Stepper motor Shaft Key (thomson t23 stock stage)

[metron9]

http://www.thomsonbsa.com/stock-stage-t23.html

I just picked up two unused t23 12" ball screw slides and a third one that had a tiny bit of rust on the one rail, and needs a bit of cleaning especially I think in the ball screw itself, I can push the nut back and forth but it takes much more force than the other two. One has gold rails the other two have standard color.

How much do these things cost do you think?

Their is a hole in the end of the shaft with a 0.12 key for the slot.
http://www.siliconcoder.com/Pics/IMG_0263.JPG

ballscrew on shaft picture
http://www.siliconcoder.com/Pics/IMG_0264.JPG
Question, taking these apart, will the balls fall out or are they like the rail guides where they stay in a grove?


Looking at the site I do see a coupler is included but i don't know if that is what I have or is the coupler another part with a keyed shaft and a hole with an allen head to connect the stepper motor shaft.

The shaft size for the motor is about 0.32

Are there steppers with keyed shafts? How do I connect if the stepper I have does not have a keyed shaft?

I cleaned out my garage after 20 years , kind of a farm building, 12' ceiling and the space is 25 x 30 foot. just finished drywalling and looking to paint later this week. I plan to build a CNC machine and further my hobby programming Atmel chips and designing machines to increase production at my printing company.

Oh, I figured out how to run the 5-Phase vexta steppers and I am now making a driver board to run it. I would like to find more of these 5-Phase motors. They have 500 steps per revolution and 1000 if 1/2 stepped, i think there are more complicated patterns to microstep at finer resolutions as well.

Also Allegro has a new driver Hbridge that will run a continious 8 Amps i am trying to get samples.

[metron9]

update

i called the mfg and these units are $2,400.00 each However Tomsonusa did not build the units. They only built the ball slides, They also said they don't have a keyed shaft hole on their ballscrews and theirs use nema23 The hole pattern on these are for nema17 but it is a .312 approx shaft size so perhaps a coupler with a 1/4 to .312 and a keyed stock saft can be used to connect the steppers to them.

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