Rebuilt/Cleaned/Maintained Plasma Cutter

The plasma cutter was in terrible shape, it had 3/16" wobble and grind as it moved along the X gantry.

The grind/wobble was because one of the gantry bearings broke which in turn tilted the gantry which caused the pinion on the X axis to rub against the Gantry which in turned damaged the pinion.

Me and Ian Jaeger took it upon ourselves to maintain the machine, I managed to replace the bearing assembly and we tuned up the pinion. Everything is running a lot smoother now.

I was actually quite surprised that people even wanted to use the machine while it was in that state, I know it isn’t a world class machine, but with a little maintenance and love it can cut some really nice parts. I hope in the future that people raise an issue when our machines are squealing/grinding/wobbling so that we can work together to get them fixed.

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Bearings are on the list to be replaced on that machine when chuck gets back. We talked about going to Purvis the other day.

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They weren’t cheap, but @Chris_Wischkowsky grabbed some bearings at ACE hardware that were the correct size, and simply mounted them on a correctly sized bolt.

Filed down the bent pinion tips and showed how just a little bit of MX goes a long way. Prime example of excellent makery. I had the easy job of pulling springs and degreasing everything…

Also… the machine is blue l, not black… who’d have thunk it?

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