Greg,
Looks more like a fairly big metal lathe. :)

Greg, a few suggestions.
"I was a little disappointed because while I was counter sinking the plate, the limit lock on my drill press slipped and I over counter sunk one of the holes. :mad:" Weld up the screwed up one and re countersink it. Trust me this works :o. Been there done that.....

"I'll have to counter sink the bolts because I put the cable chain too close and the bolts hit it.:(" Would it work to cut the head of the bolt down in height with the lathe?

Hi J.R.

Thanks for the suggestions.

On the bolts, because the plate is so close, it would be easier to just counter sink.

On the plate....great suggestion which I may try but my welding is pretty bad.:o Do you think there would be any issues with the heat in the plate? I'm just using regular steel, not the nice tool grade stuff suggested.

I'll try to post some pics today.

Greg I don't think it would be a problem. Try laying the plate on a soaking wet rag while welding, this will keep it cooler around the area of the weld.

I tried different bolts in the stub axle plate. It's close but it may be ok. I've included a pic of the plate bolted (without teflon washer) up against the y car.

Here is a pic of the slide plate with the over counter sunk screw.

Here's a pic of the stub for the axle plate and the bearing support base. I had ordered an extra v bearing to use for this but I'm not sure it's going to work.

More later.....

For the over-countersunk, a copper washer might do the trick, if you can find one. It should be soft enough to deform and fill the gap.

There seems to be multiple issue with the hold-down roller, but I have to take the missus a 6am cup of coffee now. More later . . . . .

First get a suitable sealed ball bearing that will roll under the angle iron of the rail. It is supposed to be a 6304.2RSR, but that is not critical. A V-Roller is the wrong thing in this application, to roll under the flat part of the rail. Two things to check when finding the right bearing:
1. It must be narrow enough to miss the screw heads you used for the cable chain brackets where they are screwed into the side of the gantry. (Or you need to move those screws lower down and shorten the brackets).
2. The outer diameter must be big enough (and the ID small enough) so that the stubshaft will miss the underside of the Y-car. It has been know to grind notches in the shaft and/or y-car to get the clearance.

Then you have the smaller problem of the screws touching the plastic cable chain. You could countersink the screws, or you can dump the screws and weld it together. You could even cut away the bottom section of the bearing support base plate before welding it together.

On the over-countersunk of the z-slide plate, you could use longer screws to reach the other side of the rectangular tube. Or even longer and fit nuts on the other side of the tube.

Thanks Gerald,

I was afraid you were going to say the bearing wouldn't work.:o After your message last night I figured you had seen something I didn't so I took a look at things again. Under the Y car to see how the bearing was riding. The one side of the "v" just barely made it on the rail. By the time I add the teflon washers it may not touch at all.

I think I'll give the copper washer trick a try. If it doesn't work I'll probably go with J.R.'s suggestion.

Greg,

I had the same issue with the bolt heads touching the cable chain.

I welded the plate to the pivot plate (forgot proper name) in strategic locations (so it's easy to remove with grinder). My bearing shaft is attached with a "V" head bolt and counter sunk on the outside of the plate.

I've decided to hold off on this part until I get most everything painted.

I can only paint outside and with the weather getting colder I'm limited on time.

Got my paint booth all set up.

Thanks for the idea J.R. :D

Parts all ready for primer
 

I decided the best way to handle the scale removal was brute force.

The parts turned out great. Can't wait to paint.:)

All I needed after I was finished was a few palm trees and some surf maybe a beach ball or two.....or a Corona and a lounge chair.:D

Good grief! That's the first grit blasting that I have seen under a gazebo! :D

looks like snow, please check the weather :D

Greg,
Looks great! But we dont even have snow up here in Canada yet. :eek:

Your paint is going to adhere well now too. Beautiful work.

You don't have to worry about grease. Looks great.

Nils, you would be surprised at how much grease there is on steel and how it affects paint adhesion. Clean steel rusts within 30 minutes. If you don't see rust on steel, then it isn't clean! :)

Thanks for all the kudos!!:)


Gerald,

You're right about the grease. I spent the previous day de-greasing the parts. If you don't get all the grease off... the sandblasting just pushes the grease deeper into the steel and it's harder to get the paint to stick without fisheyes.

