My DIY CNC upgrade project, the Z axis upgrade

I started with a major upgrade of my DIY CNC. The CNC, including the upgrade, is 100% of my own design, there is a long story about it here.

http://adapting-camera.blogspot.be/2015/03/my-cnc-story-part-1.html 

The first version had its issues, and while it served me well, it is now time for a major upgrade. All axes will be replaced by new, much better designed ones.

One main mechanical upgrade was the changing from unsupported steel rods which made up the horizontal and vertical slides to fully supported and much stronger ones. The Z axis had 10mm rods, the X and Y had 12mm rods. All those are now 16mm fully supported.

The other thing was the lead screws. In my version one I used 12mm stainless steel threaded rods with 1.75mm pitch and the lead nuts were made of acetal (POM), all individually taped by a piece of the threaded rod, which I made a tap of and threaded the lead nuts with to get zero backlash. This worked very well, but the speed was slow, maximum 500mm / minute. These are now replaced with 16mm ball screws and ball nuts. Of course, the speed increased significantly, a quick test bench run shows 1500mm / minute without problems. I could probably get more with higher power supply voltage, but that's for the future.

Even some parts of the electronics will be redesigned when I am done. Already added a USB controller and running with an UC300, which seems to be excellent. I will add some control buttons and jogging wheel also, and will also upgrade the power supply. Maybe I will also change the spindle motor, which is quite weak, but doing what I want it to do.

Anyway, version one of my CNC served me well, but now it is time for a major upgrade. I will post pictures and video as well as more data later on, as I progress, but in the meantime here is a short one showing the Z axis and the differences between old and new.


This video is the first in a series, showing the upgrade of the weakest part in the first version, the Z axis.

Ooops... I am sorry... I have just noticed that I made a slight error in the video. When the new Z axis is shown the caption says "The new X axis" in large red letters. Of course, that's wrong, it is the new Z axis which this video is about. OK, the Z axis is on the X axis, but when I made this video the X axis was not really ready. Sorry about that.

Plastic or metal bayonets on the Nikon 1 lenses?

There was a discussion on a camera forum the other day about the type of bayonet Nikon is using on the Nikon 1 lenses which made me a bit curious. Some people claim that the majority of the lenses have plastic bayonet, others claim that some of the lenses have bayonets made of two parts, a metal ring and a plastic tube. To find out the truth I decided to check out the 10-30mm and the 30-110mm lenses.

After removing the screws and looking underneath it is clear that these two lenses have a 100% plastic bayonet, made out of one single molded piece. The circular marks underneath are typical marks after the molding process.




 
Never the less, it seems to be high quality, and while not as good as a metal bayonet could be, it doesn't really matter as long as it works. It is amazing that the surface still does not show any signs wear and tear, and it still looks like metal.

Please note, I have no idea if the majority, or perhaps all the Nikon 1 lenses have plastic bayonets, only these two.

The coating is pretty well done, but the fact that it is plastic will stop me from using my ring flash on those lenses, and I would advise every user of the V2-F1A to not use any ring flash on those lenses any more.

On the other hand, the FT1 is really well made and is definitely 100% made of metal, so if you intend to use a ring flash with the V2-F1A I would advise to use a real macro lens together with a ring flash.

If you are interested in the V2-F1A generic flash adapter for the Nikon 1 V series cameras then please read about it here:

http://adapting-camera.blogspot.se/2015/08/the-v1-f1a-is-dead-long-live-v2-f1a.html

Please click on the images if you wish to see them larger.