Ready Steady Eddy

[EddyCurrent]

There's not a lot of progress to report, but thank you kindly for your support.

It took only a few minutes to remove the meniscus using a course file, because there was 10mm each side of the rail it meant there was no need to get it perfectly flat across the whole width. I did run a bead of liquid nails down each side of the epoxy just to give a nice transition onto the metal.
Got the rails on, one support beam painted, 20mm aluminium gantry support bracket fitted and ballnut bracket attached.
Ball screw temporarily installed just to show actual position. Tried to keep rail and ballscrew in same horizontal plane as much as possible.
I had to regrind some drills to make counter boring tools for the cap head screws.



Showing end of beam with rail, epoxy, 6mm internal flat bar to give extra thickness for rail mounting screws, glued it in with Gorilla Glue and worked great.

[JoeHarris]

There's not a lot of progress to report, but thank you kindly for your support.

It took only a few minutes to remove the meniscus using a course file, because there was 10mm each side of the rail it meant there was no need to get it perfectly flat across the whole width. I did run a bead of liquid nails down each side of the epoxy just to give a nice transition onto the metal.
Got the rails on, one support beam painted, 20mm aluminium gantry support bracket fitted and ballnut bracket attached.
Ball screw temporarily installed just to show actual position. Tried to keep rail and ballscrew in same horizontal plane as much as possible.
I had to regrind some drills to make counter boring tools for the cap head screws.



Showing end of beam with rail, epoxy, 6mm internal flat bar to give extra thickness for rail mounting screws, glued it in with Gorilla Glue and worked great.

Eddy how did you ensure your x rails were parallel and x and y were 90 degrees to each other??

[Boyan Silyavski]

Eddy how did you ensure your x rails were parallel and x and y were 90 degrees to each other??

Hi Joe, if you remember i explained it here #151 in detail how i did it, if its of any help.

But basically in following order gravity and epoxy did the job in one plane for long rails/y/, gantry legs and using square between them, then for gantry rails/x/. Then 1 gantry rail was mounted and using hardstop/precision cut squared piece of sth/ fixed at same distance to gantry legs plane. Then using dial indicator or hard stop next rail was mounted in parallel.

Now the gantry rails were mounted in parallel to each other and square to legs, was time to square long rails. One rail was mounted within millimeter square to frame. It was straightened using straight edge while tightening. So result was first rail straight and on place. Then crossing with the long straight edge and 2 precision squares, checking every 25cm second rail was mounted. That was the most exhausting job as in my case distance was 1800 between them so very difficult to judge square or not. I started scraping the square against straight edge and unsquaring it left and right, so i wanted to get the feeling when in perfect center/square. Once i felt how it feels i used that feeling to square all.

Then gantry was mounted. Then time for Z. First gantry was squared to long rails. Then using clamps clamped on place. Again the long straight edge cross the long rails below in front of gantry. Using squares between it and z rails, ...


All ball screws were mounted 1 by 1 more or less, screw not tight just to hold a little , so when moved to end they will slide on place. Axis moved by hand to one end. ball screw slides on its place, tighten screws, then repeat at other end. That ensured ball screw alignment to be parallel to rails