Of course cleaning all that sand up was not an easy task either. Sand dust everywhere...even inside the closed up house....neighbors houses....cars down the street.:eek: read: unhappy wife and neighbors

What a nice finish to paint on though. Originally I was going to use auto paint. But at $100+ per gallon I decided on the $24 Rustoleum professional high performance paint. All the priming was done with rustoleum matching primer.

Getting ready for paint TODAY!! :D just waiting for the temp to come up.

Do you own that gridblasting equipment or did you rent it for the day. Must have being a monster of a compressor

Hi Kobus,

I rented that compressor and sandblaster for $120 USD for 4 hours. The rental shop is less than a mile from my house so 4 hours was enough time. Here are some pics of both. :)

Global Warming. Snow ahead of time

Yuri....snow in brazil :confused:
Mother nature is is more then ever in serious need of our help then :eek: !!
Were I’m from we don’t call this snow... it’s consider as simple morning frost :D

No. Not yet. :rolleyes:

We're on the other side of the Earth. Our time is the opposite to his. It's almost summer.

We will sell carbon credits.:D

His work is very good.:)

Just think if you did this mess in 4 hours what could have happened if you rented it for 24 hours

That poor car parked to the left of the gazebo.....Hoped you havn't rolled down the windows or operated the wipers before getting all the grit off. The glass could be permanently scored. Same goes for other stuff that is supposed to slide. Patio doors and windows, etc.

Yes,
Sandblasting is nasty nasty nasty stuff. Gets in everything. :eek:

The car is a project car that when someday I become rich:rolleyes: I will restore. Possibly beginning with (yuk) sandblasting.

Not looking forward to that nasty white stuff our Maple Leaf friends refer to as "frost":p Prepare a room Yuri I need to get away from this stuff.
:D

Here are some pics of the priming and painting. Not as colorful as Yuri's primer.
:)

Nice color!

Greg,

Nice paint booth and setup. Oh, and the work on the MM also. :)

That gazebo is strong. The ones we buy over here has thin little poles and a MM will not be able to hang on it while painting. Nice going GregM :cool:

bent rails
 

While preping my rails for paint I remembered a problem I had with one of the rails. After cutting the rail down I noticed it was warped pretty bad (cheap steel):(. Running a line from one end to the other, there was about .625 inch gap in the middle. Sorry, no photos but I've included a drawing (not to scale).

Remembering what a wise man told me once about using a welder to straighten warped steel;)
http://mechmate.com/forums/showthrea...92&postcount=6

I ran beads of weld centered between the holes from the outside to the inside(shown as dark lines in the drawing) starting in the middle of the rail and working to the ends alternating sides.

The angle straightend right up to within .040 inch (darn inch people):D


Tomorrow I'll grind the welds down and paint.

I hope this helps anyone who might have ended up with warped material.


Greg J. Glad you got your issue figured out:)
Robert, sorry for the brain fart...spelled leaf wrong

It's been slow moving but more progress.

Problem is I need the machine NOW for a project I'm working on. :)

In my last post I showed the table assembled but it was only put together with temporary bolts because I forgot to order the beveled washers.:(
When I got the washers I found that they fit great on the large channel but they were a little long for the 3" channel so I had to trim the small end a little.
Attachment 2529

Attachment 2530

Greg,

Wow, painting the beveled washers also...... :p

Just yanking your chain guy.

I haven't checked out your thread in awhile, but it's looking good. :cool:

Thanks Greg,

Can't compete with all these other great looking machines though.;)

I have a question about the holes for the prox sensors.

First off I never drilled the holes so that has to be done before I can go any further.:o

As I was looking at the drawings "classic style" a thought came to mind.
On the x rails there is no problem with bearings but on the y rails there seems to be, at least as far as the hold down roller goes. If there are holes in that rail won't the hold down bearing drop into the hole?:confused:

Any help would be appreciated.

The holddown bearing runs near the edge of the angle iron - only a small part of the roller could get over the hole . . . that is only when you are at the limit of travel (when you hit the end-stops).

Thanks Gerald:)