Hello, I am building a microscope using C-beam linear motor bundles. I've stacked the X and Y motors using the obvious mounting approach. Now I want to stack a Z-axis vertically (see Figure 3 - XYZ-T-LST stage from https://www.zaber.com/wiki/Manuals/XY_XYZ_Stages for an example) by connecting the Z axis end plate to the Y axis gantry plate. There does not seem to be a specific C-beam part to achieve this. You can see on the page I linked there is a large angle bracket that screws into the Y gantry and into the back of the Z-stage's C-beam. I am curious if C-beam has a compontent to do this (for example for sale on the openbuildspartstore.com) or if anybody has suggestions how to achieve this. WHile I have access to a machine shop and CAD tools (I could design and manufacture an angle bracket), I'd rather just order a part known to work for this.
You may be able to mount an extra C-Beam Gantry Plate on the bottom end by matching up the existing bolt holes and running longer screws through the assembly into the V-slot end. Then just match this C-Beam Gantry plate to the one on the other axis and bolt through. You may need to drill out some threaded holes to make this work and you will probably need some spacers to compensate for the thickness of the bolt heads that will wind up sandwiched between the plates. A pair of C-Beam riser plates may also be useful.
Thanks for the suggestion. I don't see any "C-beam riser plate" on the parts store, it's mentioned on the gantry plate page but I don't see an item for it on the store. I'm trying to avoid drilling or tapping holes, mostly because I want many people to be able to just purchase existing parts from the store and assemble the scope without a machine shop.
If you can handle the Z-axis being rotated 90 deg, this can be done without any drilling or even any extra plates, just a couple of longer screws. If not, I'm not seeing any possible combinations where drilling out some threads won't be required. Here is a suggestion for the simplest way to do it (shown exploded). This will require drilling the threads out of two holes in the gantry plate as well as 6 additional washers to raise the gantry plate up a bit for clearance.
Hey guys, We do have the riser plates for the C-Beam shields(the metal plates that can be used to cover the lead screw from debris) but the shields are taking us a little longer to make then the plates so we were holding off on releasing these. However We see now there are other applications that they can be used for so we will work on updating the Part Store with them soon. Thank you Mark
