I can't find ACME thread anywhere in the country, and at nearly 1000 bucks per meter from South Africa this is way more than I'm willing to pay.... On a previous machine I used 10 mm threaded rod as the actuator, the distance between threads was 1,5 mm which do give great resolution sure, but it's slow as hell... Normally machines using ACME thread has about 10 threads per inch, that is a good mixture between speed and resolution. To compensate for the fact that I cannot get the ACME thread here I will use 20 mm threaded rod which have a thread pitch of 2,5mm that would give me 10 threads in 25mm, very close to 10 TPI on the ACME thread.
The X axis :
I installed 2 bearing holders cut from MDF on the small machine, I couldn't cast these this weekend since it was raining the whole time.. I'll replace the MDF bearing holders later with Aluminium ones. It's quite simple I locked the rod between the 2 bearing holders and welded up some mounting brackets for the stepper motor. the motor is then fixed to the rod using a pice of rubber tubing. It will cause some backlash, but this is a temporary solution till I can find a proper connector.
Here is the x axis with both bearing blocks and stepper motor attached.
one side of the bearing block with the gantry cross member attached to the threaded rod.
Other side of the rod with the stepper motor attached using rubber hose and hose clamps.
y axis using two of the cast aluminium bearing blocks.
with stepper motor and rubber hose attached.
Installed on the gantry.. I removed the stepper for this, didn't want to damage it.Notice the nut in the center that will be fixed to the carriage to move the Y axis.
Okay there you go that's 2 of the linear actuators installed.. I'm still planning on how to do the Z axis.. will keep you updated.
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