It may depend a lot on how well the machine is designed around the rack. We have two moving gantry 5x10ft routers that have been no end of a maintenance nightmare for me, because of their rack and pinion design. Since 2005 I have had to replace 2 sets of racks 4 sets of pinions, and countless bearings, and transmission shafts in the drive train for the rack and pinion on each machine. And the quality of the cut at federates above 200ipm leaves much to be desired compared to our similarly sized and specked ball screw driven machines. To give them credit we are using them much harder than they were designed for, we run'em 24hr 5 days a week, and have more than twice as many machining hours on them than any other machine the manufacturer knows of.
Todd Zuercher P. Graham Dunn Inc. 630 Henry Street Dalton, Ohio 44618 Phone: (330)828-2105ext. 2031 -- P. Graham Dunn Phone: 330-828-2105 E-mail: [email protected] 630 Henry St. Dalton, OH 44618 www.pgrahamdunn.com -----Original Message----- From: Mark Wendt [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Sunday, July 22, 2012 7:46 AM To: Enhanced Machine Controller (EMC) Subject: Re: [Emc-users] [Off] Ballscrew Support? On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 8:38 PM, Jeshua Lacock <[email protected]> wrote: <snippage> > > Of course, you could also just go the rack-and-pinion route. > > The rack teeth should point down to shed dirt and chips. > > I don't recall the specifics, but I read somewhere that rack-and-pinon was > not a good solution. Maybe it had something to do with resonance? > > > Cheers, > > Jeshua Lacock > Dunno why they said that, I've been running the rack and pinion for a few years now, as have quite a few others on their machines, and the rack and pinion works just fine. No resonance, though that's usually a factor of the stepper motor and drive, and there are ways to dampen the resonance so that it's a non-factor. I like the very minimal amount of backlash, and very positive gear engagement in my setup. Mark ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
