Re: Ballscrew bearings

Hi Chris,

Don't laugh, but on my mini miller I am using the end bearings off Hoover
Junior vacuum cleaner brushes! These have a kind of rounded cup in which
the balls work and so they take endthrust (not a lot in my case) and allow a
bit of misalignment. I have a substantial tube at one end of each slide with
two of these bearings in, working against a sleeve which is permanently
fixed to the screw. One end of the tube is solid, whilst the other has a
fine-screwed plug allowing me to set the preload accurately. The other end
of the screw is just held in a plain ballrace. Perhaps you could do
something similar using a couple of angular contact roller bearings? I get
all my ball races from a local scrapyard - its amazing what gets thrown out.
My friend who is my contact there has a bucket full of all types and sizes
of races, mostly still boxed and wrapped in the original oiled paper,
presumable thrown out when companies have been clearing out stores etc. I
get all my materials from this yard, mostly free, and it is almost all new
'offcuts'. A couple of weeks ago we came upon a 5 foot length of 2"
diameter Phosphor Bronze bar which we got for �10 ! These places are well
worth a visit.

Ian

--
Ian W. Wright
Sheffield UK

----- Original Message -----
From: Les Watts <leswatts@...>
To: <CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@onelist.com>
> > I know in an ideal world I'd have the space to mount (and the cash to
> > pay for) a pair of the premanufactured ballscrew end blocks. But I
> > don't, so I'm trying to come up with a smaller, simpler, cheaper
> > alternative that will still give acceptable performance on a lathe
> > crosslide, which doesn't need to move very fast.
> >
> > Any suggestions?