Are Ballscrews Hardened Steel or not????

[Hellbringer]

I ordered ball screws from Roton from the link on hosses website (http://www.roton.com/Mating_Componen...family=7059321) are they hardened steel??? i am looking for a place to turn them down and some of them are telling me they cant due to not having carbit tooling

thanks mike

[skmetal7]

they are cold rolled steel, so about 0.070" in is pretty hard. you will need carbide tooling to cut this hard outer case, it will eat HSS for breakfast. they are not hard like a bearing though, but you will have to turn them on a strong lathe.

[tsalaf]

Yes, they are hardened.

[Hellbringer]

thanks guys thats what i thought

[diecutter]

I used a surface grinder to grind the spots where the bearings press fits on. A surface grinder does not care if the shaft is soft steel or hard as a bearing race. I also just had to shorten a THK shaft which uses a recirculating ball screw. Had to cut it while on the machine; used a hacksaw with a bimetal blade and it came off in about 5 minutes using a single blade. So it can be done in some cases if the shaft is not too hard. Run a file over the end; if it bites you can probably cut it.

[ViperTX]

I heat the area that I need to turn to an orange red....then let it slowly cool....use carbide tooling and they are easy to machine...the hardest part is indicating them in the chuck.

I also use an abrasive cut-off saw to cut them to size.

[mrcodewiz]

Originally Posted by ViperTX I heat the area that I need to turn to an orange red....then let it slowly cool....use carbide tooling and they are easy to machine...the hardest part is indicating them in the chuck. I also use an abrasive cut-off saw to cut them to size.

This is the way to do it. I ruined several cheap carbide inserts and a couple good ones before I decided to anneal mine. Once annealed, they cut like butter. If you heat it too fast, it will warp though so do it slowly. Also, stick the portion that you aren't annealing under water.

[ataxy]

i turned my 5/8 roton on my 11x26 lather and all went fine i did ude some cutting oil with my carbide tool to do it

[maxboostbusa]

When I cut mine I wrapped a large wet towel around it and cut it slowly using an abrasive saw. Then heated the very ends where the bearings would be going to cherry red and placed them in a bucket filled with sand to make sure they cooled evenly and slowly. I have used this with ballscrews from small and cheap to 2 1/2" high end ground ballscrews. Nothing screws up your day like having to buy another 10k ballscrew.

[jhowelb]

A tool post grinder will allow any lathe into which the screw can be chucked to cut the landings and the chuck makes a pretty effective heat sink.