anotehr possible way to replace the ball screw concept

[morphious69]

I was holding a couple of roller bearings on a threaded rod while moving them to another location and when I took them off I noticed that the last one flipped sideways as much as it could and became stuck on the threads. so I tried turning the rod while applying pressure to this and I found that the threads actually hold true to the ridge or sharp corner of the inner race of the bearing. so I am wondering if this could be applied in a practical manner

a simple way of showing this would be this

---/---

the slash (/) is the bearing and the dashes (---) would be the threaded rod

my idea is to turn several of the bearings in different directions and use a pair of plates with small curved grooves cut into them
then the plates could be pressed together with a set of screws on the corners to apply the desired pressure( enough to make the edge of the inner race catch on the threads tightly but not bend the threaded rod)

so in the end it would look something like this:

__________________
. |. . . . . . .. . . . .|
-|--\---/---\---/--|---
_|______________|_

or this:

__________________
. |. . . . . . .. . . . .|
-|--/---/---/---/--|---
_|______________|_
(ignore the periods as the forum would not let me string up a bunch of empty spaces

has anyone already tried this?
if so a link to their attempts?

[holbieone]

sounds interesting

[BillTodd]

Sounds similar to this thread:
http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=66381

[morphious69]

yup that was why I was asking. figured some one some where had to have thought it up and maybe the mechanics had been already worked out so I will not have to