I am in the process of upgrading my lead 1010 with the high Z Mod. While disassembling I have noticed some of my Y axis wheels are beginning to wear, 3 top wheels on each side of the cnc. I feel like I took the time during assembly and aligned/tightened/adjusted the wheels properly(well as best as I could). I feel like this would be fixed permanently by converting my Y to linear rails. Has anyone done this previously and has some pictures or plans or information to help me in the conversion, that would be freaking awesome! As a note I am using all openbuilds parts and the openbuilds extreme solid v wheels see pictures. Please help me if you can I would really appreciate it thank you. Also I have had the machine about 2 years but have used it sparingly maybe a few times a month so shouldn't be a high usage issue but I could be wrong. Let me know if I am being overly reactive. Thanks Lead1010 cnc conversion slop design
A little "running in" wear is normal, and the wear for 2 year old wheels on these still looks great! Also, nothing wrong with considering them a long-term consumable - they are subject to a lot of forces and dust.
Thanks Peter- I have noticed from searching other threads similar to this you definitely try to steer people away from ditching the wheels. I am curious your thoughts on this, seems like in my head especially when going to these taller towers that all the torque and weight is resting on the wheels and any slop either built into them or wear that grows will easily be present in the machining especially with harder materials. I could be wrong but it feels like switching to linear rails takes the potential for any slop to build between any gaps in the wheels and the Cbeam. I appreciate all your help and feed back and am genuinely curious if i am way off base and wasting my time/money in pursuing the want/need for ditching the wheels and moving to linear rails. Thank you!
My personal opinion: You can take the most expensive rail, but as long as you bolt it to an aluminum frame.... Linear rails, on a big heavy cast iron machine... now that's a different story. The wheels themselves (properly adjusted and on a well built machine) don't cause much deflections, frame design does: See How to calculate V-Slot® deflection - thats why I love the dual-X-rails on the LEAD1010 High-Z and LEAD1515s. I'd rather spend my budget on a torsion box underneath the machine, and bracing, than replacing wheels with linear rails.
Thanks for the reply what your saying does make sense i guess just the issue isnt just in the wheels or not at all if you stiffen that up another part just gains more potential and you chase that around until the whole thing is solid. So with that being said and switching gears a bit i know i have seen some posts and i think you were on them previously of assembling this High Z mod not exactly as it is designed but in a manner that gives only a few more inches of height but the most rigid construction. Do you have any recommendations of examples/ideas of how i could go about that i really only want to be able to machine somewhere are 3"-4" of material but would like to add to the rigidity of the machine at the same time if possible. I have tossed the idea around of building the Z linear actuator the way it was built orginally(rather than flip the c beam around) keeping the cross bars lower and utilizing the movement of the actuator rather than longer bits, what do you think? I really do appreciate all your support on this forum thank you.
I’m working on a high z mod for the lead 1515. Has anyone seen a pdf of plans? If so, please point me in the right direction!
