So I taught P-CAM class last night, and it was squeeking to beat the band. I “borrowed” a can of the white lithium from Automotive (and on reflection, I THINK I might have left the can on the evacuation housing plenum: if so, would someone be willing to move it out to the Auto shelf, where it goes – 1,000 apologies for my effup! If you review the video, you’ll see me ask an attendee to grab it for me, and me standing there just before I walk away with a puzzled look on my face: I KNEW I was forgetting something!) and attempted to grease everything I could find that might turn and squeek. It only sort-of worked. I can see the tiny bearings on the torch carrier are “frozen”, specifically the left lower and the rear.
Have we made plans/arrangements to get these swapped out?
The other one that’s squeeking is the right hand gantry. I’m unclear on how that all goes together inside the rail, but it was squeeling, too. The lube helped a bit, but left a lot to be desired.
Re: Tim’s post from the manual, which I failed to have handy or use for this little foray: I did attempt to lube the teeth a bit on the gantry with the white lithium. This seems like a bad idea, so I wiped most of it back off. You can still see some in the teeth, though. I think this needs something “dry” because that section attracts a LOT of dust, and the white lithium looks bad, will yellow over time, becomes stiff, and will generally be a bad thing in that location, I think. Obviously, someone else might have a different opinion. I only now noticed that it says to prise the Z-axis motor guard off and use lithium there, so I didn’t do that.
All in all, I did a bad job, but I intended it mostly to be a quick test of the waters, to see if lubrication is really all that’s needed, or if we need replacement of bearings. My opinion is that we need both; the latter will make the most difference, and is the hardest to do (including but not limited to needing a purchase).
Oh yeah: completely slipped my mind to electronify the manual. Like several things, apparently, last night…