Hi All

I am in the middle of designing a small Desktop CNC machine and thinking of using round shaft in the design. If it works well I will publish the design. it needs to be the hardened and ground steel as used with linear bearings.

Hopefully a local UK supplier to make it easier for constructors.

Cost is an issue about 3 metres is needed per unit. (in 6 cuts so no worry with transport, maximum length is about 700mm) some 20mm and some 25mm

Cheers
John McNamara

Thank you all for responding.

I can source the material in Melbourne OZ from a couple of suppliers fairly inexpensively, I guess it is from Asia but it works well in the router I posted a few weeks back. Although in that case it was the supported kind that comes bolted to an upside down aluminium T section.

I don't want to use that type in the new machine due to the added cost of the bearing blocks, and supported rail does cost considerably more.

The machine is to be a desktop design, not intended for heavy cutting but it should be accurate. But there is not much point in designing something with difficult to source parts hence my question.

A while back actually quite a while I made a machine that used linear bearings running on a unhardened ground shaft. I thought I could get away with it as it was very lightly loaded. At that time there was no Asian revolution and the hardened bar was very expensive. But no go, bad idea. the bar marked badly and It had to replaced with the proper hardened variety.

I learnt my lesson, for this machine hardened and ground they will be.

Cheers
John

Edited By John McNamara on 03/06/2013 16:15:55

Yes a good link Thank you Nigel.

It confirms the hardened and ground shaft is available at a reasonable cost, I guess there are other suppliers too.

Cheers

John