As a followup to my post from
Thursday about plumbing the oiling system for my G0704, there was a discussion about getting a good tap locally. Reader and frequent contributor Mark Matis pointed out in a comment that
Ace Hardware had a 1/8-27 NPT tap listed online. The "check your store" feature said to call the stores to check status and my closest/most convenient Ace Hardware had one in stock. It just doesn't get better than that. I tested it on one hole, found it made a tremendous improvement over my Horrible Freight tap and then the holiday weekend happened with the other things I wrote about.
Today, I finished getting all the holes in the slide tapped and the fittings mounted. Here's three out of four:
There's another right angle fitting on the far side of the slide, which is probably not worth posting a separate picture of. The main oil distribution is on this side, and I'm using three-way "Tee" fittings to split the oil lines in different directions. There are two different-style fittings on the ball nuts that will stick up from the two openings in the cross slide, so six different hoses will end up on this side. There will be a hose that sends oil up the Z-axis to the mill's headstock, which will have a two way split to dribble oil on both of the Z-axis dovetail ways.
Eventually, the tubing and oil distribution will look something like this:
This portion of the modification is on
Hoss's open web site, not on the copyrighted DVD that I bought, so I assume I can link to it. You can see this picture is a screen capture from a
YouTube video here. I anticipate people searching for information on the Grizzly G0704 CNC conversion, the G0704 oiling system and so on might (will?) find this page. I should bundle up links to everything I ever wrote on this project and make it a separate page, like my AR from an 80% lower page.
Now I really have to figure out how to get
the ball bearings back into the ball nut and get back on track with completing the base. Before I take off the Z-axis and headstock and modify all that. Aw, gee...
guess who has a video on doing it?
Forward progress in the new year.
ReplyDeleteI watched the Hoss video, and then I watched the next video in the YouTube queue.
This contributor has a good amount of close up film, and talks about reballing the the ballnut, and mentions that when you have wear, you use larger ball bearings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8a14YbmUEHE#t=506.678881
The job looks finicky but doable, perhaps do it over a shallow baking dish, or lipped baking tin, and line it with either a shop rag, or a face towel.
I watched Hoss' video and a different one, but it doesn't look like a hard thing to do. Tedious, sure, but no big deal.
DeleteThis video taught me something important, though, so thanks for finding and posting it. The two I watched put the balls on with the ballscrew in the nut. I'd have to put the balls in the nut, rebuild it onto the screw and then remove the ballnut as soon as it's built. That means I need a ballnut removal tool and I never had one that worked.
This guy stuck the balls into their grooves with Vaseline (while saying grease is better) and then made them captive with a piece of tube or hose down the center. The tube is like a BRT, but not the fussy one I was working with. Using a piece of half inch OD tube will save me a step.
When the ballnut is removed with the fancy BRT, it goes over a long machined shaft. When the ballscrew is put back on I'll be screwing the un-machined end of the ballscrew into the nut and pushing the tool out the back.
I'm going to try to do this with a piece of half inch OD tube instead of the ballscrew.