699812

No doubt this isn't the done thing, but having done it for five or so years, I'll probably keep doing it. There's logic for ya.

Nice build BTW.

Wal.