Upgraded the bridge axis. Added a bearing to take lateral load off the flex hose connecting the threaded rod to the stepper. The bearing mount is 4 sheets of 3/16" plywood - cut by the CNC - how cool is that! The bearing is sandwiched in between. The stepper is further offset by the old plate to reduce tension from any wobble. I can now move this axis at up to 7 inches per minute - previous rates were around 6 in/mn. The stepper can only turn at 7/min in free air (no threaded rod attached), so this is pretty good.

Another touch is to mount the power transistor / driver board so the cables don't flop around so much.

Finally - a small reminder that I do not have all the bells and whistles installed. I really need limit switches. A recent job ran the table to the end and started to pull the flex tube off the stepper shaft. Yikes!

That's all for now!

The X axis had stopped working! What went wrong? I started looking at the electronics wondering if I had lost power, ground a signal, something. That was all good, then I looked closer at the stepper and noticed that the motor was turning, however the coupler had slipped off and the tie wraps were jammed against the frame stopping the threaded rod from turning.

The fix has been to grind a key into the stepper shaft and use tie wraps on the stepper shaft.

And this is why we test things. Although I'm not 100% sure what broke or failed, the end result was the Z-Axis not raising. After many a number of hours of successful milling, while on the 3rd pass, the Z-axis stopped raising. Each row would start down from were it left off. The final swerve was most likely a result of being too deep for the rapid no-milling return movement.