Stuck trying to center sled, and finish calibration

That’s a nice looking linkage! :wink:

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Thanks Logan,

It’s been a long thinking process. I have small ball thrust bearings between all the linkages to remove any play. They were all machined with digital readout on a mill so within .01 mm. I am hoping it will be as accurate as possible. The connecting linkages are 3” so equal to 12 chain links.

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Picture please :slight_smile:

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They are just 6mm thrust ball bearings with grooved bearing washers, ordered from Bangood. It was about $10 for 10.

I chose ball over needle bearings as the ball washers have a groove in the washer that would hold it with no sideways movement, where needles could have some movement. They are fastened with 6mm cap screws and nyloc nuts firm enough to hold without causing resistance. I can take some pics. Vertical linkages are from 5mm stainless, parallels are 6mm aluminium, to reduce top weight. All holes need to be very accurate to maintain tight tolerance. Once I have the machine working and tested, I will post accuracy results.

Denis

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Pictures would be great, plus maybe a link to the bearings you used.

I suspect I’m not the only one who has a banging good time and gets lost on the gazillion item megamart

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I’ve done this step for the bottom feed and both chains extend to the “known” length. My problem is that not enough chain is extended to hook up the sled. I’m using a 12ft top beam and have added to the length of both chains.

in the advanced setting tab you can set what this length is.

personally, I would set the value to something that puts the sled at (or at
least very close) to the center.

David Lang

Change “extend chain length” to 2032mm for a 12 foot top beam.

Thanks!