Hi All
I am considering buying some ballscrews to put on my little X1 milling machine and are getting a bit confused as to the type of ball nuts on offer.
The only difference I have seen apart from increased cost is the amount of backlash in the ball nut.
The 3 types I have seen are:-
1.0 as is about 0.04mm backlash
2.0 Preloaded with increased size balls( unknown backlash)
3.0 Preloaded with a spacer (again unknown backlash but costley as it uses 2 ball screws)

So considering that I am replacing a fairly grotty chinese screw thread will the first ball screw (also the cheapest option) be OK in the long run or just hang the expense and go to preload.

Peter

Hi Peter,

I have just very recently ordered some ballscrews and nuts from here http://www.homeshopcnc.com/page3.html . I am using two nuts/axis to make an adjustable zero backlash setup.

Hope it will be of some help to you,
John

Preloaded ballscrews shouldn't have any backlash.

Personally, using a machine without backlash is well worth the cost involved. I'd look at the two options and try to determine what the other features involved were, as I'm not familiar with a functional difference in preload methods aside from ease of adjustment. There should be more features that cause the price difference, not just preload mechanism.