Spindle mount and a μg of liquid cooling

Post date: Jun 9, 2013 12:31:47 AM

I've made some significant progress on my spindle mount: it's pretty much done! I believe all that needs to be done now is shortening some machine screws so they don't try to occupy the same space as the spindle. That would be bad.

Pictures!

Here you can see how the spindle mount was assembled. First, a chunk of 4" square (1/8" walls) aluminum was cut to the correct length. Two corners were cut off to allow the clamps to fit in while still leaving space to get at the corner to tighten it down. The edges were sanded smooth and the rest of the holes were drilled (for securing the clamps to the frame and the frame to the Z axis).

The clamps are as described previously. The new addition are the tapped holes for attaching them to the frame and the notched corner for turning it into a "clamp" instead of a "chunk of aluminum with a circle cut out of the middle". The notching was done on a table saw by clamping the aluminum at 45 degrees between two chunks of wood and just cutting out the required pieces. After that, the clamping bolt hole was drilled on a drill press, and it was table sawed some more to make things fit (because I have trouble drilling in the right spot... it's like I need a CNC machine or something...). As usual, everything was sanded smooth afterwards.

The end result looks something like this:

The screws on the sides securing the clamps to the frame need to be shortened to they don't try to screw into the spindle and a screw needs to be added through the clamping hole to tighten it down, but it's otherwise complete.

Finally, a little news on the cooling front. I got tubing of the correct size for the spindle barbs (it's 1/4" OD, 0.170" ID), and got at least one of them secured. I also got an adapter to connect the tubing to the pump. It'll need a bit of machining to fit right (it's just a plain brass hose barb, which is NOT what the pump wants), but it looks like it should work.