I'm far from a machinist but i have more enthusiasm than I know what to do with so had a go at milling a pocket for the nut ad well as the socket I'm going to have to fit the the end of the ball screw. I wouldn't know where to begin to get bobcad to produce the code for the 3D pocket so it just sort of made it up as a went, it is the approximate size of the nut, the only measurement that i made sure was spot in was the width of the nut flange and boy is it tight on the nut. My plan is to hammer the nut in there then some how bot it so that it cant rotate, with no movement from side to side and no way to rotate i should have a zero backlash X axis - well heres hoping!
My fist time using a ball nosed cutter and i quite enjoyed it, to be honest the only reason it was easy was due to my new Gwizard subscription, set the feed rate and the spindle speed and away you go.
The hole in the middle is the original nut mount.
So after cutting as deep as i dare and taking some more measurements I am going to have to grind this nut something silly. Sorry the pic is bad it was moving in the machine.
You'll notice the M6 cap screw in the side this is a grease nipple hole, I figured that if im going to grind the flange off I had better give myself as much chance of seating it as i can by retaining as many of the bolt holes as i can by grinding it on an angle i was able to retain 4 of the six holes instead of keeping 2. I'm starting to also think that i may be able to utilize this grease hole as well by drilling through the slide and attaching some sort of screw to this hole to assist with preventing rotation. The reason i say some sort of screw is that I had to mill so much out of the slide to give the nut clearance that i only have about 1.5mm between the peak of the nut and the top of the slide, the goal is not to clamp it using this screw but to prevent rotation of the nut so maybe all use a grub screw, even better would be a flat grease nipple - ill come up with something.