Interesting to get a variety of opinions on the matter.
Katoh,
You can get a lot out of a "system" and get good prefomance and accuracy for some dollar amount.
As the desired accuracy and preformance increases you pay for the increased system. So only you can decide and define the cost, effort, and end
system quality for what you want or may ever want to do. You can't compare systems of different quality ie; hobby to industral. Your's is what you have or will have should you desire to improve it.That my friend is just a fact of life!
As my music teacher said....YOU CAN HAVE ANYTHING ON THE SHELF BUT ONCE YOU DECIDE YOU WANT IT THEN YOU MUST PAY THE PRICE
Then he said .....NOTHING EVER STANDS STILL IT PROGRESS OR REGRESSES AND THAT IS JUST NATURE
What you see is what you get , but, maybe what you see is not necessarily what you think it is. Ask someone how much it cost to replace their bearings in a say a Hardinge lathe, or it's lead screw. Can the lathe cut a class one thread, a class two thread, or does the nut just go on the thread?
Practical info on screws:
They are not all created equal. The ones removed from both my Atlas lathes and mill were ground.
You are not going to get ground lead screws for cheap and certainly not on the imports for their machine pricing.
There are lead screws in my engraving machine and the nuts have backlash removal and provide for 20 micron accuracy over their travel
( yes that's .000020", but i could only verify to .000040", so i will believe the certification papers).
I know of friends that have cnc lathes using all thread / crappy cheap threaded rods along with .080" backlash and they have done some nice work using backlash comp. I wonder why they changed them out to ball screws?
I have a Sherline lathe with the anti backlash attachement, the lead screw is quite accurate, but, even with the backlash adjustment, as compared to ball screw it sucks in accuracy. Not bashing Sherline but it depends on what your trying to do with it.
My Rockwell manual lathe will produce threads that rival my cnc converted Atlas lathe.
But the Atlas is very reliable on producing the part over and over even if this dumbo defines it incorrectly.
The "system" is only as good as the sum of it's components and installation. A high end ball screw with poor / improper bearing installation
could be just as bad or no better than a higher end screw.
So should you replace the current lead screws with ball screws?
Only you can decide as stated above.
BTW, A non-backlash accurate cnc machine is just pure joy to use.
RICH
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