Member postings for Ronald Morrison

Change gears do not normally transmit much power so 3D printed gears can be used. If you specify what gears you need by describing width, how many teeth, pressure angle, and hole diameter it is likely someone could print them for you for a nominal fee and send them to you. People who have used 3D printed gears say that they hold up well and if they break or wear too much, are easy to print new ones.

Before you spend a lot of money changing the stepper motors, think of a cheap solution. Steppers lose steps because they don't have quite enough power to make the full step and then fall back to the previous step. If you are only losing a few steps occasionally, think how to increase the power slightly. I simply increased the power supply voltage a little to get rid of the missed steps.

Also look at the edge after using it to see if the fine edge you get from honing will hold up under machining. Let us know what you find so we can use the information to make decisions on our own carbides.

Instead of making this a difficult project with the blind hole for strength, can you change the material to gain the extra strength with an open hole?

I have Universal Gcode Sender as well as bCNC installed on my Raspberry Pi. Universal Gcode Sender insists on taking the mill Z axis to the top of its travel before it starts. bCNC starts where I tell it and only raises enough to clear any part that may be in its way as is defined in the gcode. YMMV

Look for sewing machine lights. Nice little magnetic mount with a switch, multiple LED's in a fairly narrow head. I have one on my mini lathe and may put one on my mill too. Cheap as they are, if one goes bad you just replace it, no crying over the cost.

My mistake. I saw the extra control at the bottom of the table set at an angle and expected it to control a knee but instead it raises and lowers the head. That does some of the function of a knee but keeps the entire mill base at benchtop. A larger mill would have a fixed head and a knee to bring the work to the necessary height but requires a floor level base with a knee to bring the work to the proper level. It's a compromise.

The fan belts on my tractors spend their entire lives under tension and the tractors may set unused for 6 to 8 months at a time. I don't think modern belts need to be relieved of their tension. The only factor I see with drive belts left under tension (my larger lathe, 10 X 24) is that the belts may take a set on the curve of the pulleys and cause a slight uneveness at startup but that goes away in the first few seconds of operation. If it is reasonably easy to relieve the tension, go ahead and relieve them. It is very difficult on my lathe so it doesn't happen.

A bigger and beefier version of the Seig X2 with the addition of the knee it should be relatively easy to adapt it to CNC in the future if that is your desire. It isn't a big mill with huge engine horsepower and the weight of a big mill for stability and rigidity but used as a small mill with appropriate size cutters and depth of cut and speed it should do good work for you.

Can the g-code for the crown be derived from treating the rim of the flywheel as a section of a sphere?

A drill chuck is intended to hold drill bits....which are not high precision. Their purpose is to make a hole, not necessarily a round hole and not to an exact size. You don't want the drill bit to wobble about but a tiny bit of runout in the chuck isn't going to affect the making of a hole. If you want a more precise hole you use a center drilling end mill in a collet.

Fusion 360 gave me a start in 3D modeling but it only took one year to learn what Autodesk had in mind, free sample, then reduce the features available to push one toward a purchase. I decided that for my needs (wants?) that FreeCAD would suffice and while it might take longer to learn, the features I learned wouldn't just disappear at the whim of a corporate bean counter. I no longer need to jump through Fusion's renewal process either which I found quite annoying.

If a stepper motor has power applied it acts as a brake. With power disconnected is turns freely but...it then acts as a generator so it can backfeed any electronics attached to it. Turn it slowly and there is no problem, spin it fast and it can provide too much voltage for the electronics and burn them out.

The display will work with a nearly dead battery. The measurement will not. Battery that is low will display fine but with the wrong readings.

I've been approaching the threading from a different perspective. Do I really need full depth threads for my fastening needs? Usually not, so instead of selecting the exact drill diameter I choose one of the drills just a few thousands of an inch bigger. Suddenly, starting a tap is so much easier and breakage of the tap has been eliminated.

The aluminum brazing rods will probably do everything you need for this repair. However, do be aware that this is an irreversable repair. Once done, TIG welding is no longer an option. The area to be TIG welded would be contaminated by the brazing rod.

Octopi will let you download the entire file to its internal memory before printing. That eliminates the network bottleneck and the necessity of saving to an SD card and plugging it in.

I replaced the original bed with a glass bed. It needs to be cleaned with isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol) regularly but when nice and clean the filament seems to stick really well. When the bed cools to room temp the print comes off easily.

If you can read a vernier now, will you still have the vision ability to read the vernier in 10 years? The battery of a digital will need replacing regularly but I find that I can at least see the digits. Not so the vernier.

A project like this would be easy to print on an Creality Ender 3 printer. While not the most sophisticated printer out there nor the largest, if you have the space to put it that printer is fairly inexpensive. Once you have the 3D printer you will be surprised at how many little projects it will come in handy for. Note that I have no ties to the company, just a satisfied user of one. If you do a search for "Creality Ender 3" it should show you the availability and price in whatever country you live in.