more mini-mill Z questions...

[megavolt]

My HF mini is coming along. I'll post pics when it's a little easier on the eyes.

I'm still having trouble figuring out exactly how to mount the Z ballscrew. I've decided to follow a design similar to the one's that guy sells the plans for, as well as homecnc's design. They rotate the ballnut, not the ballscrew. This really allows the simplest mechanism as far as I see.

Now how exactly do you rotate a ballnut? Homecnc describes it as 2 angular bearings on each side of the timing belt pulley, with the ballnut attached to the "quill clamp." Well, my mini doesn't have a quill clamp.

How could you attach a ballnut to a pulley?

How could you keep the pulley/ballnut from pushing up?

[FLUTE HEAD]

I believe the shaft the pulley fits around is threaded to accept the ball nut. Thats what I read in an earlier post. Also angular contact bearings.

[JFettig]

If you take a look at the pictures I have of my machine in the gallery, My ballscrew is mounted on the side of the head and the ballnuts are inside an enclosure which bolts to the side of the head, I have had pretty good luck with this, no problems with speeds up to 210IPM

Jon

[rustyolddo]

I'd suggest that you consider Ron Steel's plans, you won't be disappointed. I've spent hours looking at other peoples designs & drawings and being as cheap as I am, I thought i'd just figure it out. No doubt I could have eventually, but the plans were the best $50 I ever spent.

[thimages]

I mounted a ball screw on the right side of the column.

An "arm" connects the ball nut to the head.

A 3:1 reduction drives the screw from the top of the column.

Hal

[F1nalcut]

Originally Posted by rustyolddo I'd suggest that you consider Ron Steel's plans, you won't be disappointed. I've spent hours looking at other peoples designs & drawings and being as cheap as I am, I thought i'd just figure it out. No doubt I could have eventually, but the plans were the best $50 I ever spent.

I have a big problem that people on this forum, rather than help someone out with information, they immediately want them to go "buy" something.

I do not have have a cnc mini mill conversion yet, or else I would have tried to help, but would it it hurt any of you that have made the conversion to explain this to our firend in more detail, rather than dispatch him to "go buy" someones plans ??

Plans, that more than likely where put together with the collective efforts of many other knowledgable people on some "distant friendly forum".

Why not have him save his $50 and buy a stepper motor with that money ?

Its called helping each other out ... for FREE

Try it ! You may actually feel good about yourselves.

Everywhere you turn here lately is "Buy My plans", "Buy his plans" ...

What happened to SHARING KNOWELDGE ??

Don't be GREEDY PEOPLE.

[CerveloRod]

I felt the same way you did about this. Buy, Buy, Buy. These forums are for people to share info. I don't begrudge Ron selling plans, he seems like a very nice guy. He lives close to me, and he offered to "drop by" and help me when I was having trouble with my conversion. I did figure it out myself before our schedules worked out, but he did sell me his belt conversion directly, before they were in stock at LMS.

I didn't buy plans for anything on mine, and the only reason I bought Ron's belt conversion, is that I really didn't think I could do as good a job for cheaper.

IMHO people ask to many questions before they do their research. I don't mean to condem anyone, but I don't frequent here as much as I used to because it seems to be a recycling of the same q's. IMO again, 85% of the q's asked have been answered, and the results are searchable here.

Maybe my way of engineering on the fly is not everyone's. I like to design a little, build a little, design a little more, build a little more, ad infinitum.

My $0.02 for the day.

Rod

[F1nalcut]

Originally Posted by CerveloRod I felt the same way you did about this. Buy, Buy, Buy. These forums are for people to share info. I don't begrudge Ron selling plans, he seems like a very nice guy. He lives close to me, and he offered to "drop by" and help me when I was having trouble with my conversion. I did figure it out myself before our schedules worked out, but he did sell me his belt conversion directly, before they were in stock at LMS. I didn't buy plans for anything on mine, and the only reason I bought Ron's belt conversion, is that I really didn't think I could do as good a job for cheaper. IMHO people ask to many questions before they do their research. I don't mean to condem anyone, but I don't frequent here as much as I used to because it seems to be a recycling of the same q's. IMO again, 85% of the q's asked have been answered, and the results are searchable here. Maybe my way of engineering on the fly is not everyone's. I like to design a little, build a little, design a little more, build a little more, ad infinitum. My $0.02 for the day. Rod

I hear you Rod.

I have been away for a "while" from these boards, because you get tierd after a while. I had a different handle back then.

What strikes me now is the amount of GREED that has engulfed this forum.

No one wants to share any info. Everyone wants to make money.

I heard from a friend the other day that CNC plans and CNC software are circulating the web for free.

Well that was bound to happen ..

So there you go. You want GREED you get PIRATES.

It did not use to be like this a few years back. People actually tried to help each other. Now we are at the "Instant Gratification" stage.

And you are right. People don't bother to search for an answer that has been addressed hunderd times before. They just post it and "demand" and answer.

It seems that both sides aren't playing with a full deck of cards .

[phantomcow2]

This forum has a lot of information, ive gotten a lot of help trying to understand how to setup the electronic part of my CNC conversion (my big weakness). I've met some helpful people here, and you can never say too much about the photo gallery. The photo gallery here has given me many ideas, a picture is worth a thousand words so when a member has 4 pages of photos...thats a lot of words.
But I do think people stress the plans too much, i see it a lot in the router section "Help this guy out and buy plans". Plans are not for everybody if you ask me, i will never buy plans for any cnc project. It would be a waste if I did because i would more than likely enmd up changing half of it anyways, in which case most the the money spend is wasted.
Folks tend to repeat yes, but Vbulletin search is NOT a good one. Say you need help understanding Series Wiring, or Paralle. You can search and the search takes it literally, your hits will be ever post that ahs the word parallel or wiring in there. I bet if you searched that would get a thread i started a while ago
"My dovetails of the X axis are not parallel". Some improvement could be made here, and would make searching the archives much easier.