RE: [CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO] Affordable ball screws

>Just
>taking a standard nut and pumping oil into the middle, a la a car crank
>bearing, is not going to provide the type of Bernoulli lift forces you

need.

Agreed. How about taking a standard nut, and drilling a spiral of small
(<1mm)
holes that follow the thread? Keeping it fairly symmetrical would be the
most
important thing.

You would have to sleeve the whole nut to be able to pump oil through
all the feed
holes.

>I really don't think this is very practical.

Certainly not straight forward. But probably not impossible.

>A hydrostatic bedway slide is a
>lot more doable, and, aside from the oil collection problem, could be

Yes. Would be the right place to start. Machining the feed holes into
the slide
is harder, but probably a lot less critical.

>Recovering the oil without the chips and cutting lube is why
>the makers of these machines make them somewhat differently from

How about using water+water soluble oil as coolant and bearing fluid? A
lot
of the hydrostatic bearing references I found seems to use water instead
of oil.

That way you can use a big tank that combines filtering with settlement
to get rid of
solids, and you don't need to worry about keeping two wet systems
separate.

I saw a gear cutting machine recently that uses a hydrostatic bearing on
the Z axis.
It uses thick oil, probably close to 90 weight, that gets pumped into
the Z axis sleeve, and used
as coolant on the cutting bit. All the oil gets circulated through a
100l drum and two truck oil filters.

The machine stands in the far corner of the shop, and everything close
to it is full of oil. Real
messy. It cuts linear gear sections for gate openers 24/7.

Regards,
Nic.