Build Thread- Phoenix Modification 2.0: Flange Bearings

[Mr.Chips]

I’m following Joe’s lead and adding flanged bearings to my machine. The bore on the bearings will need to be honed to fit the ½” acme screw, this is a good thing because then it will be a very close tolerance fit. I was afraid it would be a sloppy fit and tightening the set screws would move the shaft off center.

The Y Axis upgrade is the easiest; just have to make a new mount for the acme nut. I had to mount the bearing inside the side support because my acme shaft wasn’t long enough to mount it outside, and I am too cheap to buy another shaft right now.

As you can see by the photo the movable table is too close to the base and the new flange bearing won’t fit under the table.

My solution is to put about a 1” shim between the angle iron and the table, this will give me enough clearance for the new flange. It will eat up part of my Z height but that’s life in the homemade seat of the paints design world.

[georgeburns]

As opposed to the 1” shim... have you thought about cutting off two opposing corners of the flanged bearing? Visually it looks like it would work and you would still have 2 mounting holes left as well as your full Z.

[Mr.Chips]

Originally Posted by georgeburns As opposed to the 1” shim... have you thought about cutting off two opposing corners of the flanged bearing? Visually it looks like it would work and you would still have 2 mounting holes left as well as your full Z.

Thanks George,

That is definitely an option, I would have to cut the corners off even down into the radius of the bearing to get some clearance for the moving table.

An alternative would be to cut a little and shim a little, thus not loosing too much Z.

Or to redrill my Z axis mounts moving it higher to offset any loss in Z.

I might check out 2 hole flanges and see what the dim. they are.

I currently have about 6” of Z, so reducing it to 5” would not be a major loss as I am planning to cut most things under 1” thick. But hey, I know Bigger is Better.

[Mr.Chips]

Have decided to add the Flange bearings in phases, my Y Axis is the easiest so I’ll start there, it also was the only one that had some misalignment binding. You can tell how much I was missing by looking at the left limit SW in the 3rd picture. Now if I had a 400+ Stepper I might have been able to just drive it to the end, but with 116 you cannot.

After honing out the Flange Bearings to fit my ½” 10 Acme screws it came time to mount them and hopefully do a better job of aligning the Y Axis screw than I did the first go round. Because of misalignment it would miss steps when it moved close to the end of the screw. So I wasn’t getting the maximum travel.

I cheeped out and didn’t buy new screws so I mounted the Flange Bearings on the inside of my fixed gantry side pieces. I made two plywood blocks and used 5/16” “T” nuts from the back side, the 5/16” bolts gave me adjustment room as the mounting holes are larger than that. Centered each Flange on the bolts and roughly aligned the shaft*, then screwed the plywood pieces in place.

*Went to hardware and sorted through their ½” 3’ steel rods, found one that was actually pretty straight. It would not fit the Flange Bearing bore so I chucked the rod up in my floor model drill press and ran it pretty slow. Used emery cloth to bring it down to size, it didn’t take too much.

The Z axis glides very easily on the Y axis rails, so their alignment is in good shape. The problem was to have the new bearings and Acme shaft aligned as well.

Decided to use the Z Axis plate as a reference and made a fixture out of plywood to hold two indicators. One mounted vertical and one horizontal. See photo. I need to pick up some wide flat indicator tips because the ones that are on there now have a radius and will not give an accurate reading. Now it’s a matter of moving the flanges around until I get it aligned. And no more binding.

In hindsight I think that wider flat indicator tips might have made it possible to use the Acme screw for alignment instead of the smooth shaft.

[fincsher]

Good luck with the alignment Mr.Chips. Keep us on update with the pictures man.. Video will much appreciated.