Skate Bearing Slides

[Wolfspaw]

Greetings All:
I built a small router out of MDF that has performed amazingly well on the scroll saw type cutting that I use it for. One feature that I thought may be of some interest to others is the adjustable skate bearing slides that I designed.

I always liked the modular axis design of the Rockcliff Flying Gantry machines. However, I didn’t like the idea of adjusting the bearing rails to the slides. I wanted to fix the rails and then adjust the slides to them. That concept would allow me to glue the upper and lower MDF rail components into dados to create a very rigid and self-aligning assembly.

The slide adjustment was accomplished by positioning movable upper and lower bearing assemblies inside a hollow rectangular framework. Jacking screws threaded into each end of the bearing assemblies push off of the framework and snug the bearings to the round rails. Once a gantry side, Z-Axis assembly or router plate is affixed to the slide using the (4) through bolts everything gets clamped in place.

Hopefully I have attached the photos and 3D PDF correctly and they give you a good look at the design.

Enjoy!

Wolfspaw

[RTP_Burnsville]

Nice job on your router..... What is the size?

Looks like the bearings work well for you. Was it fairly easy to get them aligned/adjusted with the rails? What did you use for the rails?

Robert

[Wolfspaw]

Hi Robert:

The cutting area of the router is about 21” x 19”. The size is just simply the largest that I could make when using 36” acme screws.

The rails are .500 O.D. x .402 I.D. DOM steel tubing with 3/8-16 threaded rod slipped through the length. I use the threaded rod to provide clamping from one end of the axis to the other and to hold the rails into their grooves. You could just as easily use .500 diameter CRS or drill rod.

It is fairly easy to align the sliders to the rails. I start by adjusting the lower set of skate bearings such that the centerline of the slider/AB nut is inline with the bearing blocks/motor shaft. Then it is just a matter of adjusting the upper set of skate bearings to the upper rail.

I am attaching a 3D PDF of the entire machine. You should be able open it with Acrobat Reader and then click to activate it. You should then be able to zoom, rotate, and hide or show parts as desired.

Let me know if you have any more questions and I will try to answer them.

Best regards,

Wolfspaw

[RTP_Burnsville]

Hi Wolfspaw,

Thanks for the information..... I'll take a look at your attached pdf.

Robert