bugger.

[frobzwiththingz]

It's 12:30am, and I'm currently in the middle of completely disassembling the cross-slides of my Bridgeport, so as to figure out why it just decided to ignore any turning of the X-axis handwheels and just sit there, motionless, taunting me. This is one of the three main machines I now make most of my living with, and I cannot afford any serious downtime. Gonna be a long night.

Update: 2:42 am: Machine is back to working order.

frotz, you owe me a donut. I like donuts. Split-nut adjustment screw was fine, though it was really hard to see anything in the X saddle until I unscrewed the leadscrew all the way out and could then get some damned light in there. This is what I saw on the right hand side:



See that funny rectangular prism hanging there? it seems that the split-nut is keyed, and that is the key piece. a 2-inch long square key, that had seemingly completely vibrated out of its place, leaving the acme split-nut free to rotate along with the leadscrew. I had to tear down the whole thing in order to take out the split-nut adjusting screw, then the split-nut itself, re-align everything with the key in place, and shove it all back in:



The odd thing is, I see nothing in the cross-nut assembly that would be designed to prevent this from happening again; no little holding screw or clip or pin or anything. Is this just something that needs to be checked every once in a while, or every decade or so it randomly hoses you at a bad time again?

Other than that, everything in there seems in good shape, the x axis is now back to near no backlash after reassembling, and I was surprised to still be able to see original wayscraping marks on the saddle ways. not bad for a machine made in 1946.

Now I'm going to have some tea, and maybe a chili dog, and go to sleep.

Comments

[tamidon.livejournal.com]

personally I go for cider donuts out at the orchards in autumn, but that would mean delayed gratification