Oznog
Active Member
Or look on CNCZone for ballscrews in their "For Sale" section.
I have similar misgivings about the chain drive. I'm sure it'll basically work, but the overall performance downsides I've heard described sound accurate.
Also I've seen some decent linear belt drives on eBay before that I almost got- and honestly should have gotten.
I've only got my CNC mill with a leadscrew personally. Ballscrews are much less backlash, and lower friction. But more important is that ballscrews are pitched with fewer turns/in. For a big router table, it means the screw doesn't have to turn at such high speeds to move the head around fast, thus the upper limit of what speeds are practical to run is much higher.
But note that for either leadscrew or ballscrew, that rod cross-connecting both sides to 1 motor wouldn't work. You'd need a pair of right-angle gearboxes which would increase backlash, friction, and cost, which is why a lot of tables use two motors stepped together. They cannot share a single driver, though. So you'd need a 4-axis drive for a simple XYZ router table.
I have similar misgivings about the chain drive. I'm sure it'll basically work, but the overall performance downsides I've heard described sound accurate.
Also I've seen some decent linear belt drives on eBay before that I almost got- and honestly should have gotten.
I've only got my CNC mill with a leadscrew personally. Ballscrews are much less backlash, and lower friction. But more important is that ballscrews are pitched with fewer turns/in. For a big router table, it means the screw doesn't have to turn at such high speeds to move the head around fast, thus the upper limit of what speeds are practical to run is much higher.
But note that for either leadscrew or ballscrew, that rod cross-connecting both sides to 1 motor wouldn't work. You'd need a pair of right-angle gearboxes which would increase backlash, friction, and cost, which is why a lot of tables use two motors stepped together. They cannot share a single driver, though. So you'd need a 4-axis drive for a simple XYZ router table.
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