kram242 submitted a new resource: New wheels for my router www.cncforeveryone.com - v wheel Read more about this resource...
Great idea John, we had toyed with the idea of trying aluminum in the past but were a little unsure about the wear on the V-Slot. What do you guys think of the aluminum on aluminum?
Having given this some thought, obviously, running a plain aluminium V-Wheel in a plain aluminium V-Slot would be a very bad idea. Referring to the following diagram… The V-Wheel circumference at point A is different to the V-Wheel circumference at point B yet for one complete revolution of the V-Wheel both points A & B move an equidistance along the linear V-Slot. However… The V-Slot is hard anodized so we have a basically soft material (the aluminium V-Wheel) running on a basically hard aluminium oxide surface (the V-Slot) and this makes all the difference. My conclusion is that as long as the V-Slot is well anodized and the V-Wheel is left as plain aluminium it will work just fine. Tweakie.
The other thing that concerns me is the noise. It will be much louder with alu against alu than alu against plastic. I have enough noise coming from the spindle and the cutting tool. Don't feel like adding to it.
Unfortunately the V-Slot is not hard anodized as it was not cost prohibitive to do so. We did at one time have OpenRail hard coated but that process was too expensive as well and we moved back to standard black anodized. We have been experimenting with some harder materials here as well and have been looking at (edit) Polycarbonate as well as Acrylic Need to test more but both are very stiff material.
Whoops correct, that should have been Acrylic and polycarbonate not POM (Polyoxymethylene) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycarbonate Thanks Rick
Thanks for the additional information Mark it makes me re-think the whole situation. It may need to be tested but a standard anodized finish to the V-Slot would almost certainly wear far too quickly if plain aluminium V-Wheels were used so it would perhaps be best to avoid them for this application. Tweakie.
Agreed Tweakie and this is the main reason we did not pursue it further. Now we just need to compare the Polycarbonate and Acrylic properties to see what would be the best for our application. I am thinking least compression as well as lest amount of wear. EDIT looks like PC is the one with less wear and less compression. The only problem is the cost. We are looking into it and seeing if we can source the materials at better cost. If it all works out we could have a stiffer less wear alternative V wheels soon on the OpenBuilds Part Store! Mark
