I rescued a CNC plasma table a couple years ago and haven't had time to get it up and running until now. This was a diy someone else had put together and the price was right so it followed me home. It has some issues with RFI noise (not a single shielded wire on it and the plasma cutter is 1" from the CNC control box...) and it suffers from some shall we say less than optimal design ideas, I'll just leave it at that.
The Zaxis assembly was crude at best and didn't hold the hand torch strait so it cut at an angle and the touch off mechanism took so much force to move it that it flexed the head every time it touched off. I built a new Z axis for it and am in the process of reassembly and rewiring (with all shielded wire) and noticed that the Y axis carriage on the gantry that carries the Zaxis was oscillating in the Xaxis direction as it moved through it's travel, my suspicion is that the motor shaft is bent slightly, I pulled the motor off and discovered that the only thing carrying the load of the head is the motor bearings. it is built from 2" square tube and uses a kit for the carriers that uses 6 bearings on each carrier, these work fine on the gantry because the gantry holds them in place in 1 axis but on the Y axis it can rotate on the square tube because there is nothing holding it but the motor. the direction of rotation is toward the head meaning that all the weight from the head is pulling against the motor bearing.
So I guess my question is are these nema 23 stepper motors designed to carry machine load on the shaft bearings or are they designed to only have the drive torque on their bearings. I can't seem to find any info on the motors which suggests that they are of Chinese decent, they have a number on them, 60H366DF1B, it leads to a couple hits on a google search to suppliers not anything about a manufacturer and no specs on the bearings at all.
I'm working on a solution to get the load off of the motor but haven't really come up with something good yet, I'll take some pics in a bit and get them on here.
The Zaxis assembly was crude at best and didn't hold the hand torch strait so it cut at an angle and the touch off mechanism took so much force to move it that it flexed the head every time it touched off. I built a new Z axis for it and am in the process of reassembly and rewiring (with all shielded wire) and noticed that the Y axis carriage on the gantry that carries the Zaxis was oscillating in the Xaxis direction as it moved through it's travel, my suspicion is that the motor shaft is bent slightly, I pulled the motor off and discovered that the only thing carrying the load of the head is the motor bearings. it is built from 2" square tube and uses a kit for the carriers that uses 6 bearings on each carrier, these work fine on the gantry because the gantry holds them in place in 1 axis but on the Y axis it can rotate on the square tube because there is nothing holding it but the motor. the direction of rotation is toward the head meaning that all the weight from the head is pulling against the motor bearing.
So I guess my question is are these nema 23 stepper motors designed to carry machine load on the shaft bearings or are they designed to only have the drive torque on their bearings. I can't seem to find any info on the motors which suggests that they are of Chinese decent, they have a number on them, 60H366DF1B, it leads to a couple hits on a google search to suppliers not anything about a manufacturer and no specs on the bearings at all.
I'm working on a solution to get the load off of the motor but haven't really come up with something good yet, I'll take some pics in a bit and get them on here.
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