Newbie- Home Made Bearing assy. from Harbor Freight drill guide

[Paulds]

I posted pictures in the photo gallery and also in this thread of a bearing assy. I made from a harbor freight drill guide.Part #92046 cost $10 on sale $6. Anyone in the group, let me know what the pros con ect. might be with this design. It can be made for less than $20. Now the issue that i have is I want to build a 4'x 4' or maybe a 4'x3' cnc router and was wanting to run 2 lead screws for the "y" axis can this be done and do i need something special to run them so that they work togather. Have Mach 3 a hobbycnc pro board that i could add a 4th axis. I think that i saw somewhere you could slave an axis in mach.How is it done. What's needed ect..

Thanks
Paulds

[CanSir]

Neat find. I'm having trouble trying to figure out how that thing was used as a drill guide - looks like it was engineered to be a linear bearing housing.


From what I've read, it's just a software setting in Mach3 to slave two axis together so any signal sent to motor 'Y' is also sent to motor 'A'. Some people use dual shaft motors and put a timing belt between the slaved motors as an extra insurance policy to prevent racking the carriage if one motor should miss a step. Read through the looong JoeChevy 4x4 hybrid thread - there is a brief discussion on using double flange bearing supports to eliminate whipping on the 4' leadscrew with rapids at 300ipm.

[gmfoster]

I don't think it was a drill guide I think it was a V block.

[acondit]

Originally Posted by gmfoster I don't think it was a drill guide I think it was a V block.

I think you are correct, but they do call it a drill guide. They even have a "product manual" for it, that shows it being used as a v-block.

Alan