About ten years ago, I was given this machine that my woodworking teachers found in another place. After trying to get the machine to work, I had to replace the electronics with new ones from Probotix store. Last year, the machine had to be moved from old shop to new one. After trying to get the machine to work, I had to replace old stepper motor drivers and controller board with new drivers and CNC XPro V3 board. Now, the machine wasn't working good due to white plastic bushings that worn out. The machine has 1" solid steel rods. The company that built the machine went out of business. I would like to replace the bushings with linear bearings but I don't know how to get linear bearings. Any suggestions?
It's impossible to provide any information without having exact specs. Are you positive that it's 1" and not 25mm? What is the outer diameter of the original bushing? How is the bushing secured? What is the allowable bushing length?
Aliexpress would be a good place to start looking. Plenty of price points with quality levels to match. Attaching them may be an issue and something you'll need to work out.
Aliexpress may have plastic bushings but I can't find correct ones. The machine was made in 1980s and required a computer with either parallel port or old kind of serial port and DOS. We started taking the machine apart to get at the bushings but we couldn't remove the table from the machine after removing four machine screws. There may be more screws under the platform on which the whole machine is attached to. I tried to search the Internet for info on the machine but I couldn't find it. The lead screw and steel rods for the Y-Axis carriage run under the table. My machine isn't the same as the one shown in the image. My machine has double swing-open plastic doors and the air pressure gauge was mounted on the platform instead of on the front panel.
I found two "hidden" screws that I had to remove before removing table from the machine. The plastic bushing are sized like this: 1" inside diameter 1.55" outside diameter 1.75" long 5/8" cut from top of bushings I have five choices: buy new bushings or have them custom-made. replace bushings with linear bearings replace old machine with new one such as LEAD Machine don't use the machine in the shop and use my machine at home bring my machine from home to shop
Probably the cheapest option but the question is will you have a fully viable machine once replaced? Easily done and not all that expensive but still goes back to the previous question.
Note the space between the rod and the bushing at the bottom. I would 3D print new bushings but I don't know exactly what kind of plastic filament that I need. The rods are hollow! I thought that the rods are solid because of the ends of the rods. Any suggestions?
The bushings came today and they fit my machine perfectly (one was a little bit too tight). The hardest job was installing the two "hidden" screws that go through the shaft, the spacers, and into the platform.
