X3 mill with rails, ATC, new motor

[Jonathan]

Thanks Mike.

Today, I milled two slots!
4mm wide by 5mm deep slots in the steel strips shown in the previous post. The slots will have simple covers placed into them.


Next I've devised a bit of a mad scheme to drill the array of M6 holes in the bed:


Then checked that it was sufficiently parallel - couple of whacks with the nearest hammer and it's now within 0.05mm over 400mm.


Now to continue the drawing...

[Jonathan]

After another few hours drilling, I just managed not to capsize my milling machine, so now I've got all the holes in the bed:



Just to visualize, I placed the rails on with the bearings at the spacing I plan to use. Satisfyingly huge:


Lots of tapping now...

[Jonathan]

Oops :(

[Jonathan]

Ok, broken tap situation resolved...

I intend to buy the fasteners I need for this tomorrow, so time for some rough calculations to check what grade I should use. From the THK documentation, I gather that the tightening torques for the M8 and M6 fasteners in the rails should be 30.4Nm and 13.7Nm respectively. They don't recommend a grade of fastener (as far as I can see), so we are left to work out the tensile strength required ourselves.

First step, use the torque value to calculate the tensile force on the fastener. This is the same formula as working out the axial force you get for a given torque on a ballscrew, so I don't even need to look it up (although can be more accurate by including more in this):

.

This gives the force, for a given torque (tau), coefficent of friction (mu, ~0.2 for steel) and pitch. Machine screws are graded based on the tensile stress, so we need to divide this value of force by the cross sectional area of the screw to arrive at the stress, in N/mm^2. The stress area is roughly the minor diameter of the fastener, so roughly the diameter of drill you would use. The area is then clearly just the area of a circle.

So, e.g, the M6 fasteners are 1mm pitch, 13.7Nm and steel, so the force is 13.7*2*pi*0.2/0.001=17kN. Divide that by the stress area, 17000/(pi*2.5^2)=865Mpa. Bolts are graded such that the first number is 1/100th of their tensile strength rating, so e.g. a 10.9 grade fastener is rated for 10*100=1000Mpa. A rule of thumb suggests to only tighten a bolt to about 80% of its tensile strength rating, so in my case I will be OK with 10.9 grade fasteners for the M6 screws (especially as the actual stress for the given torque will be a bit less due to things I missed out for brevity).

Now I just need to remember to bring my torque wrench home...

Also noticed that RS have the caps to help prevent debris getting into the linear rails, so I'll get some of those.

[kingcreaky]

good to see your doing something at last!

if you need a lift with ought let me know. Although I about give myself a hernia the other week lifting the motor ontop of my mill.

matt

[Jonathan]

Today I almost finished tapping the bed and made some bits for other projects / people. That's about it ... will buy some steel flat bar I need tomorrow to finish off the bed.

if you need a lift with ought let me know. Although I about give myself a hernia the other week lifting the motor ontop of my mill.

Thanks for the offer, but what would be most helpful from you is if we could come to some arrangement whereby I get to use your new mill for a few hours? The XY carriage piece may be manageable on mine, but the bed piece is going to be too big.

[Jonathan]

I made some progress - over the weekend I machined the end pieces for the bed:



I have now left the bed with "Leytoner De Montford LTD" in Leicester to get both sides surface ground. First time I have needed someone else to machine something for me...

Next step is to acquire a straight edge asap to align the rails and decide on what bearings to use for the ballscrews (not sure on angular contact vs taper roller) so I can machine the housings.