I haven’t built my Maslow yet but as the cold sets in and my outdoor
adventures come to a halt, I’ll have a bit more bandwidth for experimenting…I saw a mention of a ball screw (I know them as lead screws… are they the
same thing?)
a ball screw is a lead screw that has a special nut that isn’t direct sliding
contact with the leads, but has ball bearings between the nut and the lead screw
Maslow that might help to overcome some of the challenges with
chain sag/stretch and thought it might be an opportunity to contribute.You see, I’m installing Maslow on a wall in my shop that happens to lie
between trusses, meaning I have over 20’ of overhead space. I’m thinking that
this would more than accommodate the height required to have a lead screw
extending above the machine.A lot of you have experience with traditional XY CNC’s which all use these
screws; can anyone recommend a source where I can start research on the parts
necessary to pull this off? It appears that if I want to keep a 4’x8’ area,
I’ll need screws in the neighborhood of 10’ long. (Assuming Pythagoreas was
all he’s cracked up to be)
actually, you will need ones a little longer (the maslow uses 11’ chains by
default, and would help to be a little larger)
you need to pick something that will stay put when there is no power (not a
screw with a steep enough pitch that it moves under the system’s weight)
are you going to anchor the screws from rotating and rotate the nut? or are you
going to anchor the nut from rotating and rotate the scres? remember that both
anchors need to pivot (this doesn’t eliminate the need for the pantograph arms
or similar)