King Midas mill conversion

[Jonathan]

Have you tried tightening the two nuts in picture C against each other, so that they lock on to the thread, then use the inside one to unscrew the threaded rod? If it's in a tapped hole that should get it out.

I wouldn't worry too much about the hand lever. I tend to remove the hand levers on my mill when I'm using it with CNC since they have a tendency to hit stuff (or me) if I don't!

[diy-john]

A small update:

- the pinion gear eventually came out by punching the bearing out, slowly and carefully, from the opposite side


- here is the gear/bearing that came out - this is all obsolete now


- now the Z-axis looks mean and lean (LEFT: BEFORE, RIGHT AFTER)


- Now, I have bought a pile of these sort of building materials, and plenty of short 5mm bolts/nuts
-- They are made from galvanized iron, (or the more expensive ones, are stainless steel, very rigid)
-- Aim to attach bearing mounts to structures made from these building materials
-- This is cheap, but thought would make a running mock up with them.
-- Hope that way one could run the machine a bit, check dimensions again, check where to improve --> then make rigid, nice looking parts from aluminium.

Maybe this ugly duckling will turn to a beautiful swan some day.