Work Bee to Queen Bee Conversion Issue

[Ripthorn]

I picked up a barely used 1510 Workbee machine along with the Queen Bee Pro upgrade kit that was not installed. I installed the upgrades according to the videos on youtube, but one thing I noticed is that my HG15 (HiWin-style) bearing blocks don't slide smoothly on the rail. Lots of videos that I have seen show that the blocks should slide along the rail just by tipping the rail side to side. Mine require much more force than I would expect. I have finished assembling the machine just to see what's up, and I am getting the gantry jacked in the Y axis (the 1500mm long axis with two lead screws). I am thinking it may because things aren't sliding nearly smoothly enough along the linear rail. Does that seem like a reasonable cause? If so, what are my options for resolving this? I have put some light machine oil on the linear rails to try to lubricate the bearings, but it doesn't seem to have improved anything. I'm not a CNC newbie, but this is my first time working with HiWin style rails and bearings. Are there other adjustments to the bearing blocks that could/should be made? Hoping to be able to start in on projects. Thanks!

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[CNCMAN172]

Are your rails bent? If all the bearings are in the bearing block they should move very easily. You normally us get lithium grease on these type bearings

[Ripthorn]

Sorry for the late response, I've spent most all of my free time out on the machine. Here are some things I discovered:

- There appears to be a decent amount of preload in the bearings. Putting some weight on them makes them move easier. The motor/screw should be able to handle it well.
- My frame was out of parallel by about 1 mm over the 1500 mm length of the machine. I have fixed this and it seems to help a little.
- This upgrade kit came with no instructions and several parts either missing or sized wrong, even for the other parts they provided. This resulted in some guesswork on my part. For example, there were no included spacers for the Y axis delrin screw blocks, so I had to kind of guess at the length based on measurements I could take. Turns out that the spacers I made were resulting in binding of the screw in the blocks at the extremes of the travel. I have fabricated new spacers that are a little longer and that seems to help some.
- I reduced the Y axis acceleration and the problem happens less frequently
- I ran a test program where it was running perfectly for 35 minutes doing rapids and various cutting procedures: pocketing, adaptive clearing, contouring, etc. Out of nowhere at the very end (some 64000 lines of G code later) it decided it would bind up on me. A second test cut of a different routine resulted in a similar situation where tens of thousands of lines into the G code it just bound up unexpectedly and gave me issues.

When it binds up, it's because one axis isn't turning while the other is. This can result in a mismatch in the Y position of the two sides of the gantry by as much as 0.2" or more, which I have to manually fix by disconnecting the stepper motor and turning by hand to get the two sides to match.

I would love to get this to the point where I can trust the machine to do the right thing. I have some appropriately sized Zerks coming in the mail, so we'll see what that does. In all, I've made progress, but I still can't just trust the machine to run a program perfectly end to end.

[CNCMAN172]

Sorry for the late response, I've spent most all of my free time out on the machine. Here are some things I discovered:

- There appears to be a decent amount of preload in the bearings. Putting some weight on them makes them move easier. The motor/screw should be able to handle it well.
- My frame was out of parallel by about 1 mm over the 1500 mm length of the machine. I have fixed this and it seems to help a little.
- This upgrade kit came with no instructions and several parts either missing or sized wrong, even for the other parts they provided. This resulted in some guesswork on my part. For example, there were no included spacers for the Y axis delrin screw blocks, so I had to kind of guess at the length based on measurements I could take. Turns out that the spacers I made were resulting in binding of the screw in the blocks at the extremes of the travel. I have fabricated new spacers that are a little longer and that seems to help some.
- I reduced the Y axis acceleration and the problem happens less frequently
- I ran a test program where it was running perfectly for 35 minutes doing rapids and various cutting procedures: pocketing, adaptive clearing, contouring, etc. Out of nowhere at the very end (some 64000 lines of G code later) it decided it would bind up on me. A second test cut of a different routine resulted in a similar situation where tens of thousands of lines into the G code it just bound up unexpectedly and gave me issues.

When it binds up, it's because one axis isn't turning while the other is. This can result in a mismatch in the Y position of the two sides of the gantry by as much as 0.2" or more, which I have to manually fix by disconnecting the stepper motor and turning by hand to get the two sides to match.

I would love to get this to the point where I can trust the machine to do the right thing. I have some appropriately sized Zerks coming in the mail, so we'll see what that does. In all, I've made progress, but I still can't just trust the machine to run a program perfectly end to end.

Do you have two motors on the long Y axis? Sounds like they are getting out of sync. Is the gantry solid? When you move it my hand unpowered does it move smoothly or does it start to rack?

Russ

[Mrtc99]

These bearings are usually shipped with some sort of anti corrosion grease that should be cleaned out and replaced with a better grease. Have a look at this video.
Hope this helps

TC