z-axis lock

[Robin Hewitt]

The mills quill lock mechanism is rather spongy, there's quite a movement between free and locked. Move the quill up and down while tightening the lock and you'll see what I mean.

If you changed the lock mechanism to a straight push and lost the sponginess then the short power throw on the solenoid would not limit your lever length.

Presume you are aware that solenoids come with a duty cycle? If you turn a 20% duty cycle solenoid on for 10 seconds you have to leave it off for 50. You can get latching solenoids but they require pulses in both directions and the electronics becomes awkward.

[BillTodd]

I second Robin's concern about the solenoid idea.

You might get away with a motor and a cam, or perhaps just motorise the locking bolt. It'll be slower than Robin's cylinder, but would be all electric in operation.

[JasonM]

Thanks for the responses, I didn't know about the duty cycle, the last machine I worked on that didn't use pneumatics came out of the ark and the solenoid on that machine was on most of the time. I guess you don't know unless you ask.

The problem I think I've got is that the quill seems to move quite a lot, not necessarily in the z plane, but locking the axis stops all movement.

I think I'll finish my conversion and see how much of a problem the movement is.