If space is at a premium near the motor, and the torque requirement is light, you could use a string (some durable cord) tethered off to one side of the shaft, wrapped around the shaft once or twice, then draped over a pulley or two to get to someplace where you could mount a spring and a solenoid. The spring (or a weight) would provide tension to hold the shaft in place, and the solenoid would counteract that to release tension when the stepper was energized. If your Z axis doesn't move a lot (2d or 2.5d usage mostly) then good cord should last a long time. Could possibly be done with guitar string, and if more holding torque were needed, adding a disk to increase the diameter of the shaft where the string wraps around could make it lock better.
Just my 2c. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download Intel® Parallel Studio Eval Try the new software tools for yourself. Speed compiling, find bugs proactively, and fine-tune applications for parallel performance. See why Intel Parallel Studio got high marks during beta. http://p.sf.net/sfu/intel-sw-dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
