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Gordon: Servo Article - Machine Tools — Parallax Forums

Gordon: Servo Article - Machine Tools

Kenny GardnerKenny Gardner Posts: 169
edited 2015-03-02 11:10 in General Discussion
Gordon,

In your March 2015 Servo article, you've got a picture of a Sherline Mill. It looks like you've got accordion covers over the lead screw.

Did you make these, or buy them somewhere?

Also, are you using an enclosure of some type?

Thanks for any info,

Kenny

Comments

  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2015-03-02 05:25
    You can actually DIY these. They are called bellows. And you can easily make them 3-sided tubes, 4-sided, 5-sided, 6-sided, and so on... if you so desire.

    As a kid I used to make the 4-sided ones when bored in junior high school. One can always seek a career as an according repairman.

    http://www.instructables.com/id/bellows-for-large-format-camera/

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taQAM4i33OI

    This only gets tricky when you desire one end to be larger than the other end -- a tapered bellows. It seems those require two parts - a flexible fabric, and backing pieces to create the structure. These are glued together. It would be hard to just fold a single sheet of material to get the creases correctly.

    The real question is what to use for material. It has to be something that will take to folding.

    AND if you want the round kind and just want to show, search "lead screw bellows".
    http://www.machine-cover.com/round-bellows-cover.html
  • GordonMcCombGordonMcComb Posts: 3,366
    edited 2015-03-02 09:01
    These photos were all taken over at Sherline of their machines (I live nearby). You could email them and ask. The fellow I worked with is Karl, the shop foreman.
  • Kenny GardnerKenny Gardner Posts: 169
    edited 2015-03-02 10:57
    I'll probably end up making one, but the one in Gordon's photo looks prefessionally made.

    Sherline does have a blog post from last year where they mentioned they were working on a cover. Perhaps the one is the photo is what they came up with. Took a peak at sherlinedirect.com and didn't see anything.

    Thanks,

    Kenny
  • LoopyBytelooseLoopyByteloose Posts: 12,537
    edited 2015-03-02 11:10
    Good luck to you. I am happy to hear you are considering making your own. It isn't that hard to do. I would be on the look out for some vinyl covered cloth or traditional oil cloth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oilcloth

    Oil cloth may actually be a thing of the past, but it is an ideal material and can be made from scratch.

    I happen to have a passion for geometry, tiling, and the actual construction of things geometric.

    It was only in the past month that I realized that I had never considered how to construct a bellows that had one end larger than the other. The internet of course gvie me the answer immediately, but it was a bit of surprise.

    Upon revisiting bellows on the internet, I find them a very interesting handicraft with a long history (How do you get the cukcoo in a cukcco clock?) and still offer a lot of creativity for robotics.
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