Greetings all; While working on my mill, putting ball screws in this sows ear, I needed to reduce the size of the ball nut itself because of insufficient room under the X table for the 19.07mm diameter nut, and anything that could function as a nut holder.
The clearance was about 19.17mm. Not enough to allow a wrapper on any strength at all around the nut so as to allow anchoring it to the top of the Y drive slider. So I stripped the nut, and used a dremel diamond disk to reduce its width to about 15mm, which still gave about 1.5mm of steel around the ball tracks in the nut. But when I was re-assembling the nut, I managed to drop one of the 2, 2-56 x 1/8" screws that retain the nuts ball recycling tube hold down strap. This screw is about the same length, but about 2 times the diameter of the one in the bow hinge of most glasses frames. Dropped in about an inch of leaf & twig litter from a Maple tree in the neighbors yard across the back fence on the deck flooring in front of my shop building. Assuming it was steel and that one of my dial indicator magnetic bases would pick it up I spent about 20 minutes stirring in the litter, sort of sweeping it into small piles I could pick up and drop in the trash can, but never picked up the screw that I know of. It finally dawned on me that while it was white, it could be plated brass. Dragging out a screwdriver that was known to be magnetized, I confirmed the other screw was indeed non-ferrous. Oops. But it makes sense as one would not want a magnetized screw to impede the otherwise free rolling balls. And apparently its gone forever. So until I can find another, also brass, I am dead in the water because I cannot re-load the nut with balls until that screw hole, which is just big enough to let a 1/16" ball leak out, is plugged. To buy it out on the net will cost me at least a $20 bill (100+ship), and with minimum order charges, possibly as much as $50. So I am headed out in the morning to look for a semi-local place where I might get lucky and find a brass screw that size, and failing that, some brass stock suitable for making one, but I've no clue if my single tooth can make one of those. 56 tpi seems like it would push the G76 canned code about as far as it can be pushed, although it has made some very good 32 tpi threads. So, if I fail on this, I'll be back in a day or so, asking folks to go thru their "hell boxes" to see if one can be found. Cheers, Gene Heskett -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene> US V Castleman, SCOTUS, Mar 2014 is grounds for Impeaching SCOTUS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The best possible search technologies are now affordable for all companies. Download your FREE open source Enterprise Search Engine today! Our experts will assist you in its installation for $59/mo, no commitment. Test it for FREE on our Cloud platform anytime! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=145328191&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
