Sideways Open Bearings

[Tenson]

Just to let you know, I tried this today and it seems to work very well :)

However, as Jonathan said it is tricky to get the exact spacing so that the bearings on the gantry and the rail on the frame align. I made the gantry about 1mm less wide than the frame/rails and then used shim plates (see here) to fill the space between the bearings (fixed to the rails) and the gantry side. With a firm wedge of shims in place, the bearings ran smoothly on the rails. At first I just used washers but the gantry moved with some resonance wobbling about. Having got the full shim plates in place today which support the bearings across the whole surface, it runs very nicely!

It was also damn hard getting the gantry in place to begin with since I could not attach the bearings and shim plates until the gantry was perfectly aligned to accept them. I did it by putting the machine bed in place and stacking up random bits of wood until the gantry was perfectly supported. That way even without the bearings affixed, the screw holes would remain in correct position allowing me to slide the bearings in and out trying different shims.

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