Good idea! Hey how's your machine coming along?

 

I don't read the general forum much. What's going on with your carriages? Feel free to open a discussion right here if you like. I've taken my linear carriages and ballscrews apart many times. I actually take apart almost everything eventually lol.

 

My rails are THK and they were used. A couple of my carriages did / do the same. I took them apart and flushed them with solvent but be careful not to wash the plastic & rubber end caps with solvent. Also make sure you don't mix the balls with other carriages. Do one at a time. They shouldn't slide freely without a push no matter what unless they have zero preload so it's good they take a little effort. While you have them apart, clean and laying on a towel, inspect the recirculation tubes for debrit. When reassembling them, install one end cap, fill with as many balls as you can (evenly). Then insert the remaining balls in the loose end cap and seal the tubes with some grease you can flip it without spilling. I bought some thick, heavy duty lithium grease. I work with heavy equipment for a living and we use something similar. You really want it thick enough so it stays in place.

 

I also noticed that once my carriages were mounted solid, there were no more issues with the "grabbing". Some bearing systems won't feel right until they are properly mounted. I am not saying this is the case for sure but lets just see how they feel after you clesn and grease them because the THICK grease helped mine a lot.

 

This is what I use at work on heavy equipment bearings. You definitely don't want to over grease the bearings and cause the balls to stop circulating either.

 

I figured out my assembly issue. I really had to take a step back and think about things but using linear rails attached to the cbeams can introduce some interesting alignment issues.

 

It may be hard to visualize this but I was thinking I machined one of my Y axis gantry plates wrong because everything looked good when I measured from the gantry plates to the front of the machine. To actually fix my issue, all I need to do is loosen one of the Y axis rails and silde the cbeam it's mounted to forward a little. This just showed me I must have skipped and alignment step. Probably, to do things right, I need to tear down the entire machine and reassemble each part carefully. Basically, these linear rails introdue a new alignment variable as your machine frame can be square but at the same time, the rails may not be square.

 

I think I am going to bolt a piece of material to the side of one of the y axis cbeams so I can at least install one rail parallel to the cbeam. I can the use an indicator to line up the other. My x axis rails, being in different orientations, are going to be difficult. I should probably pick up a straight edge.

 

I think I was excited to show an assembled machine so I skipped some of the critical alignment steps. That's definitely what is great about the vslot and v-wheels. That system really simplifies everything.

 

I tore down the machine this weekend. First I squared the very bottom structure measuting from corner to corner diagonally. I then installed some tabs flush with the inside of the y axis cbeams. This allowed me to properly space them with a tape measure. After this I pushed each gantry plate forward against 123 blocks on each side.

 

I also attached the tslot table from the bottom side. The Sphinx bottom frame (same on this mschine) allows access to a good portion of the sub plate from below the machine. I marked out where the bottom tslots land, drilled for m5 bolts and used POST assembly t-nuts to draw the tslot table doen on to the cast sub plate. Man that cast sub plate used to look so sharp lol.

 

The Misumi tslot plates have 6mm slots on the bottom and 8.5mm slots on top.

 

That's awesome bro! My machine is still not operational. I am waiting on some inductive limit sensors. I was going to use those creltek sensors but I pulled up the board traces on a couple of the sensors. If you ever use them, be very carefull installing the wires. Those little wire clips are one time use lol.

 

Yeah, take it from me, make sure you're 100% certain before you clip the wires to the sensor. I tried opening the clip and the traces pulled up. They are fragile. I bought some waterproof inductive sensors. They're a little bigger and they require a soldered inline diode to operate correctly.

 

These are the ones I bought.

 

I know exactly what you mean. I haven't figured that out either. It would be nice to have everything tucked away. With these switches, you only need a piece of steel to activate them so you could actually use the ballscrew end supports or something like that.

 

I think it's from the top of the sensor.

 

I'll let you know for sure once I play with them as I can't truly make a recommendation right now.

 

Search openbuilds for the sensor name. There is someone else who has used them.